This Incredible Home Renovation Features Family Heirlooms and Vintage Treasures

The house with a reputation. You know the kind: The listing zips around social media like a meme, and the open house is packed, but there it sits, until the right family—creative, intrepid, and little desperate—walks through the door.

By the time they toured it, designer Diana Mathews and her husband, chef Phillip Perrow, were already well aware of “The Secret Garden House.”

“The listing was so wild, the photos so crazy, that most people were probably terrified to go see it," says Mathews. She and Perrow were nursing the wounds of yet another house lost to a bidding war and decided a “just-for-kicks” walk-through could be the perfect antidote for their disappointment. “We thought it would make for a good story. Little did we know it would become our story.

The 1930 brick house in Richmond, VA, featured a large brick wall around what was once presumably a lush, alluring garden. The yard had become a forest of weeds and unrelenting vines. "Vines had utterly eaten the wood picked fences that run between the brick columns by the gate," says Mathews.

Massive stumps, weeds, and vines obscured brick pathways that wrap the home. “We wandered around the property, walked through the house, and fell completely dumbstruck in love with a money pit,” Mathews recalls. “We both knew this place would require so much love, but we saw past all the layers and totally envisioned our future here.”

Returning the house to its original state meant peeling back those unfortunate elements. Mathews and Perrow got the seller’s permission to invest sweat equity—removing layers of paint and repairing windowpanes—even before closing. “It was a lot of work for a leap of faith,” Mathews says.

“We were stripping, stripping, stripping,” she says. “I quit counting the layers of wallpaper we removed from walls and ceilings or the sheets of linoleum we peeled off the floors. Phillip and I refinished all the floors and painted everything ourselves.”

Once they had a clean slate, the couple slowly began to embellish the bare bones of the traditional house with their eclectic sensibility. “If you asked me what my style was, I’d say ‘sentimental,’” says Mathews, who once owned a vintage resale shop and specialized in midcentury modern furniture. “We’ve collected midcentury pieces that we love, inherited antiques that have emotional value to us, and own art that spans various eras. Those were the treasures that drove this design.” 

An original corner hutch and the dining room trim were painted Sherwin-Williams Escape Gray—a few shades darker than the walls in Sherwin-Williams Spare White. Mathews says that by calling attention to traditional details, she could inject contemporary touches for balance—the light fixture, midcentury bar, and glass-top table. The dining chairs with upholstered seats belonged to Perrow's great-great-grandmother; the others belonged to his mom.

Marrying elements from different places and periods is what gives a home a certain unmatched style—something that’s become increasingly difficult to pull off in an “everything is shoppable” Instagram world, Mathews says. “I believe that if you know what you love, and you hold onto pieces that you love, they will always make you happy, and your home will be full of character. If you design based only on trends, you move on when the trends change because you have no emotional attachment to what you’re living with.”

Because of the home’s traditional layout, each room is independent rather than open—a separation of spaces that the couple enjoy. Though Mathews loves that each room tells its own story, she did want to create visual continuity. So she used color to transition from one space to the next, repeating shades of earthy greens for synthesis. “I love any and every shade of green,” she says. “Because I’ve always been drawn to that color tone, it’s possible for me to move things around, to shop from my own house, because that color thread is like my second language. It’s everywhere here.”  One of the couple’s you-had-me-at-hello elements was the original, untouched millwork in the living room. 

In the stripped, repainted stairwell Mathews' gallery wall includes a few of her own paintings, some created by friends, and a special landscape series done by Perrow's grandfather.

As much as she’s drawn to old houses and their distinct personalities, Mathews didn’t want an ornate, traditional house that felt like a stuffy antiques store. “We are a young family who likes old things. But I’m here to tell you, your grandmother’s chair can get new, quirky upholstery and represent your taste, while the form still reminds you of her,” she says.

A quilt that belonged to Mathews' great-great-great-grandmother hangs behind treasured midcentury chairs (the first piece she ever owned is on left with a close match she found later). “The quilt is one of my most prized possessions,” she says.

The kitchen was the one room that warranted a complete remodel. Perrow, a chef, wanted the room to feel more welcoming than utilitarian, so he asked Mathews if she’d forgo upper cabinets. “I was reluctant, but now I’m so glad we did that,” she says. The couple incorporated antiques, hanging Perrow's great-great-grandmother’s mirror on the wall and opting for an old workbench instead of a built-in island. 

In the couple’s bedroom, a landscape painting by Perrow's grandfather hangs above the nonworking fireplace, which Mathews filled with various potted plants. She kept the bedding simple, with an ochre canvas throw over a white coverlet, and played to the muted, woodsy palette in the geometric rug.

In the “green room,” Mathews gives her overnight guests a cozy, soft place to land. “The walls and ceilings are all painted this warm green, so you feel enveloped,” she says. The alabaster lamp lit the hallway of her childhood home, the side chair came from her family’s old river house nearby, and antique trays that hang on the wall served food at the couple’s wedding reception. The tiger maple four-poster, owned by Perrow's great-great-great-great-grandfather, was made before the Civil War. 

“Part of the fun of decorating with older things is that you have a chance to reinvent them or pair them with something unexpected. I don’t care much about having possessions worth lots of money. I want to surround my family with things that make our hearts beat because they tell our story.” 

The timeless original 3×6-inch bath wall tiles stayed. In the primary and half baths, Mathews added colorful wallpaper—even around a mirror frame.

“So much of the house was pink—terrible pink—that my mom couldn’t believe we would consider the color for any room at all,” she says. But she chose a pale shade for her daughter’s bath and spruced up the space with a new light fixture and brass faucet.

A gathering spot for friends and family, the side porch is outfitted with a full set of vintage spun-fiberglass lounge furniture Mathews found at The Salvation Army for a bargain. A raspberry-color rug anchors the seating arrangement. When the couple bought the house, nine 8-foot-tall tree stumps ringed the yard “like strange guards,” Mathews says. Now the landscaping flourishes behind a new picket fence.

Styled by Frances Bailey