Peek Inside This Knollwood-Donnybrook Home Filled with Art, Thrifts, and Family Treasures

Never-Ending Story: Our house was built in 1952, and when my husband, Mark, and I bought it in 2002, we lovingly called it our “project”—which turned out to be an understatement. We spent six months just getting it livable before we moved in, and in the 20 years since, we’ve renovated nearly every room in the house, some of them more than once.

The house has really grown up alongside our family. What’s now our master bedroom used to be a playroom overflowing with LEGOs, Brio Trains, and Lincoln Logs. As the boys grew, the house kept shifting to meet them where they were: The guest room became an art studio for our son while he attended Carver High School, and bedrooms that once held lizards, birds, and a rabbit, slowly filled with sports gear and gaming setups, books, and the accumulated evidence of teenage life.

Now that we’re empty nesters, those same spaces are transforming again. In a lot of ways, the house has never really stopped being a project.

The Collectors: Our home is filled with things we’ve collected during our travels overseas, from local makers, and from family treasures passed down. The art in our home represents generations of artists on both sides of our family.

We also love finding beautiful, practical pieces created by local artisans, but we’re just as happy thrifting, antiquing, or rescuing things other people are throwing away and giving them new life—everything from gas grills to plant stands, which is my latest obsession.

Hand-Made: I was born in the UK, and a good deal of my family comes from the Staffordshire Pottery region, an area with centuries of ceramic tradition running through it. I started collecting brown transferware from that region, piece by piece, as a way of creating a tangible link to my heritage, something I could see and touch every day rather than just remember.

That collection eventually grew into the plate wall I have now, which has become one of my favorite features. Tucked in one corner is a fish plate hand-painted by my grandmother, Doris “Dottie” Hand. I only recently became its caretaker, and there’s something quietly powerful about having her work present in the room where I do so much of my own living.

It’s a small thing, but it makes the kitchen feel less like a renovated space and more like a continuation of family history.

There’s No Place Like Home: More than anything, our home is a refuge—a soft place to land at the end of a long day. It’s where the noise quiets down and we get to just be, no performance, no pretense, just us.

Maybe that’s Mark tucked away in his workshop, carefully restoring some small piece of a Lionel train, or me in the garden with my hands in the dirt. Maybe it’s the two of us on the porch as the evening settles in, not saying much, just glad to be home.