[best of 2009] Lake Martin projects

Lake Martin, for those of you not from around here, is a weekend getaway destination about an hour and a half south of Birmingham, which also draws a lot of families from Atlanta and Montgomery.  It’s a couple hours north of our office in Rosemary Beach, Florida, making it easy for us to reach from either of our locations.  In 2009, we were excited to finally break onto the scene at the Lake with three beautiful projects that debuted.

Working with Russell Lands, a large development company with historical roots to the area, and our sister company Dungan Nequette Architects, we designed two projects for a new development called Russell Crossroads.  The first, Catherine’s Market officially opened at the very end of 2008 but saw its Grand Opening this past spring.

The interior of Catherine’s Market is fresh and bright.  A classic black and white color scheme is accented with galvanized metal, white enamel and chrome reto-inspired display cases and a cool grey-green accent color painted on sliding cabinet doors above the cases.  It was great fun to work with renowned grocers Rick and Lynn Little who manage the Market and also oversee the wonderful V. Richard’s Market in Birmingham.  We love the way the Market feels and the public does too–the response has been phenomenal! 

A couple of months after Catherine’s opening, Russell Crossroads welcomed another establishment with roots in Birmingham when James Beard nominated chef Chris Hastings, of the Hot & Hot Fish Club, partnered with Russell Lands to open the SpringHouse Restaurant.  Housed in a new building reminiscent of an old stone barn, we created an interior environment for the SpringHouse that is both rustic and sophisticated.

We love hearing from people all over the Southeast about how much they are enjoying both Catherine’s Market and the SpringHouse!  We’re pretty big fans ourselves, and feel so honored to have worked with such experts like the Littles and Chris Hastings.

Just down the road from Russell Crossroads, we were busy completing a lake house this year that like none we’ve ever seen before.  Cool, crisp and sophisticated, this home’s palette of charcoal, white and linen with touches of grey blue is incredibly serene and peaceful.

This home has been quite popular since we first showed photos of it, appearing on several great design blogs.  We think it’s an incredibly beautiful home and look forward to sharing even more images of it in the coming year.

[Catherine’s Market and Springhouse Restaurant photos by Eric Marcus]

[best of 2009] Rosemary Beach redo

We’ll admit it, the real estate market has been slow in our hometown of Rosemary Beach, Florida and all along scenic Highway 30A for the past couple of years.  In 2009 we started to see that trend shift however and we excitedly began working close to home once again.  We’ve got several exciting projects already lined up at the beach for 2010 but we did complete one project this year that bears mentioning once more.

Located just down Rosemary Avenue from our shop, the renovation of this home–one of Rosemary Beach’s originals–produced a stunning end result for an Atlanta family.

Tracery’s Paige Schnell and Anna Kay Porch completely changed the look of this house without any major construction — carefully chosen additions to the architecture combined with a crisp paint job and a house-full of new casual furnishings  from our shop resulted in the perfect beach retreat.  The clean color palette and deliberate choice of new finishes proves that casual elegance is best achieved with a simple solution.

[photos by Michael Granberry]