Houzz Tour: Cheery and Colorful in Tampa

Reclaimed wood beams and exposed bricks add a touch of texture to this new coastal-chic Florida house

Jess McBride November 25, 2017

Houzz Contributor. Custom decorating professional and content creator for the home design industry with a lifelong passion for color, pattern, and texture of every "stripe"

Houzz Contributor. Custom decorating professional and content creator for the home... More

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Pasquale Design Associates, Inc.

Photos by Chibi Moku Productions

House at a Glance
Who lives here: Two moms with 9-year-old triplets
Location: South Tampa, Florida
Size: About 5,000 square feet (about 464.5 square meters)
Designer: Franco Pasquale
Architect: Hittmeier Design Consultants
Builder: JR Structures Custom Builders

Preserving family memories doesn’t have to mean enshrining an old family property in a time capsule. That’s what two moms and their triplets discovered when they decided to knock down the small ranch home on their family’s waterfront property and replace it with a house more suitable to the size of their family. One of the moms grew up in the house next door and wanted to create a comfortable, casual place where her kids could host lively school events and sleepovers among treasured family memorabilia.

The home’s exterior can best be described as a coastal Craftsman. It features mint green siding and a wood overhang above the garage. Around the garage, what appears to be stucco is actually tabby — a mix of crushed seashells and concrete.

Pasquale Design Associates, Inc.

The family envisioned their great room as a gathering space off the covered lanai. Designer Franco Pasquale called for collapsible pocket doors to create that all-important flow. The room’s architecture really spoke to the designer. He says it felt like a cottage home you’d see in the Northeast, and he wanted the interior to reflect that.

Often these Victorian cottages would have some detailed casing and trim, so he trimmed the portals going from room to room to create some architectural detail and interest between rooms. He also used shiplap as a feature behind the fireplace and again in the stairwell. “I wanted to create a bit of history, as if some elements could have been pulled from an older home,” Pasquale says. He balanced historical references with a modern precast mantel, which enhances the streamlined look of the shiplap.

Pasquale Design Associates, Inc.

Since the homeowners wanted to keep their upholstery casual, Pasquale gave them practical slipcovers that can be pulled off to clean. Palecek slipper chairs with hyacinth-leaf frames bring a lot of texture in a clean, tailored way. Likewise, other natural fibers abound in the form of a wool and sisal rug and a reclaimed wood table by Bernhardt that’s meant to evoke driftwood in a refined way.

Pasquale Design Associates, Inc.

The kitchen is all about materials and textures, from the ground up. The wide-plank white oak floors have an oiled finish and a scrubbed open-grain texture that Pasquale says feels like old wood weathered by the ocean.

The clients also really wanted brick in their kitchen; they had seen it before and loved it as a wall treatment. So the designer decided to use an old Chicago reclaimed brick on the exterior wall to create the illusion that it’s part of the structure.

Browse wide-plank wood floors

Pasquale Design Associates, Inc.

The homeowners wanted to use authentic materials and chose to complement their quartzite countertop on the perimeter with a walnut butcher block on the island. For the cabinetry, Pasquale chose off-white for the primary cabinets and a deep, dark paint for the island. The zinc table and upholstered chairs were the clients’ own.

Pasquale Design Associates, Inc.

Another living area in the home is dubbed “the sanctuary.” It’s a place where the moms go to be alone and relax. They wanted their family memorabilia to be displayed here, and their trusted designer pulled out all the stops: Displaying their collected and inherited books on the built-in shelves was a given, but reupholstering a beloved piece of furniture became an extra-special mission.

The mother of one of the homeowners had passed away a couple of years ago, and her daughter kept her old sofa. Pasquale made some modifications to the furniture frame to make it more current, and re-covered it in vibrant fabric, leaving a small section of the original fabric under one of the sofa cushions to preserve the memory of the cherished piece.

The clients found the light fixture while traveling. It’s a series of people joining hands, and in the evening when the lights come on, you can see all these little figures dancing on the walls. “It was a way of saying that all the people they have loved and lost are still there,” Pasquale says.

Pasquale Design Associates, Inc.

The original home was Mediterranean-Tuscan in style, with furniture to match. Though they had decided to pursue a very different look in their new house, they didn’t want to give up their functional dining set, so they issued their designer a challenge: Find a way to make it work. Pasquale found a Robert Allen fabric that brought in the bright, beachy color scheme in the rest of the house and turned these old dining chairs into statement pieces.

Pasquale Design Associates, Inc.

The master bathroom evolved through three different design concepts. The homeowners fell in love with a cement tile from a new cement tile purveyor in Tampa, so they changed out the tile in the steam shower and used a coordinating solid cement tile for the ceiling there. The floor tile is a wood-look porcelain in a chevron pattern. They wanted a soaking tub, so Pasquale had a marble ledge built between the tub and shower. It’s high enough to offer a little privacy and bumps out to a bench in the shower. On the tub side, it houses the plumbing fixtures and gives them a place for candles and toiletries.

Pasquale Design Associates, Inc.

All the children were involved in the design of their rooms. They even came along on tile- and fabric-buying trips. The kids are at an age where they adopt new interests every month, so the challenge was to design rooms that weren’t too one-note, that appealed to their more fixed characteristics.

One of the kids is into the preppy, monogrammed look right now. She’s a bookworm, and the glasses over the bed are a fun nod to the glasses she wears in real life. The walls are painted in Sherwin-Williams Denim and ground the eclectic mix of different blues in the space. “Sometimes we get too hung up on using the same color blue throughout and then picking an accent color, but blues look so great together you can mix something a little deeper with something a little cooler,” Pasquale says.

Pasquale Design Associates, Inc.

The house is symmetrical on the back side, so all the kids’ rooms have similarly shaped windows and window seats. The original intent was that these seats would be low so you could see the water from bed, but ultimately the windows had to be raised to account for the roof pitch. The designer made the height of the windows look intentional by installing a daybed with storage underneath.

The overall design concept for this room was a modern sailboat. Pasquale brought in nautical details like the truss above the window seat and rope handles on the drawers. He fondly recalls working with this young client: “He has better taste than most kids I’ve ever met. On the first run, his tile selections were perfection.” The little boy was known to petition his mom for more design sessions with Pasquale. “I’d hire him,” the designer says with a laugh.

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