Starting Over

A growing family creates opportunity for the Edgertons to grow their home

FOR FOUR YEARS, Lindsay and Brandon Edgerton looked for the perfect home. After scouring listings throughout Dilworth and South End, where they lived in a small apartment, the couple was unable to find exactly what they were looking for. “We knew we wanted to live in the Dilworth area and were having trouble finding an open floor plan, which isn’t easy to come by in the older homes in the area,” Lindsay says.

Maggie Yackel used a color palette of whites and grays with touches of blue in Lindsay and Brandon Edgerton’s home, a new build in the Dilworth neighborhood.

Then the Edgertons found out Lindsay was pregnant with their first child. They were elated, but also began to panic. Their tiny apartment was much too small for three people and a dog. With the pressure to find a new home, the couple decided to buy a lot in Dilworth, building from scratch. “By building new, we were able to design the floor plan and features exactly how we wanted,” Lindsay says of their custom home by Ram Design-Build.

To ensure the new house blended seamlessly with its neighbors, the Edgertons wanted to keep the architecture in line with the nearby Craftsman homes. A clean, neutral color palette for the façade helped achieve that goal. The interior, though, was a place where the couple wanted to incorporate something different. “We were at a loss as to how to achieve the look and design we’d seen in magazines and online,” says Lindsay. The couple enlisted Maggie Yackel of Beth Keim’s Dilworth-based design firm Lucy and Company to create a clean, modern interior that was both family-friendly and sophisticated.

In the family room, geometric wallpaper by Designers Guild provides subtle texture in the modern space.

Working with a blank slate and little furniture from the Edgertons’ apartment, Yackel established a color palette of soft whites and grays. To add a dose of color, touches of blue run throughout the first floor living spaces and master bedroom. With an open floor plan that ties together the breakfast nook, kitchen, and family room, Yackel wanted to add depth to the clean, modern look of the spaces and keep them separate but equal. To achieve this, she added layers of texture with a shag rug, a tufted, diamond-patterned ottoman, and Designers Guild wallpaper above the fireplace for visual texture in the family room, while the adjacent kitchen retained a more contemporary look with an all-white subway tile backsplash and quartzite counters.

To balance the home’s traditional architecture, such as the coffered ceilings and heavy crown molding and trim work, with Yackel’s more modern aesthetic, the designer updated pieces with simple detailing and fabric. The Chesterfield sofa in the family room boasts a signature tufted back, but Yackel squared off the arms to modernize the piece. Similarly, the designer covered a single contemporary chair with a sleek, tailored metal base in a more traditional thick, white-and-gray cotton woven fabric.

In the dining room, Yackel continued the two opposing aesthetics with the addition of traditional tufted dining chairs with nail-head trim and a modern wood dining table with a rustic black iron base by Noir. A vintage gold bar cart from Slate Interiors, along with the dining table and other warm accents, help balance the cool tones of the gray and silver in the room.

The graphic wallpaper by Harlequin provides texture to the space while maintaining the neutral color palette. In lieu of an oversized chandelier, which would detract from the room’s overall design, Yackel installed a new small, circular chandelier by Currey & Company.

As she did with the rest of the living areas on the first floor, Yackel continued the neutral color palette of grays and whites in the master bedroom, but added more color to help soften the space.

“When I saw this purple-gray graphic fabric for the sofa, I used that as my springboard for the rest of the room,” Yackel explains of the Robert Allen fabric. A tufted headboard by Sunpan and the watercolor-inspired fabric on the draperies help soften the clean lines of the modern furnishings while also bringing in a touch of color.

Now that they have a second child, the Edgertons are delighted to have a home with both a modern interior and room to accommodate their family. “We could not be happier,” says Lindsay. “We love our home and love entertaining in it. We could seriously see this being a forever home for us.”