Living

Wednesday, Jul. 08, 2009

Arroyo Grande couple's home is a place where exotic treasures come to rest

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David and Carrie Porter lived in China for 5-1/2 years while David worked for Ford Motor Co. When they returned to the states, they brought with them two 40-foot containers full of furniture, art and artifacts.

The pieces infused elegance into the nearly 6,000-square-foot traditional-style home that Carrie, an interior designer, designed for the couple and their four children in Granite Bay, near Sacramento. The family lived there for four years.

By 2004, David was retired, the children were grown and gone, and the couple’s dream home seemed much too large for their needs. They visited Santa Barbara to look at homes and, on their way, made an overnight stop in San Luis Obispo. That short layover turned into a three-night visit.

“We ended up not even looking in Santa Barbara,” said Carrie. The couple immediately began investigating real estate near San Luis Obispo.

When they found a 3,600- square-foot-contemporary Mediterranean home in Arroyo Grande, two main attributes appealed to them: the ocean view, and the private interior courtyard that is a common feature in Chinese homes.

Carrie immediately envisioned a space much more contemporary and casual than their previous home, where their Chinese pieces would have a dramatic presence against a sparse, understated backdrop.

Her first task: masking all of the country-flavored oak finishes in the 2002-built house. Instead of replacing all cabinetry, she had the kitchen cabinets lacquered black and interior doors lacquered white. Changing brass door handles and hinges to contemporary satin nickel ones completed the transformation.

Carrie considers built-in cabinets essential to a pulled-together space.

“It’s a much cleaner look, and it doesn’t take up as much room as freestanding furniture,” she said.

So she used built-ins in nearly every room. They contain the flat-panel television in the family room and form a combined headboard and storage system in the master bedroom. A built-in wardrobe for David made by The Closet Factory allowed Carrie to claim the master walk-in closet for herself.

Glassed-in display shelves in the entryway create a partition between the foyer and the living room and safely display some of the rarer pieces from their collection such as an antique Tibetan chest and Chinese dolls from Shanghai.

Easing the transition of their Chinese pieces and traditional furniture into their new contemporary environment took some finesse. Sometimes the solution was as simple as a can of spray paint, as when Carrie added a gleaming coat of silver to her burnished gold frames. Re-upholstery was another tool. She parted with many of the delicate silks and florals from her old home, replacing them with sturdy, casual fabrics that are either monochromatic or striped.

Carrie is particularly fond of using pieces in unexpected ways. She stacked two bamboo trunks and topped them with glass to create a side table next to her traditional family room couch. An antique tribal costume became wall art when mounted in a floating frame and hung above the fireplace. An old Chinese bench acts as a sort of sofa table when placed behind two traditional upholstered chairs in the living room.

The Porters’ remodel also included completing an unfinished 500-square-foot-guest house, removing a too-revealing picture window from the guest bathroom, adding seven patios and installing solar panels.

Although Carrie acknowledges that she occasionally pines for the sizable custom home she left, her new house has exceeded her expectations. “We had a movie theater in the old house, but to be honest, the kids like this house better,” she said. “It’s the house we’re going to be in for a long time, so it had to be comfortable and very livable—and it is.”

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