What 24 hours earlier had been a vacant storefront in North Baltimore was now a carefully curated pop-up shop. And on this Saturday morning in March, customers streamed into the temporary home-goods shop Taken, filling the space with excited murmurs as they browsed through the products, many of them one-of-a-kind.

Offering everything from Wight Tea Company’s loose-leaf teas to fragrant handcrafted soaps by Silver Linings Lavender and soy candles by Art C, owner Vanessa Milio says she wants her customers to see the best of Maryland goods, crafts, and collectibles. An aficionado of cool, vintage stuff, Milio, who holds a master’s degree in book arts and printmaking from Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, is no stranger to showing up to an estate sale, eager for a good find, only to have the best antiques bearing the dreaded label reading, “taken.” “You’re in that moment of, ‘Ugh, I wanted that!’ It’s like, ‘I missed something,’” she says.

As a child Milio had a dream of being an artist, an aspiration that has morphed a little bit: A longtime plan to set up a community hub that sells handmade goods was set in motion three years ago while Milio was attending a women-in-business event with a friend. Previously the president and CEO of the Harford County Chamber of Commerce, Milio was an expert when it came to helping small businesses get off the ground, but her nonprofit work took up most of her professional energy, delaying dreams of owning a craft store until after retirement.

But as she sat at the event, taking in the same advice as dozens of others who were mulling a business venture, Milio realized there wasn’t really anything stopping her—not even her other professional commitments or her responsibilities as a mother.

Six weeks later, in December of 2015, Taken hosted its first pop-up at The Painted Palette in Mt. Washington. Despite the blink-or-you’ll-miss-it nature of that first event—with set-up, sale, and break-down happening within the same day—its unexpected success made it evident that Taken was here to stay: Lines were out the door as people waited for a peek at the goods offered by the 30 makers featured.

Since then, she’s had pop-up shops from Bel Air to Chestertown (and also online at shoptaken.com). And besides featuring local makers, they’ve also reflected her support of sustainability through the sale of vintage pieces, a belief that inspired the company’s tagline, “forever reinventing.”

“You’re telling a story of these vintage pieces, of the lineage of these maker products,” she says. “And you’re then saying to the customer, ‘If you find something you love, that’s part of your story now.’”

Congratulations, you’ve survived the stuffing-and-pumpkin-pie season—but that just means it’s time to switch gears and get into serious tinsel-and-lights mode.

But before you head to some big-box store for the usual made-in-China plastic tree and trimmings, you should check out greater Baltimore’s best sources of more original holiday décor. Whether you’re looking for a towering tree, offbeat seasonal bric-a-brac, or unique Hanukkah candles, we’ve got you covered with our roundup of a dozen holiday stores, sources, sights, and services—just think, one for each of the 12 days of Christmas.

Annapolis Country Store

Locally known as stocking-stuffer specialists, the Annapolis Country Store carries old-fashioned, small items for children and adults, from harmonicas and slide whistles to Mason Pearson hairbrushes and home fragrances. Create a cozy holiday atmosphere with glass ornaments, boxed cards, hand-carved German incense smokers, holiday napkins, dinner candles in red, green, and white, or a selection of Robin Reed English crackers filled with small prizes, including a set of whistles with sheet music and a tiny conductor’s baton. And you night- owls can shop late at three Midnight Madness events on December 5, 12, and 19. 53 Maryland Ave., Annapolis, 410-269-6773,annapoliscountrystore.com.

Bearing Gifts/Holiday House at Savage Mills

Find hundreds of ornaments and decorated trees in a range of sizes, from table-toppers to eight-footers, at this jewel-box-sized shop in Historic Savage Mill. Here, Jim Shore resin figurines share space with Fontanini nativities, poseable elves, and berry, green, glitter, and pearl garlands, along with contemporary stocking stuffers like texting gloves. When you’re finished browsing, check out holiday events at the Mill, including visits from carolers and breakfast with Santa. New Weave Building at Historic Savage Mill, 8600 Foundry St., Savage, 301-498-6871, savagemill.com/bearing-gifts.

The Becker Group

The Becker Group certainly has the Baltimore area’s largest selection of Christmas and Hanukkah decorations, with four-foot outdoor ornaments and trees that top 42 feet. (No, that’s not a typo.) Though their primary business is supplying seasonal décor for public spaces like resorts, hotels, and hospitals (including being a sponsor of Kennedy Krieger’s Festival of Trees fundraiser), the Group welcomes ordinary consumers to its website and Facebook page, and throws its warehouse doors open to the public once a year. Falling on December 7 this year, the warehouse sale will offer commercial-level decorations designed to last “forever and ever and ever” at exceptionally low prices.

Stick with favorites like decorated trees and indoor/outdoor reindeer, or get creative with oversized teddy bears, life-sized Norman Rockwell figures, or a weatherproof elf made out of soft play material, sitting on two-by-two-foot blocks. 2008 Washington Blvd., 800-999-1830, beckergroupdirect.com.

Christmas Decor by Hallco

Too busy to decorate? Or get vertigo from hanging the lights? The experts at Christmas Decor by Hallco will help you design an outdoor display, supply all materials and cabling, put everything up, and take it all down. Noted for its signature roof lighting, the company does everything from wreaths, garlands, and trees to lights that highlight architectural features or run along the ground. Clients pay for the season, and though costs vary by complexity, all displays include decorations, timers, installation, two maintenance visits, removal, and followup. Set up a personalized consultation by phone or directly from the mobile-enabled website, and owner Ted Hall with walk you through a portfolio of concepts and colors to help you find the perfect scheme. 888-95-DECOR,christmasdecormaryland.com.

Homestead Gardens

Homestead Gardens offers fun for families throughout the holiday season, with decorating workshops, coin-operated children’s rides, and visits from Santa on weekends from November 30 through December 22 (with a special weekday session for pets). In both of Homestead’s two locations, visitors stroll through themed rooms, each with its own tree, and toy trains wind through miniature villages. Come to the Grand Illumination at the Davidsonville store on November 23 at 6 p.m., pick up this year’s limited-edition ornament, and hear carolers sing as the team throws the switch on 200,000 Christmas lights. 522 Ritchie Hwy., Severna Park, 410-384-7966, and 743 W. Central Ave., Davidsonville, 410-798-5000, homesteadgardens.com.

Irish Traditions and The Green Phoenix

Separate businesses located in the same storefront, Irish Traditions and The Green Phoenix both carry unique gifts and home accessories for the holidays. As the name suggests, Irish Traditions emphasizes heritage pieces from the Emerald Isle. Shoppers will find a broad selection of items featuring Celtic knotwork and Claddagh patterns, from hand-carved wood ornaments to metal advent wreaths (complete with the requisite purple and pink candles), as well as tartan stockings and Santas dressed in plaid. While you’re there, fill a pottery serving tray with classic holiday foods from the island, like iced Christmas cakes, plum pudding, chocolates, and tea biscuits.

Steps away, The Green Phoenix specializes in handmade glass objects with a local focus. Its artisan-produced inventory encompasses both the quirky (angels with the heads of cats and dogs) and the quintessential (hand-blown ball ornaments and stars made from recycled glass). Don’t miss the angels crafted from reclaimed movie-theater marquee and projector bulbs. Irish Traditions, 141 Main St., Annapolis, 410-990-4747,irishtraditionsonline.com. The Green Phoenix, 410-626-0739.

Kingsdene Nurseries and Garden Center

Kingsdene transforms itself for Christmas with one or more themed trees in each room, swags, mantlepieces, and small decorations like plush pillows, plaques, evergreen picks and sprays, and seasonal figurines, as well as larger-scale pieces like holiday-themed ironwork and four-foot grapevine reindeer. The staff is happy to help customers create decorative concepts from photos while the nursery hosts an open house with hot apple cider and homemade cookies the first weekend in December. 16435 York Rd., Monkton, 410-343-1150, kingsdene.com.

Sewell’s Farm

Outdoorsy types (and weekend woodsmen) come from all over Maryland and Northern Virginia to cut their own firs and spruces on the 50-plus acres at Sewell’s Farm. Beginning the weekend before Thanksgiving, the Sewell family provides handsaws, pickup assistance, and free baling for cut-your-own trees. They also run a country- and woodland-themed gift shop selling handmade wreaths (some adorned with antlers), decorated sleds, and gifts; and they serve breakfast, lunch, snacks, and free hot cider on the weekends. No pets and no chainsaws, please. 3400 Harney Rd., Taneytown, 410-756-4397, sewellsfarm.com.

Sweet Elizabeth Jane

Located in the old Caplan’s department store building in historic Ellicott City, Sweet Elizabeth Jane specializes in “cute, functional items with vintage flair.” The Christmas selection starts in the kitchen department, where holiday-themed Nordic Ware baking pans and specialty mixes join texturized dinnerware resembling a snuggly winter sweater (with table linens to match), along with seasonal wine bags and bottle stoppers. The winter wonderland winds through the apparel department and into home goods, with glittery ceramic Cody Foster cottages and uniquely Maryland lighted crab-pot Christmas trees. 8125 Main St., Ellicott City, 410-465-6400, sweetelizabethjane.com.

Trohv

Among the “artful objects” at Trohv Home & Gift are the classic pickle ornament, felted mistletoe, humorous holiday cards, and a modern menorah that anchors pewter candleholders in a wooden base. But the shop really shines at entertaining. Pick up winter-themed entertaining guides like Ellen Parnavela’s Fireside Feasts & Snow Day Treats, and prepare to party with Christmas-printed napkins and table linens, cocktail glasses with etched snowflakes and silver branches, and small-batch foods from local producers. In addition to the usual red and green stuff, Trohv also stocks home goods like pillows and dishcloths that can be tied to the season but are designed to be used year-round, lending longevity to holiday purchases. 921 W. 36th St., 410-366-3456,trohvshop.com.

Valley View Farms

A Christmas institution, Valley View Farms finds ways to keep its selection of more than 6,000 gifts and decorations balanced between classics like Steinbach nutcrackers and new favorites like low-voltage lighted artificial trees that can be switched from colored to white lights, or set to fade in and out between the two. In addition to artificials in a range of tones, from pale blue tinsel to realistic green, Valley View also carries fresh-cut and live traditional plants starting the week before Thanksgiving. In-house artist Carey Wilkerson personalizes ornaments on weekends until Christmas, and WBAL broadcasts its morning show from Valley View Dec. 23 and 24, accompanied by local children’s and adults’ singing groups. 11035 York Rd., Cockeysville, 410-527-0700, valleyviewfarms.com.

Watson’s Garden Center

For more than 40 years, Watson’s Christmas Wonderland has offered gifts, collectibles, and a huge lighting department, in addition to artificial greens, live plants, and a DIY “creation corner” for customers to make their own decorations. Focused on American-made and regional products, Watson’s carries Byer’s Choice carolers from Pennsylvania, signs from the Eastern Shore, and Alice’s Cottage linens and kitchenware from Hagerstown. A different kind of local color shows up the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in the form of live alpacas from Monkton.Kids can pet the animals and adults can wrap up soft hats and scarves made out of their hair. 1620 York Rd., Lutherville, 410-321-7300,watsonsgarden.com.

You’ve been trying to ignore it for a couple of years, but now you have to face the facts: Your home’s landscaping has gone from chic to shabby. The snow’s broken off countless azalea branches, the mulched beds have surrendered to an invasion of creeping charlie, and after you pruned the dead stuff off the old dogwood, it looks like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Yes, it’s time to think landscaping. And it may also be time to seek professional help.

Depending on the scope of the job, and your willingness to get dirt under your nails, there are several options.
If you envision a high-end makeover with a pool house, myriad garden paths, or a re-positioned driveway, you’ll want to call on a landscape architect. Once your new design is complete, the landscape architect will likely bid the construction and planting out to a contractor—a landscaping firm or a garden center with installation crews.

Another option is to go with a design/build firm like Bob Jackson Landscapes or Maxalea, which can set you up with a professional landscape designer to draw plans—from pool decks and pergolas—that the firm will then install itself. And most landscaping companies offer contracts to come back each year and maintain your yard.
If the job is simple, a visit to a garden center with a design arm, like Green Fields Nursery & Lanscaping Co. in Baltimore, might just do the trick. The Green Fields designers will help you sketch a plan for your garden, and even make a visit to your place, says general manager Peter Bieneman. Of course, you’ll be expected to buy your plant materials from the store.

It all sounds expensive—and it can be—but it needn’t be. While a design can cost as little as the designer’s hourly fee—licensed landscape architect Sarah Trautvetter of startup Traut Landscape Studio, for example, charges from $75 to $135 per hour—the fee might also be collected as a percentage of the total cost of the project.

Finally, if do-it-yourself is really your thing, become a master gardener. Once a gardener has completed the course offered through the University of Maryland Extension service, says Bieneman, “they’re usually inspired to go further.”
We’ve done some research and built a list of some of the best residential landscape solutions in the area. And part of that research was asking the firms with the most industry awards whom they saw as their worthiest adversaries in the market.

Our two-step plan for your yard? Read this. Then pick up the phone.

Blue Water Baltimore
Advocating sustainable and native gardens, Blue Water Baltimore is happy to help you plan an eco-friendly yard, even offering rebates for homeowners who follow the advice of its free water audits, available in Baltimore City and County. The nonprofit, which holds native-plant sales several times in the spring and fall, has horticulturists on staff, as well as a list of sustainable landscape designers they recommend. 3545 Belair Rd., 410-254-1577, bluewaterbaltimore.org.

Bob Jackson Landscapes
Landscape designer Bob Jackson’s design/build firm, whose trucks seem to be everywhere, takes on mostly larger residential and commercial jobs, as well as working with builders on site plans, and offering maintenance contracts. Influenced by English gardener Russell Page, who believed that every site “has a voice,” Jackson works closely with homeowners to ensure a look that is sustainable, functional, and reflects the personality of the space. 11436-H Cronridge Dr., Owings Mills, 410-356-1620, bjl-inc.com.

Campion Hruby
This Annapolis-based landscape architecture firm does a lot of work with contemporary architects, creating sustainable landscapes to complement modern designs, as well as jobs for clients looking for more traditional or formal solutions. The firm—which serves clients from Northern Virgina to Baltimore and the Eastern Shore—has worked in recent years with the Severn School on an overhaul that includes playing fields, a ropes course, and environmental improvements overlooking the Severn River. 26 South St., Annapolis, 410-280-8850, campionhruby.com.

Creative Land Design
While this full-service design/build firm creates environments influenced by owner Joe Cramer’s study of Japanese garden design, its specialty is “living” retaining walls. Using native boulders and plantings, the natural-looking walls help with nutrient uptake and groundwater retention while blending into the surrounding environment. 1736 Old Generals Hwy., Annapolis, 410-758-2455, creativelanddesignmd.com.

Green Fields Nursery & Landscaping Co.
More than a garden store, Green Fields has landscape architects and designers on staff to help you plan the garden of your dreams—even making a visit to your home to get the lay of the land. If warranted, the nursery will also help you contract with a designer or landscape architect. And they hold regular, free gardening classes on everything from houseplants to rose gardens. 5424 Falls Rd., 410-323-3444, greenfieldsnursery.com.

J.D. Outdoors
After working for the tree division of a prominent landscaping company, licensed tree expert Jason Davidov struck out on his own. A full-service tree company, J.D. Outdoors also designs and builds affordable landscapes for clients, and is an expert on deer-proofing. 5 Greenlea Dr., Pikesville, 443-691-3550.

Jean Mellott
Landscape architect and Roland Park resident Jean Mellott works with clients in the North Baltimore area, including many referred by Blue Water Baltimore’s water audit team. Working with native plants, she designs landscapes that deal with drainage and storm-water issues, along with providing aesthetic appeal. She also works with schools to help reduce asphalt surfaces and create rain gardens and learning environments. 18 Midvale Rd., 410-905-8689, jeanmellott.com.

K Gay and Associates
Trina Gay’s approach to landscape design is largely nostalgic. By channeling the pastoral spaces where she wandered as a girl on a family farm in Baltimore County, the landscape architect, who works out of her home, incorporates habitats and natural drainage systems, water gardens, brambles, and bird sanctuaries into her designs. A frequent subcontractor for Green Fields, Gay says she tries to re-create old Maryland landscapes with modern needs in mind. 410-483-8602, kgayassociates.com.

Mahan Rykiel Associates
While known best for urban planning and large projects for commercial and institutional clients, this award-winning landscape-architecture firm also designs residential gardens and master plans for homeowners. The Stieff Silver Building, 800 Wyman Park Dr., Ste. 100, 410-235-6001, mahanrykiel.com.

Maxalea
Its name morphed from Mac’s Azaleas (dating to the 1920s), this design/build firm, run by the four grandsons of the original Mac, employs both landscape architects and landscape designers, as well as construction crews to install landscape visions ranging from pool decks and outdoor kitchens to flower gardens. 900 Oak Hill Rd., Towson, 410-377-7500, maxalea.com.

Nature’s Artisans
This 12-year-old company serves residential clients with a staff that’s experienced in both traditional landscaping and environmentally sensitive restoration landscaping, but is best known for providing designs and installations that work with the local ecology. 13530 Manor Rd., Baldwin, 443-622-7076, natures-artisans.com.

Stone Hill Design Associates
This landscape architecture firm is familiar with the period homes and guidelines of Baltimore’s historic residential neighborhoods. Stone Hill specializes in landscape restoration, water features, and theme gardens, as well as sustainable design. 5704 Bellona Ave., 410-464-2000, stonehilldesignassociates.com.

Traut Landscape Studio
Principal Sarah Trautvetter left Graham Landscape Architecture to start this small design studio, which specializes in small urban spaces and what Trautvetter calls, “an aesthetic of efficiency.” 1124 Battery Ave., 410-980-0790, trautlandscapestudio.com.

Walnut Hill Landscape Company
This soup-to-nuts company specializes in high-end custom landscapes from country gardens and swimming pools to outdoor living spaces; many of its clients live in waterfront homes in Annapolis and on the Eastern Shore. Along with planning and installation, Walnut Hill offers maintenance contracts. 1563 St. Margaret’s Rd., Annapolis, 410-349-3105, walnuthilllandscape.com.

Master Gardener
The Master Gardener Program taught through the University of Maryland Extension service is for those deadly serious dirt-scratchers who want to turn their green thumb into 10 green fingers. Along with design advice, students are instructed in plant identification, soil health, composting, and sustainability. Beware, it’s a heady time commitment, with about 10 weeks of evening classes, demonstrations, and a volunteer requirement. Admission is by application. mastergardener.umd.edu.

Sloane Brown is no stranger to interior design.

When her mother, Clare Bingham Cochran, moved to a lakeside home outside of Boulder, CO, in 1971, Brown and her three younger siblings were given carte blanche (okay, within a budget) to design their own bedrooms. Brown, whose room featured a hanging wicker chair and a piece of Jefferson Airplane artwork, was in decorating heaven. “It was great,” recalls Brown, society columnist and fashion writer for The Baltimore Sun. “The only problem is that I was going through a purple phase. I did a shag carpet that was a mixture of three different purples, and I shot the whole ‘expense budget’ on that carpet. But hey, it was the ’70s.”

Despite that early gaudy faux pas, Brown credits her mother, an interior designer, with helping her develop a sense of style. “My mom liked Mid-Century Modern,” says Brown, who was named after the Sloanes, her maternal great-great-great-grandparents, who owned the venerable New York City furniture store, W. & J. Sloane. “That’s what I grew up with.” Brown also admired her mother’s sense of whimsy and inventiveness when it came to décor.

“At one point, my parents turned the garage of our split-level Boulder home into a living room—my mom was just creative that way. This hippie guy who was a stonemason and his wife came in and did this fabulous fireplace. He put found objects in between the rocks. It was considered very edgy at the time—no one out there was doing that.”
Though her passion for the color purple has long since waned, Brown still has a strong interest in design. Her current place to call home—a 4,000-square-foot, two-bedroom Canton condominium with minimalist pieces, black-and-white graphic art, and panoramic views of the Patapsco—spells simplicity, sophistication, and glamour. (The apartment is so photogenic, in fact, it was used as drug kingpin Stringer Bell’s apartment in an episode of The Wire). Even her three Norwegian Forest cats, Phoebe, Waldo, and Diesel (stylishly striped in black, gray, and white) add panache to the place.

Before moving downtown in 2000, Brown and her husband, psychiatrist Steven Sobelman, contemplated a serious overhaul of their Baltimore County residence. “We thought about redoing that house, but then we thought, ‘Why?'” recounts Brown. “We were like, ‘Let’s move downtown.'” Seeing their current condo sealed the deal. “I saw this view and all the natural light, and I was like, ‘Oh my God,'” says Brown. “We weren’t looking for anything as extravagant as this, but once we saw it, that was it.”

Aside from the soaring spaces and floor-to-ceiling windows, the real selling point was—what else?—location, location, location. “I loved seeing all the big ships passing by and all the industrial buildings across the river,” says Brown. “I didn’t want it all picture-perfect-looking like the Inner Harbor. I loved the industrial feel. There’s something very real about it, and I loved the terrace and the access to the outside.”

Even empty, Brown found the space to be breathtakingly beautiful. “I remember the day we moved here,” she says. “I had the cats in the cat carrier, and Steve was following behind. I came in with the cats, and there was nothing in here. I thought, ‘How wonderful.'”

Then it was all about furnishing it: “When Steve decided we were going to buy this, I told him, ‘It doesn’t end there. If w e are spending the money to live here, we can’t move in with the furniture we have,'” says Brown, who quickly took control of that process. “I’d tell him, ‘You’re the expert when it comes to people. I’m the expert when it comes to style.'” And, so, slowly but surely, special pieces were chosen to fill specific spaces. Working with Andrew Wallitzer Interiors at the Washington Design Center, Brown’s choices included a pair of ultra-modern black ball-shaped ottomans, a stainless-steel coffee table inspired by city street grates, and a streamlined
Brueton sofa with built-in lighting. With classic modern furniture as a backdrop, the couple’s art “pops”—from a signed set of Jean Dubuffet playing cards and a red and orange Dale Chihuly glass “seaform” sculpture to a trompe l’oeil infinity mirror by Maryland Institute College of Art’s Chul Hyun Ahn. One challenge, says Brown, was to maintain a modern look while also adding warmth.

“We didn’t want it to come across as sterile,” says Brown, who instilled a sense of history with carefully chosen family keepsakes, including an antique steamer trunk, a ceremonial Samoan Kava bowl, and a sterling silver teapot. Additionally, some family heirlooms are reminders of Brown’s fascinating family tree. Other items are from her family’s travels. “My dad was in med school in the ’50s and the Army needed doctors,” says Brown. “If you signed up for three years, you could go to any part of the world you wanted. My parents thought it would be a great way to see Europe, so we went to Germany. Those chairs were purchased on a trip to Denmark.” Some of her curios invokes stories of Brown’s pedigreed past—her maternal great grandfather, Hiram Bingham III, was a Yale professor who re-discovered Machu Picchu. Bingham, in turn, married the granddaughter of Charles Tiffany I, and a vase on a dining-room shelf was a present from her uncle, Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Brown, who designed the funky, futuristic, master-bedroom furniture herself and sells her own line of jewelry, is an artist in her own right. “I never thought of myself as being creative,” says Brown, who studied jewelry-making at MICA. “It wasn’t something I set out to do consciously, it just morphed into that.”

Similarly, in her professional life, Brown “morphed” into a journalist through a series of serendipitous circumstances. “For me, it never worked to absolutely decide there was something I wanted and focus on that,” she says. “It was much more about feeling my way along.”

Brown majored in theater at the University of Colorado, but after two years, she had a change of heart. “I realized I just didn’t like being someone who wasn’t me,” she says, laughing, “which just doesn’t exactly work well if you want to act—but I realized I wanted the attention; I wanted the spotlight.” In college, she admits, she was a good-time girl. “I had a great time partying,” says Brown. “I’d sign up for a bunch of classes and any of the classes that had term papers, I’d drop.” She was put on academic probation. Then, at her mother’s behest, Brown transferred from the University of Colorado to the School of Hard Knocks. “After two years, my mother said, ‘We are going to try a different form of education—supporting yourself,'” says Brown.

With no plan in place by the fall of 1973, Brown headed for Caramel, CA, where she rented an uninsulated room in a freestanding garage. “I had a plug-in frying pan, an electric fondue pot, and a toaster oven,” she recounts, “and I stored milk and mayonnaise in the toilet tank because there was no refrigeration. I was 19 at the time.” After a series of dead-end jobs, Brown worked in a shoe store where well-known local DJ Howard Portnoy shopped with his wife. Portnoy took note of the beautiful blonde with a Brenda Vaccaro-quality to her voice and told her he thought she’d be well suited to a career in broadcast. “He said, ‘You have a perfect voice for radio,'” says Brown. “This was a time when Alison Steele [a pioneering rock-radio disc jockey in Manhattan in the ’70s] was the first major DJ,” says Brown. “Until this time, it was thought that women’s voices were irritating on the radio, but Alison was pulling big numbers and every station in the country was looking for female DJ’s.” In the fall of 1974, Brown went to New York City to attend Announcer Training Studios in Times Square, and then hit the streets looking for a job.

Brown’s first break came at KIDD-AM in Monterey, CA, though she worked a second job to make ends meet. Other broadcast gigs followed, including stints on television. In 1977, Brown worked at the Salinas station KSBW–TV, where she moved up the ranks from weather girl to reporter and anchor. “I’d run around in my little yellow VW with a police scanner they had installed in it,” she recalls. She had another stop as a weekend anchor and general-assignment reporter at KUTV in Salt Lake City before joining WMAR-TV in Baltimore in 1983, where she was an anchor and arts-and-entertainment reporter. From WMAR, she became the news director at Lite 102 before hanging up her broadcast mic for good when things came full circle and she became a writer/resident “party girl” for The Sun.

Though her real-estate portfolio has improved since those days of dwelling in a garage, Brown looks back on her humble beginnings quite fondly. “That place was my first ‘very own’ home,” says Brown. “And I reveled in it back then. That’s been important to me with most of my successive homes. There needs to be something I connect with—it doesn’t have so much to do with being fancy as it has to do with being an extension of me.”

After Eric Dickman’s parents passed away, his memories of the two in their Georgetown home lingered.

“The front door opened into the living room,” recalls Dickman, who currently resides in Federal Hill, “[and] when I came into the house, my mother and father were always right there, sitting in their twin wingback chairs.” So when he and his wife, Karen, began to rehab the residence, he resisted his initial impulse to clear stuff out and gut the place, in favor of preserving memories.

To help, he turned to Baltimore interior designer Amanda Austin, who helped him go through the houseful of furniture, cataloging each piece, and deciding what was worth saving. “Left to his own devices,” says Austin, her client “might have left everything out by the side of the road.”

Those two chairs, in spite of their ragged appearance and outdated upholstery, were solid, well-made, and worth saving. “I’m a big believer in repurposing,” says Austin. While the chairs were “old and tired,” she says, “they were classic, and had great potential.”

She took the Dickmans shopping for fabric, and they chose a soft grey mohair to re-cover the pieces. Now, the two chairs—decorated with small throw pillows in an off-white, gray, and yellow Ikat-like pattern—are in the dining room, blending beautifully with the soft palate of taupe and cream, with vivid yellow highlights.

Austin also worked with Dickman to reupholster a channel-back chair that had belonged to his parents, smoothing out the ridged pattern on the back and lacquering the wooden arms and legs in white. The bold geometric print on the repurposed bedroom chair matches throw pillows on the bed. The room also has a brightly upholstered vanity stool in shades of lavender and cranberry that matches both the pillows and window treatments.

Reupholstering is a way to give furniture new life while at the same time keeping family heirlooms in the family—and out of the landfill. (There’s more than 8 million tons of furniture finding its way into solid-waste dumps each year.)

Even so, the good turn of recycling motivates only a small percentage of the clientele at Fox Upholstery, says owner Vladimir Fox. Mostly, he says, “it’s a luxury business.” About 95 percent of the work at his Pikesville studio comes through interior designers, including those working on restaurants. He’s responsible for the fabric walls at Aldo’s and has done projects for Kali’s Restaurant Group—including the serpentine banquettes at Meli, with their mid-century-inspired floral patterned fabric. Another client has been high-end restaurant group Foreman Wolf: Fox has worked with designer Patrick Sutton on Cinghiale and the renovation of Charleston. And twice now, says Fox, he’s reupholstered the four oversized couches from the sunken lounge area at Foreman Wolf’s Pazo, a feat he accomplished without any disruption to the restaurant’s business. “The window for the job was 6 a.m. to 4 p.m.,” he says. Each day, he’d pick up one sofa and completely re-cover it, returning it to its place before happy hour. “They’re deep, too,” he says, “with plenty of throw pillows.”

Like Fox, Alan Ibello has done his share of quick turnarounds. He recently reupholstered a chair for the HBO series House of Cards—twice in one day. The production designers “liked the shape of the chair and the way it fit in the set,” he recalls, but couldn’t make up their minds on the fabric. “We actually re-covered it in a few hours.”
Ibello says he got his foot in the door with the film industry when he did “just about every piece you see” in the Barry Levinson film Avalon.
Ibello’s grandfather started the business after moving to Baltimore from Italy in the 1940s. These days, along with work for film designers, Ibello says he’s doing a lot of custom work in homes. Projects in his Remington shop include breakfast nooks that resemble restaurant booths with upholstered benches, and “Pee-wee Herman-style” sofas for home-theater rooms.

Most of Ibello’s work also comes through interior designers—he currently subcontracts with about 40—though, occasionally, a customer will come in off the street. “Sometimes they have a chair they love that fits in a spot in their house, or it’s been in the family for a long time,” he says. Ibello will give them an honest appraisal of the cost-effectiveness of reupholstering the piece. A woman once brought in a wing chair that she’d found next to a dumpster. “It was probably 50 or 60 years old,” he says. “The material was all shredded and the foam poured out like sand.” But underneath, he found the tell-tale workmanship of a fine piece of furniture. Another landfill candidate rescued.

The insides of a piece of furniture can tell volumes about its history and its value, says Charlene O’Malley, owner of C. H. O’Malley Antiques in Mt. Washington. In an antique that is 100 years old or close to it, it’s usually the frame and stuffing, not the fabric, that matter. “Most of the time, the fabric has been changed at least once,” she points out. In fact, it’s rare to find a “period antique” piece (200 years or older) with its original cladding intact. A good upholsterer will be able to fix the insides, retying metal springs and replacing cotton batting, while not over-stuffing a chair or sofa—as the current trends may dictate—but keeping its original shape and profile.

Maintaining the integrity of an antique may also mean choosing a new fabric that is appropriate for the period—like a Chippendale sofa she recently recovered with damask. This is especially true if the piece is meant to be displayed as an antique, says O’Malley, who is on the board of the Friends of the American Wing at The Baltimore Museum of Art. “We often do document [research] so that we know we’re doing the right thing,” she says. Sometimes, that research is done simply by removing layers of fabric until the scraps of the original are revealed.

“A lot of people come to me and ask, ‘Should I restore this?'” O’Malley says. “I start by asking them, ‘What does it mean to you?’ If it’s their grandmother’s and they fix it up, they’ll have it for another 40 years, or longer.” And what about the value of this stuff? “Sometimes, the things people believe are valuable in their homes are not,” she says. “Other times, there are treasures they didn’t even know about.” Ultimately, she points out, “everything has value,” whether it’s real monetary value, or because it evokes fond memories. The one piece of advice she gives in these cases: “If it means something, if it has value to you, if you want to give it to your kids, then keep it.”
For Eric Dickman, the value of his parents’ furniture is multi-layered. He acknowledges that he and his wife could have bought new chairs, but “knowing the previous life” of the chairs, he says, “preserves the connection, and now they’re suited to our taste.”

Who you gonna call?

Here are some of the upholstery and furniture-rehab experts most respected by designers and antique collectors.

Fox Custom Upholstery 1217 Greenwood Rd. 410-484-3231,foxupholstery.com

Ibello & Co. Upholsterers 429 Fawcett St. 410-243-1163,ibelloupholstery.com

Joseph’s Refinishing, Reupholstering & Touch-Up9176 Red Branch Rd., Columbia 410-997-5550,josephsrefinishing.com

Sujeta Upholstery P.O. Box 20, Sykesville 410-552-5288,sujetaupholstery.com

Curt Singer strolls along the edge of his backyard, seal-brown Lab in tow, as a breeze carries the faint scent of marine life. Nearby, a neighbor pulls crab pots onto the dock, the sound of seagulls in the distance and lapping water setting the afternoon’s leisurely pace. “We had always wanted to live by the water,” Curt says of himself, founder of a hospitality management company, and his wife, Paula, who works for Laureate Education. The couple resides in Howard County, but spends weekends and holidays at their waterfront home in Cambridge.

The shingle-style home, reminiscent of one you might see in a historic Cape Cod seaside town, sits on eight acres cradled between a pond and the Choptank River, a major tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. “The property was key,” Paula says, noting that she and Curt spent years looking for the ideal waterfront view.

Drawing inspiration from the New England homes of their childhoods, as well as a beloved vacation spot—the Wauwinet, a shingle-style inn built in 1860 on Nantucket Bay—the Singers envisioned a tranquil refuge where they could unwind from hectic schedules, and where family could come to relax. The house offers the allure of times past but with all the appointments for today’s lifestyle, and is built with the craftsmanship it takes to make a home last for generations.

Though impressive inside and out, what makes the home unique is how the Singers’ vision for the house—as a space to reconnect and relax with family and friends while surrounded by nature—drove the architecture and interior design.

Architects Christopher Frank and Robert Hammond of Annapolis-based Hammond Wilson Architects helped bring that vision to life. “They pretty much gave us free rein to create a design plan, and then see if we could sell it to them,” says Frank. “And we did.”

Unlike many such projects, the Singers knew exactly what they wanted and the architects were in total sync: The first floor of the plan was almost identical to one Paula had drawn, which the architects hadn’t seen, and the second floor was very similar. After a year refining details of the plan, Gary Smith Builders of Queenstown broke ground in the fall of 2008, tearing down the original 1950s one-story, ranch-style home that was typical to the surrounding neighborhood. The 6,500-square-foot house was completed in January of 2010.

The buildable footprint was only about three acres, according to Frank, because much of the land is too close to the water to build on. “Paula was enamored with the view up the river, north of the bridge, versus the expanse of the river,” he says. So they slightly shifted the siting of the house from the original floor plan to capture the ideal vista.

A view of the water distinguishes almost every main room in the house, but there’s none quite so striking as when one comes through the front door. Standing in the foyer, one can see directly through the great room, where floor-to-ceiling windows span the back of the house, perfectly framing the river below.

The house emphasizes horizontal continuity in exterior details and in the interior flow of spaces. Painted cedar shingles wrap the home’s rambling form, which is anchored by a stone masonry foundation, while crisp white paint accentuates the gambrel roofline. Transoms on the waterfront side brighten up the view, allowing more light in and creating a more transparent wall. Inside, bold classical arches and columns replace doorways, opening the interior space and allowing light to penetrate, while creating a sense of flow through the house.

Despite the home’s impressive size, the Singers wanted it to feel cozy, and they achieved that. Coffered ceilings and detailed moldings, such as the three-tray ceiling in the great room and kitchen, keep the rooms defined and intimate.

Interior designer Kristin Peake collaborated with the Singers to expand on these architectural details, tying the aesthetics together. Soft whites, sandy beiges, and sea-glass tones create a soothing coastal palette, adding to the home’s light, airy atmosphere. The stone fireplace, oak floors, bronze wall lanterns, and natural wood décor convey a sense of warmth and coziness. Ocean-inspired artwork and textiles—a handmade oyster-shell mirror in the foyer, indigo sea horse and octopus prints in the stairwell, and a hand-embroidered sand dollar pillow in the great room, among others—add touches of seaside whimsy throughout the house.

Every space has been designed with practicality in mind. From the side entrance, the Singers’ nieces can clamber into the mud room, throw their towels into the adjoining laundry room, and shower in the pool bathroom. The back hall leads to the kitchen, where an eat-in island provides an ideal place to grab a quick breakfast or snack between dips in the pool. Appliances, such as the built-in coffee maker, wine refrigerator, and microwave, are situated for easy access while minimizing traffic in the cooking area. Instead of a dining-room table, the Singers opted for a hand-made Tuscan-style dining table and custom banquette by Gary Smith Builders. This eating nook is nestled at the end of the kitchen, where the windows overlook the river.

A custom cabinet with columns divides the kitchen and great room, functioning as kitchen storage space on one side and as a bookshelf with two reading chairs on the other (or as a serving space when they have company). “We like to sit here and watch sunsets or storms come in, or in the morning, sit and drink coffee on the terrace,” Curt says, referring to the back terrace, which has access to both the great room and master bedroom.

“That’s the neat thing about this house,” he says. “Sometimes we have 15 to 20 people here, but there’s enough room for everyone to find a favorite spot.”

Visitors staying in one of three second-floor guest rooms can relax in “the loft,” a spacious barreled-ceiling family room that leads to a deck overlooking the river, or in the sitting room, which faces the pond, home to fish, bullfrogs, and muskrat. Curt points out a guest room window seat, one of many tucked throughout the house, where his youngest niece likes to curl up.

It’s in the outdoor spaces where one can really see the influences of the Wauwinet inn. There’s an old-fashioned back porch with a screen door that has that special “bang” that reminds them of their childhood. “More often than not, we find ourselves sitting in the breezeway,” Curt says of the passage between the house and garage, which overlooks the pool and river. “It’s shady and there’s the best breeze through here 90 percent of the time.”

Sometimes, the couple simply brings folding chairs down to the dock with a bottle of wine and watches the sun set.

“We enjoy watching that view change with different seasons, different weather, and different wildlife,” Paula says. Curt notes the three crab boats out on the water each morning, the heron family that frequents the docks, and the ducks that buried their eggs beneath the pergola by the pool. “If you’re by the water, you build a house and then spend all your time outside,” he says.

Shortly after the Singers moved in, their neighbor welcomed them with half a dozen crabs, which they cooked on the spot and ate with wine.

“At the time, this Connecticut Yankee was not into crabs,” says Curt. But people grow: Now he checks crab pots himself, his nieces often joining him. “I don’t know which they like more, grabbing the crabs out of the pots or eating them.”

Whether you’re a budding collector or merely in need of a conversation piece for your living room wall, there is good news, and there is bad news about Baltimore’s fine-art-buying scene. The bad news is that economic forces have conspired to do in many of the old-school galleries that once so masterfully melded the showcasing and selling of art. The good news? A few still remain, and a host of smaller galleries have cropped up to fill the gap and connect consumers with works that range from the traditional to the avante-garde (and everything in between). In honor of our “Fall Arts Preview,” we’ve compiled a list of our favorites, from the strictly commercial to the ardently artsy.

Jordan Faye Contemporary

When she was brainstorming marketing ideas for an art exhibit in 2007, Jordan Faye Block came up with the perfect tagline for her gallery: “Your Collection Begins Here.” And, if you’re in the market for affordable works—primarily paintings, sculptures, and photographs—from artists whose careers are newly launched, it may well be true.

A Maryland Institute College of Art graduate, Block sells works, including her own, from early- to mid-career artists ranging in price from about $1,200 to upwards of $5,000. (Each December, she hosts a “small wonders” show, which offers fine art with lower price tags.)

Block, now in her tenth year as a gallerist, moved two years ago into her current gallery space, a graceful 125-year-old former public library building in Federal Hill. She features 20 or so artists and describes their style as “sophisticated and edgy, very fresh and unique.” While some of her artists have landed museum shows already—Lori Larusso, Janee Mateer, and David Page among them—most are still emerging. But Block is confident they’re well on their way to success. “My artists are going to be in a museum some day,” she says.

1401 Light St., 443-955-1547,jordanfayecontemporary.com

Goya Contemporary

It would be easy to overlook Goya Contemporary’s location—tucked away in Remington’s slightly off-the-beaten-path Mill Centre. Not so its reputation, which has launched the highly regarded gallery onto the international scene. Founded by Martha Macks as Goya-Girl Press in 1996, the gallery has moved away from its original print atelier business and embraced its larger goal of promoting “the art and culture of our time,” says Amy Raehse, Goya’s executive director and curator.

Its exhibitions and scholarly programming play a large part in its vision of promoting the arts, but Goya Contemporary also regularly connects art lovers with contemporary and modern works from mid-career and established artists. Prices range from mere hundreds of dollars to more than $500,000.

Inside its sleek gallery—renovated in 2003 with the help of architects at Ziger/Snead—Goya features artists that specialize in everything from paintings to sculpture, video and installation art. It also hosts about five exhibitions a year—last year’s featured artists were Liliana Porter, Christian Marclay, Sanford Biggers, and Joyce Scott, among others, and it takes part in art fairs worldwide as well.

“We’re happy to work with clients at any level of collection,” says Raehse. For casual buyers, “we make certain they expand their knowledge and appreciation along the way,” she says. “Those clients tend to want to learn something, not just buy something.”

3000 Chestnut Ave., Studio 214, 410-366-2001,goyacontemporary.com

Renaissance Fine Arts

You might not expect to find world-class works of art in a suburban commercial stripmall, but step inside Renaissance Fine Arts’ master works gallery, and you’ll be rewarded with original gems by Picasso, Matisse, Renoir, and others.

The business, started 28 years ago by Joanie Young, is now run by her daughters, Merritt Miller and Rachel Rubin. It is a decidedly commercial enterprise—you’ll rarely find exhibitions or openings here—but over the years it has become the go-to gallery for everyone from interior designers and architects to private and institutional collectors in search of original works by local, nationally known, and international artists. In addition to those master works, for example, Renaissance sells works by established locals Alice Pritchard, Vitali Miagkov, and Eric Albrecht and nationally known artists like Marshall Noice and Charles Dwyer. Styles range from traditional to contemporary.

And while higher-end works can go for more, the bulk of what’s sold here ranges from $5,000 to $15,000, says Miller. All of the works are owned by Renaissance, rather than sold on consignment. “I believe in the artist that I’m supporting so I think that says something to the client,” says Miller. In addition to what’s on the walls, Renaissance also has a large inventory of works not shown.

And if it doesn’t have what you’re looking for? “If don’t have it, I can look for it,” says Miller, who offers free in-home consultations for would-be buyers.

1848 Reisterstown Rd., Pikesville, 410-484-8900, renaissancefinearts.com

Crystal Moll Gallery

At the Crystal Moll’s gallery, the entrance on one real-life street—Charles—leads to dozens of other painted ones. On the walls, delicately rendered street scenes—mostly from Baltimore—come to life. Some are the oil paintings and prints of Moll, who, for 23 years, has been painting en plein air and favors urban landscapes. Others come from the plein air artists Moll represents, some of whom paint outside the city.

Moll, a full-time artist, opened the gallery in December 2009. “The space became available, so I just decided to take advantage of it and try it for a bit,” she says. A short-term agreement with her landlord was followed by a second short-term lease and then a year-long agreement. Business has been good, and Moll has recently signed a longer-term lease.

Works range from prints under $100 to paintings that fetch $9,000. And while many of Moll’s buyers are homeowners coming in “for a specific piece to fill a space,” more “just come in and find something they really like and go home and find a space for it,” she says.

1030 S. Charles St., 410-952-2843, crystalmollgallery.com

C. Grimaldis Gallery

If there’s one name that consistently comes up when Baltimoreans talk about buying art, it’s the C. Grimaldis Gallery, a Baltimore mainstay since 1977. Founded by veteran dealer Constantine Grimaldis, the gallery, which may be the last of Baltimore’s traditional commercial art galleries, specializes in post-World War II American and European art, with an emphasis on contemporary sculpture.

And while Grimaldis made a name for himself by bringing big names to his gallery—Alice Neel, John Waters, Grace Hartigan, Willem de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, and Anthony Caro among them—he also features local rising stars. One example: MICA grad Chul-Hyun Ahn, an artist whose exploration of light and illusion has turned an early start with Grimaldis into an international run.

Featured artists also get a boost from the gallery’s increased presence at art fairs around the country, “as a way to find new clients and put our artists into international collections,” says gallery manager MacKenzie Peck.

If you’re visiting and you don’t see something you like, don’t panic. The gallery, housed in a long and narrow Mt. Vernon row house, has limited space and uses storage space elsewhere. (Some of Grimaldis’s featured artists create large works that are more likely to find a home in front of a public building rather than, say, in your foyer.) Grimaldis also hosts regular exhibitions—they usually run for six weeks—and artist talks, both of which can be a boon for anyone who enjoys exploring art as much as buying it. If you need your hand held a little, the gallery offers consultations and even studio visits aimed at finding a work that fits your needs—and budget—even if you’re not quite sure what you’re looking for. Or, as is the case with all the galleries we found, you can just browse. (Grimaldi refers to your kind as “tire-kickers.”)

523 N. Charles St., 410-539-1080, cgrimaldisgallery.com

Steven Scott Gallery

In business since 1988, over the years, gallerist Steven Scott has ventured from his former digs on North Charles Street to Owings Mills and then, in 2009, to the bright and airy former visitor’s center in Fells Point.

Scott represents 20 artists from around the country, specializing in landscapes, still lifes, and portraiture, including Annie Leibovitz prints. Some are well-established and “mostly everything is figurative,” says Scott. But while you won’t find much in the way of abstraction here, you will find “expressively brushed paintings, what I call ‘painterly realism,'” rather than pure photorealism, he says.

Web sales—and the works of artists who’ve developed an international reputation—have helped Scott expand his reach far outside of Baltimore, but he also has a steady flow of regional and local clients who arrive looking to add to their collections, plus the occasional tourist who wanders in. What they find is a pleasantly cluttered arrangement of works priced from $500 to $50,000, plus access to additional works as well.

Scott typically curates four shows a year but he’s also known to bring works to clients’ homes and offices. “I’m not just trying to make the sale,” notes the affable Scott. “I’m trying to make the collector happy.”

808 S. Ann St., 410-902-9300, stevenscottgallery.com

Galerie Myrtis

If you’ve never actually shelled out money for fine art, and you find the typical gallery setting a tad intimidating, you may feel a little more comfortable at Galerie Myrtis, a contemporary fine-art gallery representing 13 emerging to mid-career local, national, and international artists.

The gallery, run by Myrtis Bedolla, relocated in 2006 from Washington, D.C., to a smartly rehabbed Charles Village row house. Bedolla aims not just to sell art but also to encourage the notion of art buying among the general public.

“We really noticed that even with MICA pumping out all these talented artists, there’s still a lack of information among the public about the cultural benefits of buying art,” she says. This fall she’s launching a Tea with Myrtis educational series, which she hopes will gently encourage neophytes to consider collecting art. “I have a vested interest in trying to encourage them to understand why it’s important,” admits Bedolla, who instead of holding court plans to bring in artists, art historians, and appraisers to share their perspectives. The message they’ll try to convey: “That art is an appreciative asset,” says Bedolla. “It has value—cultural, aesthetic, and monetary value.”

2224 N. Charles St., 410-235-3711, galeriemyrtis.net

McBride Gallery

The daughter of a Midwestern farmer and an artist, Annapolis gallerist Cynthia McBride opened her first gallery in Massachusetts as a bold 25-year-old looking for an alternative to the corporate lifestyle. “When you’re 25, you think you can do anything,” laughs McBride, 39 years and three galleries later. Actually, in this case, she was right. McBride had soon sold the New England gallery and moved to Pennsylvania and then Annapolis, starting and selling two more art businesses along the way. (One was Annapolis’s Marine Art Gallery, still one of the places to go for water-themed art.) In 1980, she opened McBride Gallery, a classic representational gallery that fills seven rooms of a Colonial-era Annapolis row home with styles ranging from Dutch Old Master to American Impressionist.

Today, McBride features 65 painters, plus a handful of sculptors and ceramic artists, with works typically starting around $350. Many are well-established—you’ll find nationally known names here like sculptor Sandy Scott, and painters Michael Godfrey and Matthew Hillier, plus local stars like John Ebersberger and Linda Roberts. But McBride, who puts on eight major shows a year, also brings in up-and-comers.

For clients in need of framing or a little help selecting a piece, McBride can oblige. She often brings works to clients’ homes to see what works well for a given space. “The funny thing is sometimes I’ll grab one piece at the very last minute and think, ‘This isn’t exactly what they asked for, but I think they might like it, and that’s the one they love,'” says McBride. “Art is fun. It can surprise you sometimes.”

215 Main St., Annapolis, 410-267-7077, mcbridegallery.com

Antreasian Gallery

When gallery owner Robert Antreasian hosted his “Best In Show” exhibition in February 2011, he invited 35 artists, whose 50 or so canine-inspired portraits and sculpture ranged from the expressive to the realistic. The show drew an impressive crowd of artists, family and friends and dog lovers alike.

And unlike the typical solo exhibition, “it turned into a big social party,” Antreasian recalls. Of course, most of his shows don’t revolve around subjects with four legs, and on most days, dog-themed art isn’t on hand. Instead, inside Antreasian’s gallery on The Avenue in Hampden you’ll find an eclectic mix of original works from his regular stable of 10 to 15 artists. Art here ranges from abstract to realism to figurative works selling for $500 to $4,000; almost all are paintings.

That Antreasian is in a position to curate and sell art at all is somewhat unlikely. An accountant for more than 20 years, he had always yearned to indulge his artistic leanings, and finally jumped at the chance to buy out an existing gallery in 2005.

Among his local artists are David Cunningham, Ruth Channing, and Suzan Awalt Rouse. Clients tend to be locals and while Antreasian has regulars, he also has a steady stream of one-time buyers who walk in on a whim and walk out with a work of art. “All the works here are individually expressive and they appeal to people on an emotional level,” he explains. “You see a picture and you just really like that picture. It’s hard to describe why it touches you.”

1111 W. 36th St., 410-235-4420, antreasiangallery.com

Out of the Gallery: Where To Buy

Artnet, artnet.com: An online sales network that includes more than 2,200 galleries worldwide and more than 166,000 works of art.

Nudashank, nudashank.com: Its bricks-and-mortar gallery is open for exhibition openings and by appointment only. But no worries. You can purchase a host of works from emerging artists at Nudashank’s website.

The Baltimore Fair for Contemporary Prints & New Editions, April 28 and 29, 2012: Hosted by The Baltimore Museum of Art every other year, this is the place to find original limited-edition prints.

Artscape, artscape.org: Yes, it’s always HOT, but entry is free and features the works of 150-plus artists of every type imaginable. Plus gyros and beer. How can you go wrong?

Creative Alliance,creativealliance.org: While it hosts regular exhibitions in its two gallery spaces year-round, each summer the Creative Alliance also presents 200 pieces in The Big Show. The only catch: Buyers have to wait until the show closes to pick up purchased work.

Maryland Art Place,mdartplace.org: This nonprofit has an impressive gallery (with works for sale) but also moves lots of art at its two annual benefits. In the fall, an annual auction features pricier works, while the spring Out of Order event, in which artists of every skill level can hang and auction their work, offers up low-cost buying options.

Maryland Institute College of Art, mica.edu: Pick up fine art and handmade objects through MICA’s online alumni gallery or at its annual Art Market (December) or Raw Art Sale (February).

School 33, school33.org: This neighborhood center for contemporary art has gallery space for several exhibitions each year, studio facilities for professional artists, and an outreach program to local schools.

Sideshow at the American Visionary Art Museum,avam.org: AVAM’s museum shop sells original visionary art at very reasonable prices.

Guilford.

For nearly a century, its name has remained a synonym in Baltimore for high prices, closely guarded privacy, and social power. So followers of the annual Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage last spring felt fortunate to get a peek into a handful of the grand homes in this leafy, exclusive neighborhood with its elegant—and sometimes ecclectic—architecture from the early 19th century. Guilford’s participation was no doubt motivated by the fact that proceeds from the tour went toward restoration and maintenance of the beloved Sherwood Gardens, six acres of manicured, unfenced open space shared by neighborhood residents, and indeed, all of Baltimore. What the pilgrims generally didn’t see, though, were the owners. So, as has usually been the case for the 73 years the statewide tours have been in operation, the tour-goers were left to wonder, “Who gets to live there?”

“There’s definitely curiosity at work,” says Margie Powell, who has been involved with the Pilgrimage for more than 40 years, first as a volunteer, and for the past 20 years as its executive director. And the curious are not just those from outside Guilford: “Usually, lots of neighbors turn out, people who live nearby but have never been in the house.”

Sometimes, of course, what is even more interesting than these houses, gardens, furnishings, and decorative objects are the people who call them home. So we went in search of those owners, who had shied away on the day of the tour from the curious home-and-garden crowds.

One of those elusive owners is antiques dealer Maliene Wajer: Her story is that she tired of acting only as a temporary foster parent to all the beautiful antiques she’d seen go by in recent decades.

Wajer has been studying furniture since she was 16, buying and selling since she was 21 years old, and operating Crosskeys Antiques for 25 years along with husband Bernard.

“I’m 68 years old, and this is the end of it,” she says, gesturing around her Guilford living room. “I’m not selling any of these things.”

At the same time, a visitor may feel a small sense of relief to hear that Wajer has no intention of adding to her collection. Every surface of the 20-room, circa 1916 granite house is occupied, and it’s nearly impossible to take it all in: the rugs, the furniture, the artwork in gilt frames, the animal heads—sculpted or stuffed—staring down from the walls.

There’s a pair of Queen Anne needlepoint chairs, a painted Chinoiserie chest, an early Italian table. Bronze statues of Mary Queen of Scots and her sister Elizabeth share the mantle with a carving of a woman removing a thorn from a lion’s paw. There’s a tufted leather ottoman that opens to reveal a clever dog bed, while hundreds of oversized art books are stacked under every table, chair, and sofa in the 40-foot room. Chandeliers dripping with crystal hang from the ceiling.

“People ask me if I ever get bored of things,” says Wajer. “I’ve never been bored a day in my life.”

There really is no one item that adequately serves as a metaphor for the collection, but if one were forced to choose, a candidate might be the large oil painting that hangs over the camelback sofa, which is upholstered in vintage fortuny, a cotton-based, velvet-like fabric popular in the 19th and early 20th cenrtury. The painting is about four feet high and six feet wide. A serene young woman sits near a window, and she’s surrounded by dead animals, including a rabbit and a pheasant, the recent spoils of some kind of hunt, ready for skinning. It’s a copy of a Flemish painting from the 16th or 17th century, Wajer says. Even the copy is more than 100 years old, and part of a four-piece series—two others are elsewhere in the room, while the fourth is in a house Wajer owns in England. Each of the four depicts a season (this one is spring), with the subject matter mainly food. Wajer’s philosophy about collecting is illustrated by this painting.

“I don’t care if it’s an old copy or a made-yesterday copy. It’s beautiful.”

And, of course, there are the actual dead animals, another important theme in Wajer’s collecting. She is fascinated by taxidermy and other images of animals, seemingly frozen in motion. Like the Victorian fishbowl with a life-size, terra-cotta cat poised above it, its paw ready to swipe. A giant moose head is positioned on the wall of the staircase landing. A swan sits atop a cupboard in the dining room. (It’s a court cupboard from the 15th century, Wajer notes.) There are even dioramas of otters living in miniature habitats tucked into a corner of a sitting room, and a fox is curled on a chair in the hallway, captured in eternal sleep.

And, no, she didn’t stalk the now-motionless animals herself, a la Sarah Palin.

Wajer, who has owned three houses in Guilford and one in Roland Park—this one for 12 years—was once looking at a Roland Park house she was interested in buying. It was filled with animal heads, hunting trophies accumulated by the owner’s husband. “I told her I wasn’t going to buy her house,” Wajer recalls, “but I offered to buy her heads.” Much of the collection was sent to the Maryland Club, but Wajer took what remained.

Peggy Mullan Greenman’s home on Northway achieved notoriety some years ago when her father, Joseph Mullan, posted a six-foot sign in the front yard advertising for a wife. The professionally executed advertisement, which read “Wanted: A WIFE!” with the instructions “apply within,” attracted women of all ages, recalls Greenman. “People were lined up to get in the door.”

Her mother, Getty, had recently died, and while her father “met a few women,” as a result of the stunt, he did not remarry. “It was more to keep him entertained,” his daughter says. Mullan died the following year. “Dad had a great sense of humor, and he was always doing something,” says Greenman. “He had a collection of antique cars, and we’d go out driving around the neighborhood.”

Greenman, whose family bought the stucco house when she was five years old, says that while the three-story home is built to the scale of the neighborhood (read: large), with nine children in the family, she never felt like she grew up in a big house. “I didn’t have a room of my own until I was in my 20s,” she says.

Built as a wedding gift to a young bride from her father in 1927, the house was purchased by Greenman’s parents in 1948, and three additions were subsequently built—a garden room, a library, a second-floor sitting room and deck, as well as an expanded basement. But Greenman has not done much to the place since her parents passed away.

Greenman, who is married to Donald Greenman, a maritime attorney with Ober/Kaler, inherited the house and its furnishings from her father. For a while after her parents died, she said, she would have dreams in which her mother chastised her for moving furniture or changing the drapes.

Along with taking over the house, Greenman took over the family business. She manages a 400-unit apartment building that her father built. Greenman’s grandfather, Thomas Mullan, was founder of the Mullan Contracting Co. and a part owner of the Baltimore Colts.

Along with his passion for cars, Joseph Mullan was devoted to woodworking and photography, and evidence is all over the house. He completed scores of pieces of furniture in a span of just 13 years, beginning in the 1970s until he suffered a stroke in 1986, Greenman says. She points out examples of his work: dining room chairs with carved backs that reveal swirled monograms, inlaid tables, and reproduction Chippendale chests. There are miniature desks and reproductions of spice cabinets used to store silverware. In the living room, a burled walnut secretary with a myrtlewood drop front has dozens of drawers and cubbyholes. The desk is a blend of ideas he found in books on antique furniture. “My parents would draw the plans together,” she says.

On a stairwell that leads to the third floor are a series of calligraphy charts that document Greenman’s mother’s history. The family trees date to the late 1700s, when Francis Getty came to the U.S. from Armagh in Northern Ireland. The Mullan family came from the same place, even earlier, Greenman says. Her family has lived in the area since the 1800s—her great-grandparents owned a property on Old York Road, and there’s a small park in the Pen Lucy neighborhood named for the Mullan family.

“I always felt very secure growing up, knowing this house was here,” she says. “It’s important for me to pass it along to my own daughter.”

Laurence Hall Fowler designed several homes in Guilford, no two in the same style. Which is why Barbara Brody likes to joke with a good friend—who lives in a Spanish-style Fowler house—about the international mish-mash that defines the neighborhood. “You’ve got your English, your Italian, and your Spanish,” Brody says. Barbara, who is a clinical instructor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, and her husband Edward, CEO of Brody Transportation Co., live in a Spanish-style pink stucco Fowler house built in 1925.

Despite its grandeur, the house has only two bedrooms. The Brodys moved here more than 20 years ago, after their three sons had grown and moved out of their home on nearby Northway.

“I guess you could call it an empty-nester home,” Brody says. She would walk past the house from time to time and always admired the gardens, she says. And when she learned that it was for sale, she and her husband decided to buy it.

Aside from light paint in its large and gracious rooms, the Brodys haven’t done much to change the place.

“Our kids are always telling us we should redo the kitchen,” Brody says. “But I don’t really care about granite countertops. We like it the way it is.”

One alteration they have made is outside. “We were out here one day, and I said, ‘Edward, we have this big yard, almost half an acre, but there’s nowhere to sit,'” Brody recalls. Adjacent to the house, in a space previously dominated by a random series of boxwood bushes, the couple built a small swimming pool with a tile border. On one side is a pergola wrapped with wisteria, and on the other, a peaceful terrace with comfortable chairs.

And through a gate at the side of the pool is the garden that Brody saw many years ago. It’s largely as it was, though Brody, who is a certified master gardener through the state Department of Agriculture, added rows of rose bushes around a fountain and installed an arbor that billows with blossoms in the late spring.

One of Brody’s favorite possessions is a photograph of the rose arbor, taken by one of her sons and hanging in a place of honor in the living room. The large room is about four steps below the entry hall, and has a high vaulted ceiling. Oversized, arched windows keep the room bright during the day. At one end is a grand piano, which Brody says her husband occasionally plays, and on a nearby wall is a charcoal drawing of her uncle playing the violin. Brody studied violin at the Peabody Preparatory School and a large black-and-white photo of her playing the instrument as a child hangs in her husband’s study.

With the exception of this forest green office with its traditional dark wood and leather tufted furniture, the color palette in the Brody’s home is mostly pastels. The dining room is a light pink, the walls adorned with Barbara’s collection of Royal Crown Darby china, and a print of a pink pelican, which hangs above the fireplace. “A decorator friend of mine said these rooms are too large to be dark colors,” Brody says.

On a peaceful afternoon, the house feels far removed from Baltimore—even as the rumble of traffic on nearby St. Paul Street is ever-present. According to Brody, the house was designed for a couple who wanted a copy of a villa they had seen in the Mediterranean. And though the Spanish villa is smack in the middle of Guilford, the architect seems to have fulfilled their wish.

Who can forget the images of last winter’s double-whammy record snowstorms? Now imagine watching a phenomenon like that from inside an all-glass conservatory.

“When it starts to snow, it’s magical,” says Janet Plum. “All the environment is out there, and you’re snug in here.”

The Plums—she’s a retired school teacher and her husband Jeff is an attorney who practices in Bel Air—had their conservatory built in 2007 adjacent to their Kingsville home. It’s not large—about 18 by 20 feet. But during the day, it’s full of light and has a soaring peaked ceiling topped by glass with louvers that can be automatically raised and lowered like glass wings from a control pad on the wall. At night, it’s a dramatic vantage point for stargazing.

“When we first talked about building a conservatory, I thought we’d have to import something from England,” says Jeff. But then the couple heard about an Eastern Shore-based firm called Tanglewood that specializes in exactly what they envisioned. “We were surprised to see that they are located right here in Maryland,” he adds.

The Denton-based company was started in 1993 by Alan Stein, an architect trained at the University of Maryland who has created a niche for himself making custom, ornate, Victorian-style conservatories for clients all over the world.

“We’ve built hundreds of conservatories,” says Stein. Tanglewood is currently working on projects in China, Europe, and all over the U.S., including Hawaii.

Conservatories—known variously as orangeries, sunrooms, or even greenhouses (though definitely not the sort used to start tomato plants)—are an indulgence, but one that many homeowners embrace.

For the Plums—their glass addition has stained-glass images of their namesake purple fruit embedded in many of the panes—it’s strictly an investment in creature comfort. “We’ll never get it back,” Jeff says of the money the couple laid out (think in multiples of six figures). “But we plan to stay in this house for a long, long time.”

Conservatories can be traced back to the food-storage facilities in ancient Rome. Built with walls of mica, a silicate mineral, the name may be derived from the word for preserved, conservato. Beginning in the 1700s, “orangeries” were seen in the homes of the very wealthy as places for fragile warm-weather plants, like citrus trees, often acquired on travels abroad. The structures were most commonly seen in grand homes and palaces, including the chateau at Versailles, and, locally, at the historic, 18th century Hampton Mansion in Towson.

But the idea began to take hold among the middle class, says Stein, at the time of the industrial revolution, when glass could be produced in larger pieces and steel became a common construction material. And while steel is a critical structural element in Tanglewood’s conservatories, it’s often concealed beneath the warm luster of wood. The Plums’ structure, for example, is paneled in mahogany. Today’s conservatories also employ another innovation: insulated glass, which was developed around the 1970s, when the structures saw another surge in popularity. But in those times, says Stein, the glass rooms were dull by comparison. “People were interested in passive solar, and the styles were more modern,” he says.

In the past decade or two, Stein says, more traditional, Victorian-style conservatories have returned. And he was fortunate to be at the crest of that trend, having left his job at an architecture firm because he wanted to both design and build projects.

“A client showed me a picture of an English conservatory and asked, ‘Can you do that?’ And with the confidence of youth, I said, ‘Sure,'” Stein recalls. “By the time I finished, I was completely in love with these things.” The next call he got was from another client who asked for the same thing. “It was a complete coincidence, but it was definitely a sign.”

He and his wife Nancy, a music lover who also works for the company, decided to call the business Tanglewood after the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a name that is meaningful on several levels. The other meaning of the word conservatory—a school of classical music—is apropos.

“We once built a conservatory for a professional violinist and went to a concert there. The sound was magical,” says Stein. “I’m not sure if it was the shape of the room or the materials, but the music tends to resonate.”

Michael and Molly Metzler have a detached conservatory they built in a wooded area on their 15 acres along the Nanticoke River in Delaware, about 15 miles east of Cambridge.

“We have bald eagles, otters, beaver, and turkeys, you name it,” says Molly, a nurse in a nearby physician’s practice. The couple wanted the structure “to look like it’s always been there,” and even though it’s only a few hundred feet from the house, it feels as if it exists in its own 100-acre wood.

The conservatory was built to surround Molly’s idea for an in-ground spa, but evolved into more than that. There’s also a fireplace and a seating area. The roof is a glass cupola, surrounded by copper sheeting.

“I initially wanted to build some kind of greenhouse, but when we found Tanglewood, our ideas changed,” Molly Metzler says. “At first, my husband was skeptical.” But when they visited the shop and husband Michael, a veterinarian, saw all the exquisite mahogany, he said, “I want one of those,” she recalls with a laugh.

A visit to the conservatory spa requires a short trek through the woods, and the Metzlers visit it mostly in winter. They installed a flat-screen TV and like to hang out in the whirlpool to watch rock videos and concert films by The Rolling Stones, The Doors, and Simon and Garfunkle. Their college-age son is not allowed, she says. “That building is our little retreat. We let people see it, but it is our private space.”

The Metzlers so enjoy their conservatory that they recently commissioned Tanglewood to build a glass addition off their bedroom. “It will be a glass jewelbox,” says Molly. The plan is to have a glass dome atop a curved copper roof. “We’ll probably have a crystal chandelier,” she says.

“I think conservatories are magical,” says Sondra Wells of Owings Mills. “I’m surprised more people don’t have them.” She and her husband Peter, a “basically retired” investment manager, had a Pennsylvania-based company called Renaissance Conservatories design a round room that connects to an addition they were building adjacent to the kitchen. Sandra says they call the space, with its couches and fireplace, their “winter living room,” where they “like to snuggle up near the fireplace.” It’s also a favorite spot in the summer with its enormous amounts of light. “It’s a room that gives you a lot of happiness and good feelings,” says Sondra.

To avoid the heat of direct sunlight, the Wellses decided to forgo a glass roof, choosing copper instead, she says. But the plants in the room thrive from windows all around, winter and summer. On sunny days in winter, she says, “Sun just pours in,” and when it snows, “It’s beautiful. Last winter during the blizzard, it was so dramatic to sit in there with snow falling all around you.”

Though it may not fit the traditional image of a “conservatory,” the glass tower built by Marilyn Lyons and Dr. Clark “Corky” Graham of Annapolis is where the couple retreats in all weather. “We call it our folly,” says Graham, describing towers often built as frivolous appendages on buildings, or as stand-alone decorative elements in formal gardens. When Graham, a former U.S. Navy officer, lived in England for a time while working for an American defense contractor, “we toured a lot of estates and castles,” he says. “Many would have a folly. They weren’t terribly practical, but they were cool and fun.”

“I figured the next cool thing I did would be the first cool thing I’ve done in my life,” says Graham. “I wanted my grandkids to think I was a little bit cool.”

Behind the design of the house and the tower on the couple’s South River lot was award-winning architect Wayne Good of Good Architecture in Annapolis. And by any measure—excepting maybe on the hottest summer day—the glass tower that Good came up with is indeed “cool.” And Lyons and Graham aren’t the only ones who think so: The house has won awards from the Maryland chapter of the American Institute of Architects for excellence in design, from Builder magazine as Custom Home of the Year, and was Southern Living magazine’s “best new home.”

Architect Good says the house is modeled after the “shucker’s shanties” commonly seen on the Eastern Shore, small cottages with board-and-batten walls. “I like to say the house is what an oyster shucker would build if he won the lottery,” says Good.

The highlight of the house is the tower, measuring about 12 feet square outside, with thick, insulated glass, mitred and sealed at the corners. The tower is three stories, with a covered terrace on the ground floor, a sitting room attached to the master bedroom by a glass walkway, and a third-floor room, reached by a ship’s ladder, with a peaked roof at the top. The proportions exactly mimic the entry hall, says Lyons. “This house is perfectly proportional. It’s an architect’s dream.”

The tower is a magnet for visitors. “Once you sit down, it’s pretty hard to move because the views are so stunning,” she says. The couple recently hosted a reunion for Graham’s naval unit, says Lyons, “and the men took their drinks up there and just sat. It’s pretty funny that people traipse through our bedroom to hang out.”

But the folly almost didn’t get built.

Lyons and Graham had long planned to live in Annapolis and had purchased the land—with a prosaic cottage—that was meant to be the site of their new house. Their home in coastal Pascagouola, MS, was on the market. Then came 15-foot tidal surges from Katrina, which washed away their home—they couldn’t even find the lot afterwards because all the neighbors’ houses were gone, too. Also gone were all their worldly goods—furniture, rugs, family mementos, and a prized art collection that Lyons, a former museum director, had spent her entire adult life accumulating in travels all over the world.

The couple felt so displaced after the storm, says Lyons, that they nearly abandoned the plans for their new house. The only thing that kept the plan on track, she says, is, “We’d already hired the builder.” At the time, she says, “we had a hard time making decisions. I’d had niches designed in the house for specific pieces of artwork, and no longer had things to put in them.”

Lyons has filled the new house with a new collection of art, most of which she acquired in the Gulf area, where she says, the artists “are still struggling to get back on their feet” after Katrina. The art, much of it brightly colored paintings, wood blocks, and collages, as well as whimsical biblical animals, works well in the stark white house.

“We’re simple people,” says Lyons. “We didn’t want lots of molding or anything to detract from the view.” When a storm comes up the river, she says, “This is the place to be.”

Resources

Tanglewood Conservatories
Alan and Nancy Stein
15 Engerman Ave., Denton, MD
800-229-2925
tanglewoodconservatories.com

Good Architecture
Wayne Good
132 West St., Annapolis, MD
410-268-7414
goodarchitecture.com

Renaissance Conservatories
Mark Baroco
132 Ashmore Dr., Leola, PA
800-882-4657
renaissanceconservatories.com

So you say you need an extra 8.7 hours in your average day just to get halfway down your to-do list? And that most of the personal services you need are hanging out the “closed” sign just when you’re finally getting off work? No sweat: We went in search of all the myriad mobile services that do house calls, from tailors and personal chefs to pedicurists and personal trainers, and found a wealth of such time-savers. Of course, there are a few direct-to-your-door services that have been around since Grandma’s day, from the milkman with his noisy glass bottles to the, er, odoriferous diaper service. But there are also some really cool ones out there in greater Baltimore that you might not have thought of. So, whether it’s a low-tech phone book or your computer keyboard, let your fingers do the walking: Here are our 10 favorite home services, both time-tested, and, well, a little over the top.

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Gee, Your Hair Looks Terrific!
Leslie Storms, Hair Sylist
faceworld.com

For 25 years, Leslie Storms has been on the road, styling hair on television and movie sets (Ladder 49, The Wire, Flags of Our Fathers, and Wedding Crashers, to name a few) and gussying up the candidates of various political stripes for state and national election campaigns. (Yes, to style a Democrat or a movie star, you’d better be a union member and she is: the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Local 798.)

She has even been summoned to Washington’s halls of power to make over the manes of the Clintons, Sen. John McCain (the hair was not the issue, as you’ll see later), Tom Brokaw, and others. So you would think she might want to give the road-trip gig a rest, especially since she stays plenty busy running her hair-styling and finishing salon in Hunt Valley, Faceworld Cosmetics, and is starting her new Pink Consignments “designer resale” shop as well.

But steering her brushes, blowers, and beauty products into people’s driveways (for $125 an hour or so) is how she made her name, and she can’t give it up.

“It’s still my passion, and I still have a lot of people who won’t let me go,” says Storms. “What I do is an integral part of fashion and hair and makeup and all that—it just means I have to hire people to run my shop.” So we had to ask, with all the VIP elbow-rubbing she’s done, what were her most challenging moments?

In terms of sheer numbers, she’d give the nod to her job of styling 100-plus men and women—including Kirstie Alley and Tim Allen—to look like the Amish for the movie For Richer or Poorer.

And in the category of light refraction? “I’d say it would be keeping the bald heads of Sen. John McCain and [Democratic strategist] James Carville from becoming too reflective for the cameras during the heat of the summer in Wedding Crashers,” she offers. Then there was fighting off the overprotective Secret Service while attempting to trim then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s eyebrows—”Oh, and, not flirting with Bill Clinton,” she says with a laugh.

A Chore Thing
Bridget Gatewood, Personal Concierge Service
mason-dixonconcierge.com

It’s been a year since swearing to yourself that you’d straighten out that filing cabinet packed with yellowed mortgage refi papers; months since you promised Aunt Elma you’d take her shopping; and weeks since scribbling on a Post-it note to call a plumber to fix that bathroom drain (which, of course, means waiting around from “10 to 3” for him to maybe show up).

For Mason-Dixon Concierge, every day is about tackling such chores. From providing transportation to and from appointments to housecleaning and personal shopping, there’s little they haven’t done. “Just the other day, I was ironing labels onto a woman’s clothes,” says company President Bridget Gatewood. “Then I had a client a few weeks ago who had me put her dog down for her. She couldn’t handle it, so she asked me for some help.”

Sound like a job even stranger than yours? Maybe, but these people are good at it, and at typically $35 or more per hour (or on a long-term retainer), quite affordable for both private and corporate clients.

“The personal shopping we do is upscale, sometimes for professional people and sometimes for celebrities, either local figures or people who come into town for an event,” says Gatewood. And, of course, for many VIPs, everything is an emergency: “Sometimes their assistants will call out of the blue and ask us to do such and such right away,” she says. “If we can do it, we will.”

Of course, there’s a recession on and there’s also some wierdness out there, so in Gatewood’s business, the concierge service is not the only one that gets interviewed before the deal is sealed: Gatewood also personally interviews new clients herself to ensure her staff will be safe, that everybody will get paid as agreed, and that the fit is a good one.

“Every day is different,” says Gatewood. “But it feels good being able to do something for somebody else, to help them with things they can’t do”—or simply don’t have the time to do.

Tailor- Made
Victor Pascal, Master Tailor
victorpascal.com

In this job market especially, first impressions are important, and that means looking good. That’s why Victor Pascal finds that his business of designing and creating tailor-made men’s suits and shirts actually does better when the economy is rough. After an initial meeting in his store to discuss what type of suit you are looking for, he’ll visit you at home for fittings or for additional suits.

A native of France, Pascal trained in design schools in Paris and worked for years with designers Ralph Lauren, Adolfo, and Christian Dior. While he enjoyed the designing, he found that for some people, buying even high-end designs off the shelf wasn’t good enough—they wanted to buy clothes that fit them perfectly. His father was one of Paris’ top master tailors—he apprenticed under him starting at age 14—so, in a sense, he’s returned to his roots.

“Everybody is different,” says Pascal, whose typical custom-made suits start at about $1,300. “Every body is different. My clients want clothing for their bodies and no one else’s.” Makes sense. Because people in Pascal’s line of work will tell you that an ill-fitting suit makes you look 10 pounds heavier. And who wants that?

Paws and Effect
Bridget Graff, Pet Groomer
pawsfurme.com

When she was in college, Bridget Graff thought maybe she would enjoy a career related to animal behavior—she ended up getting the certification. Later, she thought a massage therapy concentration would be better, so she took those courses, as well. In the end, though, she ended up in a calling that draws a bit from both disciplines: a mobile pet grooming service.

While doing a stint at Pet Smart’s Grooming Academy, she went to a pet expo in Pennsylvania where she met a mobile groomer and got hooked on the idea. “I researched it for quite a while and became absolutely fascinated by it,” says Graff, a Jarrettsville resident whose business serves four-legged clients in Harford and Baltimore counties. There are no career conundrums, now: “It’s the best thing I’ve done so far.”

After six years in grooming and two years on wheels, she’s got it down to a science, to the tune of $65 to $180 per pet, depending on what size creature we’re talking about (giant breeds excepted—her limit is 65 pounds).

Her cheerfully decorated and heated towed trailer is equipped with electricity, hot and cold running water, and all the bells and whistles that the bricks-and-mortar groomers have, except that it comes to your door—sort of like a little RV for pets. Kitty or Killer can order up a massaging bath (that college certification is starting to come in handy here), a brush and fluff during hand drying, a pedicure, ear-cleaning, paw-pad clipping, or a trim of the client’s choice, including classic AKC-breed styling and poodle styling—all topped off with a bow or bandana.

She’s also tuned into the health of her client’s pets, and learns as much as she can about vaccination status (she’ll ask for proof the pet is up-to-date) and health issues of the dog or cat.

“Coming to the home is easier for the dogs or cats and it’s certainly easier for the clients,” says Graff, 27. “It works especially well if, for instance, a dog is aggressive with other animals at the groomer’s, is sick, is very large, or if the client simply doesn’t have time to drive back and forth to the groomer.”

And the animal behavior programs in college have come in especially handy, too: “I’m pretty good at understanding cat and dog signals—I think it’s given me a leg up on reading behavior.”

Housing Authority
Joaquin Fajardo, Estate Manager
joaquin_fajardo@yahoo.com

So, ok, the manicurist just left, but you’ve got the personal trainer coming Tuesday, and the personal chef Wednesdays and Saturdays. How are you going to keep track of all this TLC? All you need now is an estate manager like Joaquin Fajardo. Think professional overseer/jack-of-all-trades/butler-on-steriods: He not only coordinates all of the meal-planning, but he will also plan for parties, manage contractors, do minor household repairs, and clean up after everything is over. Best of all, he will blend into the background with finesse and grace. “You have to be a swan in this business,” he says. “You can’t see it moving, but somehow it gets from one side of the lake to the other without leaving a wake.” Fajardo cut his teeth at the Four Seasons Hotel and the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, as well as in the service of a couple of very demanding celebrities. Plus, he knows a thing or two about food: He is a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. So whatever you have for him won’t be a problem—he’s dealt with worse.

Gifted Hands
Cinnamon Bowser, Nail Care Expert
nailtaxi.com

It was a pregnant roommate that got Cinnamon Bowser started down the career road of mobile manicurist. “She wanted to have her toenails painted before her baby was delivered, but she couldn’t reach her feet,” recalls Bowser. “And I couldn’t find anyone to come to her house and do it for her.” So Bowser started Nail Taxi, a company that will come to home or office to give manicures and pedicures. The four-year-old operation also serves hotels, hospitals, and corporate events. For $75 an hour and up, she has painted nails for guests at bridal showers and for mothers and daughters out for some girl time. Her favorite part? How much a small thing like a manicure can brighten someone’s day.

She also loves learning something new every day. “I could write a book of all the little tidbits I pick up here and there. One client told me all about poisonous snake venom while I painted her nails.” Guess you have to talk about something.

Training Day
Candace Grasso, Trainer
fitisitcardio.com

You’ve got the brand new exercise outfit (still in the package), the shiny new fashion gym bag, the trial gym membership you’ve never used, even the exercise machine in the rec room (you know, the one you use for drying your socks). No problem: Candace Grasso of Fit Is It can get your butt in gear. And since she’s also a nutritionist, she can not only coach you through a workout (she doesn’t want to list her prices), but will also help you plan your diet and learn about what your body needs. “I’m sort of like a therapist,” says Grasso. “I talk to people every day for the first two weeks, holding them accountable for what they’re doing and eating. I call my range of services ‘wrap-around care.'”

If you want a virtual personal trainer, Grasso has also created audio workouts that can be downloaded from iTunes, so you can listen to her on your own time. If nothing else, Grasso’s sheer energy is contagious. She not only works as a personal trainer, but also writes a column for Smart Woman magazine, does a weekend health segment on WBAL-TV, works with doctors as an online nutrition consultant, and is a member of the Power Bar Team Elite (think Michael Phelps and Lance Armstrong). And all this after recovering from a broken neck suffered in a bad car accident. Beat that.

Massage Delivered
Kelly Wilkes, Massage Therapist
ojaswellness.com

At the end of a long day, you’ve got a mild headache, your feet hurt, your back is killing you, and you can’t get over the temper tantrum the boss threw at the office. What you need, buddy, is a nice massage—or maybe some yoga. Or maybe both. Though a lot of the clients at the six-year-old Ojas Wellness Center come directly to one of its three Baltimore centers—which offers everything from massage and yoga to skin care and waxing, Pilates, and various health-related workshops—they also offer massage therapists and yoga instructors who visit their clients’ homes. They’ve even sent out an acupuncturist. “We’ve seen all kinds of people,” says Ojas owner Kelly Wilkes. “We have worked a lot in-home with elderly people who can’t get out of the house and pregnant women,” she says. “We also work with patients who are recovering from an injury, and I personally worked for a long time with a quadriplegic patient who needed special care.”

If the yoga and massage combination sounds a little weird (typically at $70-90 per hour), it shouldn’t—both will help you relax and get in tune with your body. So as long as you have enough space for them, they can bring a portable table, all the necessary lotions, and even some soothing music to get in the mood. It’s all about the “fluid of life,” the supposed translation of the word Ojas from Sanskrit, or so goes the company line: “Through regular massage, organic skin care, yoga and Pilates classes, and acupuncture, you maximize the body’s essential energy, bringing you back to your natural state of perfect health,” it claims. That does sound pretty nice, though, right? Especially when it comes to you. After 12 hours of small wins, losses, and draws in your stressful private and professional life, it’s a great way to end the day.

Chef Mate
Chef Kim Tyrie, Personal Chef
virginiadaughter@comcast.net

Sure, Kim Tyrie of The Virginia Daughter, A Personal Chef Service, can whip up a mean dinner right in your own kitchen for any special occasion, but, when asked, she also offers a novel twist: stirring American history into the mix.

She’s cooked for bridal showers, birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and other special family occasions. But as a student of Colonial times who grew up near Williamsburg, Virginia, her real love is creating 18th century recipes using authentic ingredients, pewter and period china, even dressing in period costumes to serve up her Colonial-themed dinners and tea parties.

“I come from a long line of great Southern cooks—my company name is dedicated to my grandmother—and have a special interest in 18th century cooking, tea parties, the old recipes, and so forth,” she says. “I enjoy dressing up for the period dinners, too—it’s like going back in time for the evening.”

For the Kingsville mother of two college-aged boys and former legal secretary, word has spread quickly of her prowess in the kitchen. “I love to cook and feed people and entertain, and friends began to ask me to help them cook for events, all volunteer of course,” she says. “So I decided to make it a business.”

New Order
Holly Millman, Organizer
hollymillman.com

With a background in both psychology and education and 20 years of experience in the corporate world, Holly Millman seems to have what it takes to get things done. And in her latest incarnation as a personal organizer, she also has what it takes to make you get things done and turn the kitchen junk drawer that is your life into something frightenly tidy.

No, she won’t go through your junk mail for you every day and she won’t follow your toddler around picking up discarded toys and putting them back. What she will do is teach you how to keep your time, space, materials, and information in order (at $65 an hour). Her goal is to give you the skills to bring order to your life where there was once only chaos, whether it’s help with paperwork overload, getting your 6th grader to do his homework, or sorting out a houseful of dusty memoribilia you haven’t looked at in years. But Millman isn’t just about working with private individuals in their homes: She also gets things organized in the business world.

For one recent client, her success with the business owners’ smart but distracted children inspired them to bring her into the family’s catering business as a consultant. “I helped them with their staffing, organizational charts, filing systems, and business plan,” says Millman. “Then I went into the homes of the company officers and principals and did the same sort of thing for their personal systems and spaces.”

“The people who come to me are typically highly intelligent but don’t have the skills to manage their time and information and work space. I help them function better in their lives. The same is true with kids—they’re the reason I left commercial real estate, so I could use my background in psychology and education and work with young people again. The kids I work with test very high but often have frustrating functionality and organization challenges associated with attention deficit disorder. As for the adults, that problem doesn’t just go away because you got older.”

With Millman’s coaching, her adult and child clients create efficient systems so everything can get done in a timely manner, which relieves stress. (No, really, it does.) It also means you might have a little extra time for you. Imagine that.

Textile designer Mark Pollack likes to tell the story of an interior designer who, while working on a restaurant, wanted to use one of his more expensive floral fabrics to upholster the seats and backs of otherwise prosaic chairs. But the woman’s plan, says Pollack, a Baltimore native and cofounder of the Manhattan-based fabric company Pollack, would likely have quadrupled the cost of each chair. “She was way over budget,” he recalls. The designer modified her plan, finally covering only the back of each chair. “Instead of ordering 200 yards of fabric, she ordered about 50 yards,” he says. “But when you walk into a restaurant,” he points out, “what do you generally see? The backs of a bunch of chairs.” The point, says Pollack, “is a little fabric can go a long way in producing your desired effect.”

Today’s interior designers use fabric to reflect a variety of sensibilities. Some embrace the lush, more adventurous approach, with a mix of patterns and textures working in harmony, or in planned dissonance, in one space—or even on one piece of furniture. Others, like Baltimore’s Mona Hajj, prefer fabric to play a rarified role. In her soothing interiors, dark wood plays against cream-colored walls, and solid upholstery is a foil for an antique pillow from Turkey or a rare Italian shawl. “I avoid big prints and prefer hand-done weaving techniques,” says Hajj, whose Lebanese heritage, extensive travels, and love of all things Mediterranean enrich her work.

She describes her use of fabric as the “less-is-more” approach, but nevertheless claims that fabric is “the unsung hero” in interiors.

“They can really make or break the mood of a room,” she says.

Mark Klatsky’s interior design business grew from his furniture business. Regency Gallery & Antiques, which he opened on Howard Street in 1987, was known for its extravagant reproductions of Baroque and Rococo styles, heavily ornamented chairs and armoires, and chandeliers dripping with crystal. His own home, a condominium in Guilford, has marble floors and faux-painted columns, mirrors and paintings with ornate gilt frames, Sevres porcelain, and tall Czech crystal vases.

Clients who bought his furniture, Klatsky recalls, soon began asking for design advice.

“Everyone wanted me to come to their house,” he says, “but I thought I was too busy. Then I realized this was a big part of it.” Soon, Regency Interiors became the lion’s share of his business, and “working with fabric became a necessity,” Klatsky says.

The opulent style that is Klatsky’s signature calls for billowing window treatments, watered silk upholstery, thick tassels, and fringes. In his own home, large arched windows in the dining room have bunched damask valances with profuse trimmings that follow the shape of the window frame.

Recently, Klatsky’s clients have begun seeking a more streamlined aesthetic. “They’re looking for clean lines and sophisticated looks,” he says. But that’s no reason to shy away from luxuriant fabrics. At a home in Pikesville, he created a bedroom with brown velvet as a theme. The client, Gail Margolis, said she wanted the look and feel of a luxury hotel to serve as a sanctuary. Klatsky had curtains custom-made in London from brown velvet with gold fabric appliqué in a pattern reminiscent of ornate plaster scrollwork. When the heavy velvet drapes are pulled back, sheer panels appliquéd with the same pattern remain across the windows. The velvet design is repeated on the brown velvet bedspread, and a bench at the foot of the bed has a silk panel embroidered in the same color scheme.

Margolis’s husband had requirements of his own. An avid collector of antique Coca- Cola paraphernalia, he wanted a private space—in a soda-fountain equipped basement room, no less—designed to show off his collection. Klatsky chose a woven print of over-sized paisley-style flowers for a sectional sofa and a nubby tomato-red fabric for a pair of club chairs.

In the greatroom off the kitchen, 20-foot windows are draped in taupe silk with valances of paisley tapestry, while the otherwise brown leather couches have seats upholstered in a different, but complementary, pattern.

Klatsky says he usually presents clients with a range of choices for drapes, upholstery, or bedspreads, so they are involved in the finishing touches. “It creates an individual look,” he says, “so the person using the room knows it is their own, personal space.”

Laura Kimball of LCK Interiors says she sells more fabric than anything else, and notes the options are endless. “Looms these days can create patterns that look like abstract art and weaves that look like they came from the earth,” she says. “A stripe really isn’t a stripe. It’s a meandering vine inspired by a plant form.”

Kimball, president of the Maryland Chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers, says fabric is essential in today’s world. “We live in such a high-tech, hard-edged era. We sit at computer screens, drive on hard pavement,” she points out. “Fabric gives us the softer edge we long for.”

While she claims to love florals, it’s the texture that really gets her excited. “I like to feel something with my eyes before I touch it,” she says. Kimball recalls a valance she recently installed in a home in Park Heights: “It was a deep red silk with ruby-red beaded trim that hung in luxurious layers,” she says. “It was eat-it-with-a-spoon sumptuous.”

But Kimball also points out that fabric can be used to achieve a look on a budget. Over the past several years, she’s been working with a retired couple on their modest circa 1970s rancher in Churchville. “We’re doing one room at a time,” says the designer, who describes her challenge as “keeping unity and flow throughout the house,” so the new elements don’t put the older looks to shame.

The tiny master bath had turquoise fixtures, relics from The Brady Bunch era, that the clients were not inclined to change. Kimball and the owners had a new vanity built around the existing sink and hung a large gilt-framed mirror above it. She painted the walls a deep gold (to coordinate with the gold walls of the master bedroom, which hadn’t made it onto the design schedule yet). Finally, she added a Chinese print with a bright red background and a pattern that included gold and turquoise. “The fabric really pulled all these oddities together,” she says.

Susan Burch Obrecht came to interior design as a late-in-life career: After her marriage dissolved, she attended The Community College of Baltimore County, where she received a degree in interior design. “I did things backwards,” she says.

Her firm, Morgan Truesdell Interiors, which she purchased in 2003, specializes in fabric. “To me, the design and layout of a home are important, but fabrics are essential,” she says. “Without beautiful fabric, it’s like wearing a beautiful dress and not putting jewelry on.”

Obrecht admits that she likes lots of jewelry. Defying the trend of modern, minimalist looks, Obrecht is in the “more is more” school. “I’m a person who loves a lot of bells and whistles,” she says. “When you have lots of things going on, you feel more cozy.”

She was fortunate enough to find a client with a large house in Laurelford who felt the same way. “I knew she’d be a good client when she got excited about two-story drapes,” says Obrecht. The two worked together on the 10-year-old house, filling it with color and texture. Fabric is used in each of the home’s 20 or so rooms: as raffia-textured wall covering in a hallway and in the 18-foot draperies hanging in the great room.

And Obrecht doesn’t hesitate to mix patterns in a space. “The more patterns, the better,” she says. But she does have some rules. One is that “everything has to be of a different scale. You can use two florals in a room, but never use florals with the same-sized flowers. Same thing goes for stripes,” she says. She also repeats themes, incorporating fabric patterns from one space into another part of the room. In the greatroom, for example, the couch fabric becomes an element in the window treatment.

Fabric doesn’t always need to be visually busy, Obrecht concedes. In the Laurelford home’s guest bedroom suite, fabric is monochromatic and designed to be soothing. Obrecht had the walls of the room upholstered in a white floral linen fabric that is also used in the window treatments of the adjoining sitting room. The coverlet on the bed is a complementary green water-tinted damask.

In another home, the client wanted a monochromatic theme in the sitting room, so Obrecht chose textured wallpaper, striped silk curtains, and a mini-print upholstery—all in an amber hue. In this case, the room was designed to appeal to the husband, who didn’t want too formal a look. “I tried to find a balance that they would both like,” she says.

Obrecht frequently starts by taking a trip to the Design Center in Washington. “I’ll ask clients to pick their inspiration fabric,” she says, “and we’ll build a whole room around that.”

Stacey Phinney’s mother was an antiques dealer, so she grew up around old things—but without ever developing a love for them. For Phinney, they were simply the tools of her mother’s trade, not pieces to be savored or treasured. So when she renovated her Canton home, she filled it with contemporary furniture, designed everything to have clean, modern lines, and detailed the kitchen with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. It was an antique-free zone. Now Phinney is living in a painstakingly restored Victorian row house in Reservoir Hill that is filled with antiques. What happened? Marriage.

In October 2008, Phinney married her husband, Mike Phinney, whose home style was far more traditional than her own. Mike already owned the Reservoir Hill house, and throughout their courtship she helped him renovate it. Mike even received a historic preservation award from the Baltimore Heritage society, after Stacey nominated him. When he wired the basement to accommodate her kilns (she is a fused-glass artist), she knew this old house was going to one day be her home and she would need to jettison most of her modern style.

“Normally, I’d be more opinionated about it, but understandably, the architecture of our house is so strong, it’s hard to go too contemporary,” says the 43-year-old creative services director for Laureate Education. “I’ve succumbed a little bit. The house is what it is and it wouldn’t have looked right to have some big modern art piece in a Victorian dining room.”

Increasingly, couples are marrying later in life, marrying for a second time, or living together at various stages of life. So it’s not uncommon for couples with diametrically opposed design aesthetics to try to arrive at a successful design compromise. But while finding Mr. or Mrs. Right is a dream come true, fitting your guy’s hideous leather recliner or your gal’s collection of tacky porcelain miniatures into your new home can require, well, some painful compromises.

For Phinney, the word “compromise” became a mantra. She and Mike agreed that her minimalist, Shaker-style bedroom set and Art Deco dining room furniture would look out of place in the circa 1895 home. Finally, she decided to leave her furniture in Canton and rented her home fully furnished. Though she admits it’s been a battle at times, together she and Mike embarked on finding furniture for their new home they could both live with.

“It takes us a really long time to hunt and hunt until we find something we both agree on,” she explains. Ebay has been tremendously helpful—Stacey will bookmark items that she likes in their account, then Mike peruses her choices until he finds something that dovetails with his taste, too. That was how the couple found their dining room chandelier and formal dining chairs.

There are places where Stacey’s style shines through, especially in the eclectic accessories throughout the home and in the kitchen, where the couple chose a bold granite countertop that features bright swooshes of color and contemporary pendant lights. Or in the master bathroom with its Italian tile, glass shower, jacuzzi, and—a small victory for Stacey—brand new sconces.

“It’s all about open communication, respect for the other person’s opinion and taste, and, most definitely, compromise,” says Phinney. “I always knew that the style of the house would inevitably be more antique, but I do think you should talk about it before you move in together so there are no surprises and no one’s feelings are hurt.”

According to Lou and Bruce Stewart, co-authors of Your Way Home: The Psychology of Place Inside and Out, couples moving in together should, “address the issue of sharing space rather than claiming space.”

“Sit down before the moving date and plan the bedroom design first,” the Stewarts explain in an e-mail interview. “All too often, couples will address their bedroom last, which can be detrimental to a smooth transition. By creating their bedroom as a sanctuary, couples have a more harmonious foundation at the beginning of their lives together.”

Much of moving in together is about managing expectations and finding the common ground. Start by flipping through interior design magazines and try to find joint inspiration. Focus on what you share in terms of aesthetic taste and build from there, rather than dwelling on your differences. If all else fails, head for neutral territory—literally: Using a neutral color base for a home provides a good canvas for each person to express him and herself through bright and unusual accents.

When Mary Ellen Chambers, 50, married Werner Mueller, 63, in 2001, both had lived full lives and had full homes. Her Rodgers Forge place had a number of antiques (her parents owned antiques stores) and his Bolton Hill house was brimming with sleek Italian leather sofas and Turkish rugs. Luckily, the 4,000-square-foot house gave them room to express both their tastes. As the home was still being renovated—Mueller, an architect, had been working on it as a hobby for more than 20 years—there were opportunities for Chambers to put her aesthetic stamp on the bones of the house.

Mueller and Chambers finished the third floor of the house as a complete apartment that can be used as a guest quarters. This proved an ideal place for Chambers’s Rodgers Forge furnishings, while many of Mueller’s contemporary pieces moved to his studio on the first floor.

“The idea was to create a third floor that was uniquely Mary Ellen, a first floor that was uniquely me, and a second floor where we would both have our comfort zone,” explains Mueller.

The second floor is the couple’s main living space, an open floor plan area where their tastes combine. Some of her favorite antiques, like a rosewood desk and a few paintings, are sprinkled throughout the house. Mueller’s Turkish and Moroccan rugs give the rooms a warm, organic feel that is enhanced by the couple’s mutual collection of plants and books, as well as oddities they collect together on hikes, like feathers and snake skins.

After melding their current things together, the couple set out to find things that they both enjoyed. Trolling through auctions they picked up treasures like a 16th-century chest.

“The pieces we bought together that form the nucleus of the second floor were special events, events that are about us being together,” says Mueller.

The biggest compromise was the living room sofa; Chambers was not a fan of Mueller’s modern leather ones, which were relegated to his studio and replaced by a contemporary Italian couch in a soft, neutral upholstery. Similarly, Mueller didn’t know where to put Chambers’s large, antique stove. It ended up fitting perfectly in the third floor bedroom, where it has found a new purpose as a storage cabinet.

Many things the couple created together. For example, they designed and built a bookshelf on the third floor that runs the course of an entire wall. “There’s an integration of styles, and also labor, that pulls the whole house together,” says Chambers.

“Combining our furnishings was really easy, and I liken it to Werner’s philosophy as an architect,” says Chambers. “If you have a historic building and want to expand it, you want to use a contemporary solution to create contrast and tension.” Rather than copy a historic style, the couple married the newer pieces to the older, the contemporary to the antique. And now the perfectly blended home serves as a metaphor for their blended lives.

John and Donna Easton married late in life and moved from their respective homes—he from a condominium in Arlington, VA., she from a townhouse in Cockeysville—first to a large Homeland house, then to a slightly smaller, less maintenance-intensive one in Lutherville. Though John’s style is more contemporary than Donna’s, luckily, their tastes were similar. Their design challenge was not a matter of clashing taste, it was figuring out whose furniture to keep and whose to jettison when moving into tighter quarters.

First, the couple took pictures of their existing places, then looked at the new spaces and how they could bring things together based on color, proportion, and style.

“Don’t think in terms of room collections,” Donna recommends. “Look at them as accent pieces that you can break up and use to complement other spaces.”

They also used a professional, Curtis Cummings, senior designer at Papier Interiors in Timonium, to help.

“If you hire an interior designer, it takes the emotions away from your furnishings and objects and puts a more logical perspective on where things belong and what fits best for the space, not where it’s always been in the person’s old home,” Cummings explains.

In the Lutherville home, Cummings focused on making each room look new to the homeowners by replacing the first thing they saw when they entered a room with something new and special, then filling in with their existing belongings. For example, in the living room, the secretary that belonged to Donna’s grandparents and John’s old leather chair reside nicely with new accent chairs and a cream damask sofa.

Donna’s dining room set wasn’t quite right for the space, with its dramatic 19-foot ceilings. The couple opted for a “new” antique dining set and large chandelier (necessitated by the high ceiling). In the end, the new pieces are a better complement to the couple’s collection of silver pieces, and the old dining set got a second life in the basement as a conference table in Donna’s home office.

“We never had a family room before, so this room was of particular interest to us,” says Donna of the cozy den off the kitchen. “John got this rug years ago in Kazakhstan and it became the basis of everything. It’s interesting because the rug is very primitive but it lends itself well to very Tuscan colors.”

The Eastons’ new house is small, so they gave away at least 30 percent of their belongings to young family members happy for the donations. “Be bold about what you can jettison,” Donna advises. “They’re only things, after all.” Now they enjoy filling the house with new things they collect on their many travels together.

Still, there are some special things, like artwork and family antiques, that John and Donna continue to cherish from their lives apart and bring into their lives together. “Understand the things that are important to hold onto,” she says. “Other things I like a lot, but they’re negotiable.”

Sounds like good relationship advice, too.

Silo Point sits on a ragged section of Baltimore’s once-industrial waterfront, a stone’s throw from Fort McHenry, where the harbor heads out to the bay. The building’s stark profile—long neck and step-down shoulders—is visible from several angles: from Highlandtown and Johns Hopkins Hospital, from downtown Baltimore’s Center Club, from the entry points to the Harbor Tunnel, from the surrounding Formstone-clad rowhouses of blue-collar Locust Point. Its 24 stories tower above the neighborhood’s residential height restriction of 35 feet.

You may wonder who would want to live in such a place, a 1923 cement structure that once shot five million bushels of corn, wheat, and soybeans up and down its cavernous shafts each day, loading them on railroad cars to be transported across the country for Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM).

But developer Patrick Turner didn’t wonder for a second. When he came upon the structure in 2003, he immediately envisioned luxury condos. “It was a no-brainer,” says Turner, 56, who has previously converted a Catholic school and a former hospital into condos, and a movie theater into an upscale office building. He dialed the emergency number on the “No Trespassing” sign. “It was after hours and I got transferred to an office and the guy who picked up was the president of ADM. It was a total fluke.”

Turner was referred to the company’s head of grain operations, who put him off for several months. “When I told him I wanted to do high-rise condos, he said, ‘You’re either crazy or brilliant.’ He was leaning toward the former.”

It’s a story that Turner loves to tell. His rapid way of talking and gesturing, the glint of blue eyes framed by splayed crow’s feet, and the shaggy beard combine to leave you wondering the same thing: Is this guy nuts?

Even now, after an investment of more than $100 million (he bought the site for $6.5 million), Turner and crew are doing their best to ensure that people can, indeed, see themselves living here. Silo Point hired six different interior designers to decorate a range of models that reflect various lifestyles: a young professional couple with a home office, an older couple of empty nesters, a single guy. (Conspicuously absent was an apartment decorated to attract a family.)

A condo designed for an urban single wom an was outfitted by Turner’s wife, Jeanine, a former interior designer and artist who has shown her photography and mixed-media work in local galleries.

Jeanine Turner isn’t the only family member involved in the project: Turner’s son, Eric, is handling the day-to-day management, including retail leasing, sales, and marketing. In addition to a restaurant by Michael Marx (of Blue Agave and Rub fame), amenities will include retail, the spa Privé, and a gym called Life F/X Fitness.

After playing coy about pricing and opening dates for months—a ploy that only increased the buzz—Silo Point finally threw open its doors to the public at a party in October with very cool entertainment.

“We wanted people to see how unique we are, so we got the fire-eaters and Cirque du Soleil,” says Turner. The event, attended by about 1,200, was indeed extravagant with lavish hors d’oeuvres and drinks—including specialty cocktails in conjunction with a promotion for 360 Vodka, in honor of the towering project’s 360-degree views.

But the event may have been unnecessary. “One thing that’s taken me by surprise,” says Turner, “is the number of groups who want to hold events here.” The Open Society Institute held a party last May attended by 500. The Baltimore chapter of the American Institute of Architects held its annual awards ceremony there as well. “The Baltimore Heritage Society wanted to do an event, and they said 40-45 usually show up,” Turner recalls. “They sent out the invitation at 3 o’clock on a Friday, and by 3:15, more than 150 people had responded.” Turner, of course, couldn’t be happier to accommodate: “Usually a developer has to throw all sorts of parties and hope people will come down to see the building.”

The converted grain elevator is one of two high-profile Turner projects backed by Washington-based private equity firm The Carlyle Group; the other is a multibillion-dollar redevelopment of a 50-acre abandoned industrial site now known as Westport Waterfront, on the Middle Branch of the Patapsco, where he plans to build homes and shops.

At Silo Point, sales may have started as the economy hit the bleakest point in decades, but Turner is unfazed.

“We’re getting steady traffic,” he says. As of the first of the year, about 50 contracts had been signed on the 228 total units, and residents have started to move in. “We priced it right,” is Turner’s explanation. “The most important thing in real estate is, you don’t make money when you sell it, you make money when you buy it. If you buy it right, you can price it low, and still make a profit.”

With the financial meltdown, some in the business community seem to regard that as brave talk.

“Pat is cool, and creative—that’s a pretty good way to describe him,” says Christopher Janian, assistant developer at H&S Properties, which has turned Harbor East into an upscale office, condo, and retail district. “I’ve been to Silo Point; I haven’t compared prices for the square footage to other developments, but the product is very unique,” says Janian. “But Pat’s definitely not conservative. Though his risks have paid off in the past, Silo Point delivered in a very tough economic climate. Had it delivered two years ago or two years from now, sales would be much different.”

“Silo Point is one of the most architecturally exciting projects that Baltimore has ever seen,” adds Baltimore Development Corporation President M. Jay Brodie. “It’s obviously a gutsy project for Pat Turner and his partners to have undertaken [there are no city dollars involved]. I hope it goes well, even in this difficult economic climate.”

Silo Point’s condo prices range from $265,000 for a 1,100-square-foot one-bedroom to $4.2 million-plus for the penthouses. In fact, Turner had planned to reserve a penthouse for himself. “I’m not sure if I can afford it,” he says. “And we’ve been getting amazing offers.” He may just be a victim of his own marketing: “This is the only place in the world where you can live in a grain elevator.”

We stalked a few new Silo Point buyers and found out what they have in common is that they all love the novelty of their new environs.

Like a hotel
“We jumped on it,” says Ted Blankenship, who, with his partner, recently purchased a 1,250-square-foot, one-bedroom unit with a wall of windows that look across the harbor to Patterson Park and the Russian Orthodox church. “Worrying that we’d miss out was definitely part of the decision.”
Blankenship, who does fundraising for A Moveable Feast, and partner Thomas Kazmierczak, a VP at T. Rowe Price, lived in a narrow, 130-year-old rowhouse in Fells Point. Though they are both still in their 30s, says Blankenship, they wanted a more convenient space, a home they could grow old in, preferably one-story.
When the couple visited Silo Point, they made up their minds quickly. “We’d looked at a lot of places, but we just saw ourselves living here,” Blankenship says. They’ve hired designer Maria Mascato to help with the décor, which, Blankenship says, will look like “a very elegant hotel suite.”

Easy Access
Michael and Cathleen Cox fit only part of the “empty nesters” stereotype. Both federal employees who commute to Washington, the two are in their 40s and have no children. They lived in a ranch house on a generous lot in Columbia, which they bought just before Michael Cox was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 2001. “We wanted something low-maintenance, and decided to get the work of moving over while we were still young,” says Cox.
“The view at night is amazing,” says Cox. “We weren’t expecting that.” In fact, the couple is considering upgrading the blinds in their unit so they can be operated from a panel on the wall. “We don’t want to be raising and lowering blinds all day,” he laughs.
One of the most appealing attributes, Cox says, is the commute: Silo Point is about a minute’s drive from the Key Highway ramp to Interstate 95, meaning commutes of half an hour or less each way.

Friends
First-time homeowner Chris Guarda, 23, moved from another Turner project in Federal Hill, where he rented an apartment with 40-foot ceilings in what was once the gymnasium of the Holy Cross Catholic School.
He admits concern about the real estate market, and whether he’s making the right decision. “When you buy a condo,” says Guarda, who works as a financial consultant at an auditing and risk consulting firm, “you’re not just buying an individual property, you’re investing in the expectation that others will buy, too.”
But he’s hedged his bet by talking his best friend Andrew into buying the unit next door, and the two plan to remove the rail between the two terraces. Guarda also asked his girlfriend of six years, Andrea Lasner, to live with him. If his approach to collaborating on interior design is any indication, it looks like they’ll do pretty well together: “I have an idea, she tells me why it’s wrong, and we reconcile it.”

While the mudroom is fast becoming an essential addition to any 21st-Century home, you may want to leave your shoes at the door. Today’s mudrooms have designer laundry rooms, granite bathrooms, imported flooring materials, upscale upholstery, docking stations for the adults, and elaborate storage areas for the kids. In fact, about the only thing you won’t find in the mudroom is mud. And along with the rest of the home, the mudroom is getting “designed” by top local interior designers.

“I think the mudroom is becoming as important as the kitchen in terms of the function in families’ lives,” theorizes Inez Schapiro of Jenkins Baer Associates. “It has become a drop-off space for the kids and all their equipment and other stuff. They are no longer leaving it in the hall—it has become part of this new focus in homes on organization and preplanning.”

“Mudrooms are extremely popular in new upscale homes,” says Steve Melman, director of Economic Services at the National Association of Home Builders. “People want a more casual lifestyle, and that’s a big part of it. They don’t want to spend their time sorting out the coat closet—they want this room where they can push everything, and close the door. There is an incredible demand for storage space, but storage that people don’t see when they are entertaining. What the pantry did for the kitchen, and garage shelving does for big items, mudrooms do for daily gear.”

The muck stops here

Living on a farm can often be a constant battle to keep mud, muck, and, yes, manure outside. But for one Stevenson family, an elaborate mudroom designed by Inez Schapiro was the key to living comfortably in their sophisticated, refined farmhouse.

“Our mudroom is the linchpin in terms of making this a functional home,” says the client, who has four children ranging in age from 8 to 16. “The whole goal of this mudroom was to be beautiful but functional because we live on a farm. My kids are out with four-wheelers, they’re with the cows, and my husband is in an industrial business and comes in with muddy boots every day; so, first and foremost, we wanted a functional living space. You build a house like this, and you don’t want it destroyed.”

The spectacular space includes a full bathroom and laundry room, built-in armoires and shoe drawers, a docking station for cell phones and cameras, and a designated corkboard area for pinning up invitations and myriad art projects. The floor is a unique multicolored gray and brown Chinese slate that easily masks dirt, and a built-in bench positioned between the armoires is upholstered in a high-end, but washable, black and white Clarence House toile.

“Everything is so beautiful, but behind every drawer is an absolute mess,” says the client with a laugh as she pulls open a drawer to reveal an assortment of boots and sneakers caked with mud. “I like everything tucked away. The kids can take their shoes off, they can put their bags down, and then it’s their place.”

Small Room, Giant Leap

“We didn’t have mudrooms when I was growing up,” reminisces a Brooklandville mother of three. “Our ‘mudroom’ was the basement. I was on the swim team, and I used to come home from practice and go down in the basement, hang up my wet suit, hang up my wet towel, and put my goggles away. Now, kids have too much stuff, and they dump it—that’s why we have created mudrooms. Mudrooms are a product of their generation—how many winter coats did you have when you were growing up? I had one. My kids have five fleeces, a windbreaker, and a winter coat.”

For this Brooklandville family, the addition of a small, but essential 6 foot 6 inch by 7 foot 9 inch mudroom adjacent to the kitchen transformed the way in which they live in their ’60s four-bedroom Colonial home. “The kids used to come in the front and dump in the front hall,” says the client. “And I told them, ‘When we get the mudroom, don’t worry, you can come in and dump stuff.’ So now when they come in, they dump stuff, and I’m like, ‘At least put your things on the hook.’ And they just look at me and say, ‘But, Mom, you promised us we could dump stuff!’ So what can I say?”

In addition to numerous coat hooks, the space, designed by Ann Hagerty of Ann Hagerty Architect & Associates, also features roomy cubbies and scads of shelving for the assorted bric-a-brac and sporting equipment of family life, including sticks of various shapes and sizes (there are 14 lacrosse sticks alone in addition to an assortment of hockey sticks), water bottles, tennis racquets, helmets for biking and lacrosse, and countless pairs of cleats, boots, sneakers, and shoes.

“What amazes me is that this small bump-out has changed the way this house works,” says the client. “It has changed the way we use the kitchen, and it has changed the way we enter the house. We always enter now through the mudroom. My husband said to me recently, ‘I don’t know if I even have the keys to the front door anymore.'”

A cubby, even for the dog

When Lisa and Neal Shapiro gutted the kitchen and dining room area in their Pikesville home, they also transformed their chaotic, cluttered mudroom into the very model of order and organization.

“In the old space, everything was in a heap,” recalls Lisa Shapiro, mother of daughter, Emily, 10, and son Charlie, 8. “It was a mess.”

“There was a coat tree falling over from the weight of the coats,” chimes in designer Sue DiPietro of Jenkins Baer Associates, who reclaimed the space, “and there was a hanging cabinet filled with junk mail which is what you saw when you walked into the house. It was overcome with stuff.”

Even after the extensive year-long renovation, Shapiro says the family still struggled to stay organized. “I said to my husband, Neal, ‘We just spent all this money—the house should look better,'” says Shapiro. “I am not naturally organized, but I want to be.” So Shapiro hired Rachel Shapiro (no relation), a Federal Hill-based organizer to come to the rescue. “We still had muck everywhere—things were thrown, and it wasn’t what I was envisioning the mudroom to be. Nothing had a place, but now, thanks to Rachel, everything has a home.”

For maximum order, there are a dozen cubbies with bright red bins with labels for the different members of the household including bins for “Charlie’s Things,” with his baseball mitt and library books, “Emily’s Things,” containing her lacrosse goggles, and a separate out-basket for charity items and hand-me-downs. Even the family dog, Lily, gets her own bin filled with leashes, collars, and treats. Rachel also came up with other clever storage solutions such as a hanging, sectioned shoe bag on the inside of the closet for gift cards, kids’ trading cards, and sunglasses.

“Finally,” says Shapiro, taking a deep breath, “everything has a place.”

A Garage Transformed

For one Owings Mills family, the mudroom is a way station between their sprawling four-acre yard and the inside of their well-appointed ’30s Colonial home. “My younger son has a propensity for bringing nature indoors, from tadpoles to rocks, old glass bottles, and frogs—anything he can find,” says Kate Pisano with a laugh. “But thanks to the mudroom, it all stops at the laundry-room sink.”

With a large coat closet for the adults and guests, separate closets for her two sons, a high-function laundry room and bathroom area, the mudroom is utilitarian but beautiful. Slate floors, bead board, and a stunning 13-drawer country-style chest lend the space a cottage feel and add to the architectural interest. One of Pisano’s favorite features is the built-in corkboard on the front of each of the boy’s coat closets, or “lockers,” as she calls them. “It allows you to put up their artwork, rotate it through, and you never have to keep too much of it. As time goes on, you quietly take it down,” she says smiling.

“Before we built this eight years ago, it was a garage with cement floors,” recalls Pisano, who hired architect Peter Ratcliffe for the renovation of the mudroom as well as an extensive renovation of the family room. “The back door opened straight into the kitchen, and everything ended up on the kitchen floor, on the back of the tables, or over the seats—it was a total mess.”

Now the mudroom area helps at least some members of the family stay organized.

“I have two boys who need some organizational help,” says Pisano. “One of my boys is the absent-minded professor. And one of them is so organized, it’s frightening—they call me to see his spotless locker at school, but at home, he refuses to do it. The lockers give me a place to put things, and then when everyone yells at me, ‘Where’s this? Where’s that?’ at least I know where I can find it.”

Major Players in the Owings Home Recreation

Builder: David S. Brown Enterprises, Owings Mills.

Historical research: Brian Freidlander, local historian and owner, Simply Beautiful Flowers, Pikesville.

Interior design: H. Keith Henry, Lewes, Delaware.

Selected furniture: J. Conn Scott Fine Furniture, Selbyville, Delaware.

Landscaping: Larry Williams, Advanced Landscaping, Catonsville.

Judy Burch and her husband, Dr. Joseph F. Williams, live in the historic Samuel Owings Jr. house in Owings Mills. Okay, it isn’t really a historic house. It is a replica of the home once owned by the influential 18th-century resident for whom Owings Mills is named, built to exactly match old photos and descriptions. But for the couple, Samuel Owings’s spirit is alive and well.

Samuel Owings Jr., the son of Samuel and Urath Owings, was born in 1733 in the Green Spring Valley. Like his father before him, Owings operated mills and acquired large tracts of land in Baltimore County. The origins of the original Samuel Owings house are a bit foggy; accounts of its construction place the building date between 1765 and 1769. What is known is that Owings and his wife were living in their new home by 1798, a home that had already received several additions to accommodate a growing family. The brick home was a classical example of the Colonial manor style and featured a wide, welcoming front porch. Owings named the house “Ulm,” after the sources of his fortune: the Upper, Middle and Lower Mills.

Owings, though not perhaps the most illustrious figure in Baltimore County history, was certainly a mover and shaker in his time. In addition to his large landholdings (as much as 1,775 acres), he was deputy sheriff, a justice of the peace, county commissioner, and a county delegate to the legislature. Owings donated land to St. Thomas Church for the construction of the parsonage. Later in life he became a Methodist and championed various Methodist causes. No doubt, Ulm played host to many important figures in local politics and community life until Owings died in 1803.After Owings’s death, the house stayed with his heirs for a period, went to multiple unrelated owners, then passed to the Painter family, who were stewards of its history for 100 years. Milton Painter excelled as a pioneer of ice cream-making and during the Civil War, soldiers reportedly stopped at the Painter’s home to eat some of his confection. When the last of the Painters left the estate in 1943, the house began a slow spiral into disrepair until 1973 when it was refurbished as a restaurant. Baltimore County gourmands may remember the Owings house’s stint as “The Country Fare Inn.”

The Owings Mills of today bears little resemblance to the town Samuel Owings knew. His landholdings are now covered with highways, a mall, schools, townhomes, and the other trappings of modern suburban sprawl. When developer Howard S. Brown of David S. Brown Enterprises bought the Owings House, it was hemmed in by light industrial buildings and strip malls. In 1996, to the horror of The Committee to Save the Samuel Owings House, Howard bulldozed Ulm, one of the oldest structures in the county. A little piece of local lore seemed lost for good.

Brown promised an outraged community that he would put the Owings House back together at a new location. While he did not use the same materials as the old house (which was reportedly built with bricks made on Owings property), Brown worked with architect Larry Link to build a perfect replica of the Samuel Owings house on a 1.5-acre tract on St. Thomas Lane. Great pains were taken to be faithful to the original design. Exact measurements were taken to make it the correct size, the windows are the exact height and spaced according to Owings’s design, and the house features the same huge, welcoming porch and massive custom door that Owings himself could have flung open.

The house was left unfinished on the inside so that Brown could complete the home’s interior to the specifications of the new owner. But no owner stepped forward. Wedged onto a piece of property just a stone’s throw away from a Wendy’s, the location of the house wasn’t ideal. But when Burch and Williams saw it on a cold winter day, devoid of any landscaping and wearing its checkered history on its sleeve, they fell in love with the new version of the old Samuel Owings house.

“When we looked in here, both my husband and I said ‘Some way, somehow, we’re going to live here,'” says Burch. Burch was perhaps fated to become the home’s owner, as her furniture and accessories collections are as unique as the house’s history. It took two years to complete the construction of the home’s interior—because the builders were so particular about quality, Burch says—but when the couple moved in, they brought with them an eclectic selection of art, antiques, furniture, and objects that represent Williams’s love of art and Burch’s passion for collecting and travel.

Long before she became interested in meditation, Burch shared her grandmother’s interest in collecting, and specifically, in the décor of the eastern Orient. Her most impressive collection is of Chinese rose medallion, which is evident in almost every room, in curio cases, and in the form of large vases on stands in rooms. The rose hues of that china inspired the colors of the dining room, a stately room that includes a table and chairs that reportedly came from a Meyerhoff’s home. A massive French mirror, hand-carved and still with its original glass now clouding gray, came from an estate sale in Palm Beach. The Baccarat Crystal dolphin that sits on a sideboard below the mirror was purchased on a trip to the French Riviera. Burch carried the fragile cargo home in her carry-on bag. The chandelier is an Italian crystal replica of a 1770’s palace chandelier that took a year to complete.

“This home is a great place to display items,” she explains. “According to the books, Samuel Owings was a man who liked finer things and he wanted this to be a lovely home. I want this to be a lovely place, too.”

Like all great collectors, Burch has perfected the art of trolling estate sales, auctions, and antique shops. The couple purchases items when they are traveling, as well. The house features numerous Chinese and Indian wood carvings that once graced eastern temples, and the living room features an impressive array of century-old Chinese roof tiles, three-dimensional figurines that, for thousands of years, have been placed around the roof soffits of the wealthy.

Burch mixes old and new, French and Chinese, rustic and formal, with abandon. Take, for example, the softly hued gray master bedroom. A massive Indian woodcarving anchors the wall above a fireplace trimmed in tiles salvaged from a Bolton Hill rowhouse. Enormous bedside lamps that are copies of silver candelabras offset an Oscar de la Renta, four-post bed the couple selected for its carving and craftsmanship. The kitchen blends a French Country aesthetic with the distinctly Asian influence introduced by Burch’s collection of Blue Canton dinnerware. Burch used a dynamic, Thibaut-designed wallpaper in the French style and the pattern is repeated in a custom-painted table in the breakfast nook. More collections sneak into the breakfast nook, where Burch displays her impressive haul of antique brass kitchen molds, burnished to a cheery sheen.

When asked to describe her home, Burch states with confidence that it is “eclectic.”

Not all the home’s quirky items were inspired by Burch. Her husband is the art aficionado and his collection includes signed prints by Salvador Dali from his New Jerusalem Suite. A native of Waterbury, Connecticut, a town known for its clockworks, Williams also owns five clocks made in his hometown, including one from the town train station. Despite their collecting prowess, many of the pieces the couple own wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow at auction. Burch frequently buys items that are in terrible disrepair and restores them to new luster, breathing new life into something others might consider a lost cause. A bit like she did for the Owings house.

“There are things we’ve done [in the house] that we’ve asked ourselves, ‘Would Samuel Owings have approved of this?'” she explains. “For both my husband and myself, it’s significant to own the Samuel Owings house. We feel like it is a way of keeping his history going.”

When Orioles right fielder Nick Markakis went looking to buy his first real house in the Baltimore area, he wanted to purchase something that reminded him of his beloved home state Georgia. Having lived briefly on the 22nd floor of Spinnaker Bay in the heart of downtown Baltimore and later in a Canton row house with close friend and Orioles teammate, pitcher Adam Loewen, Markakis was eager to leave city life behind in favor of a more countrified existence.

“I’m not too much of a city guy,” admits the 24-year-old Markakis who also owns a brick rancher in Cartersville, Georgia. “It gets on your nerves after a while. Every time I wanted to walk the dog, I had to take an elevator. It’s kind of like living in a jail, [but] with no walls around it.”

So, looking to make a clean break from city life, Markakis started searching for a new neighborhood amidst the rolling hills of northern Baltimore County.

“I had somewhat of a mindset of what I was looking for,” he says. “I was on the way to see another house when I passed this house with my real estate agent. I took one look at it, and I bought it that day. I have enough neighbors to be comfortable, but not too many. It reminded me of my house in Georgia, somewhat out in the country and quiet.”

After purchasing the four bedroom, four-and-a-half bath Monkton Colonial set on two woodsy acres, Markakis set his sights on making his house a home. With little furniture to his name, he called on the decorating talents of Kristen Peake of the Rockville-based Kristen Peake Interiors to fill the sprawling space. One thing was for certain: Family and friends would have to be central to the setting. The home has three guest rooms and a rotating corps of people passing through, from his three brothers—Dennis, 26, Michael, 20, and Gregory, 17—to his parents, Mary Lou and Dennis, to his Floridian girlfriend, elementary school teacher Christina Dutko.

While the home is lovely, with its roomy furniture and state-of-the-art kitchen, it remains understated and tasteful. Says Markakis’s sports agent Jamie Murphy, “Nick is not the type of guy that’s going to buy a three million dollar house, brag about it, and put it on MTV’s Cribs. It’s just not his style—he prefers to live in the country where there are not that many hassles or where he doesn’t get noticed a lot.”

Amazingly, the decorating details were worked out over a mere 20-minute conference call between Markakis, Peake, Murphy, and Markakis’s senior marketing manager, Olivia Cabrera.

“I wasn’t here to plan anything,” says Markakis who shares his home with his weimaraner Riley. “I left it in Kristen’s hands.”

Recalls Peake laughing at the memory, “We had one phone call during spring training in Fort Lauderdale. I could hear the crack of the bat over the phone.”

Markakis’s edict was simple: “He told me being comfortable was of the utmost importance,” says Peake, who finished the project at record speed in one month. “I knew he wanted a big TV in the family room, and he wanted comfort and being able to seat a lot of people.”

When Markakis saw the home for the first time in late March after returning from Florida, he was thrilled. “I didn’t know what to expect when I walked in,” he says. “I was impressed with what I saw.”

“You were?” beams Peake, as if hearing feedback for the first time.

“Yes,” continues Markakis. “I couldn’t complain about any of it—I’m easy to please.”

The ladies in his life liked it, too. Dutko, who wears a heart-shaped diamond “promise ring” (sorry, girls) loved it. “It definitely captures him,” she says. “It’s not over the top, but it’s beautiful and simple.”

“I loved it,” says mom Mary Lou. “I thought it was perfect for him.”

With few marching orders, Peake put together a home that is tailored, simple, and sophisticated. “I looked at the house and saw the traditional elements and architecture,” she says. “I tried to create a tone on tone effect so it would be neutral, and it would always be easy enough for him to sell.”

Markakis’s parents also got in on the act. They picked out the dishes, the wall-to-wall carpeting, the granite kitchen countertops, and the bathroom décor.

Architectural detailing, including white wainscoting in the 18-foot foyer, coffered ceilings in the kitchen and family room, and a tray ceiling in the bedroom contribute to the beauty of the home. While Markakis’s favorite color is red, the space is suffused in a neutral palette of beiges, grays, and warm browns. And although Markakis doesn’t cook, Dutko enjoys whipping up lasagna and brownies in a kitchen outfitted with the latest in stainless steel KitchenAid appliances, warm cherry cabinets, and handsome oak flooring. (And for those times when Dutko is not in town, Markakis says that he enjoys an occasional trip to Harbor East’s Fleming’s or Taco Fiesta with teammates.)

Unique knickknacks and accessories offer visual counterpoints to the neutral color scheme. A set of tribal sculptures is displayed in the family room. Lovely botanical prints purchased from a gallery in California sit over the gas fireplace in the family room, and cherished family photos are on display in nearly every room.

Thanks to his love of just “hanging out,” televisions loom large in nearly every room (there are six of them), including a 60-inch Hitachi TV in the family room with a state-of-the-art Bose sound system where Markakis enjoys sitting on his oversized chenille sectional sofa watching Fox’s Prison Break or, he says, “pretty much anything on ESPN.”

With workdays that are both physically and mentally draining, Markakis is a homebody who wants nothing more than to relax off the field. When asked if he socializes with his teammates, he says, “We’re together nine hours a day. A lot of the guys just need to be away and relax and need their privacy when they’re not at work.”

As of yet, he hasn’t even had time to meet his neighbors (though Orioles owner Peter Angelos shares a zip code).

“I really don’t do too much,” shrugs Markakis. “I go to the field and by the time I get home it’s late, and I just hang out at home.”

When asked to define how he “hangs out,” he says, “I do it all—video games, watching TV. I like to play Tiger Woods Golf, and I play the Wii.”

With his broad shoulders, spinach-can crushing biceps, and deep brown eyes hidden behind a baseball cap (this day, worn backwards), Markakis definitely has matinee-idol good looks. That, coupled with his tremendous on-field play, has made him one of the marquee stars of the Orioles. But Markakis is a man of few words—both on and off the field. At work, says Murphy, “He’s a throwback. He’s more like a player who came up in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s. As a [young player], he understands his place on the team and does a lot more listening than talking. A lot of players take to instant stardom. He defers to the veterans. He stays quiet and learned the game from the guys that have been there longer.”

In person, Markakis is extremely quiet, and according to those who know him best, he can be painfully shy.

“There are two distinct Nicks,” says Murphy. “The public one when he is quiet and somewhat withdrawn, and the private one with friends in the clubhouse when he is putting on a show for teammates by balancing things on his chin. When you’re young and famous, you have to learn to be a little bit guarded.”

In all areas of his life, in fact, Markakis seeks balance, not always easy to achieve when you are the team’s wunderkind with all of Camden Yards—from teammates to fans to owners—watching with great expectations.

With his love of open space and the majority of his childhood spent in bucolic Woodstock, Georgia, Markakis’s new home is helping him to achieve some of that balance and return to his pastoral roots. At heart, Markakis is a country boy who—while most of his teammates shelled out the big bucks for Cadillac Escalades and BMW 7 series—splurged on a Ford F-150 pickup truck after signing with the O’s. In his spare time, he hunts deer, fishes, collects guns, and counts fellow countrymen George Strait and Kenny Chesney as his favorite musicians.

The tattoo on Markakis’s right arm—a cross with the name Taylor Scott Randahl emblazoned across his forearm—tells another piece of the story. Markakis’s best friend from high school died in a tragic biking accident when the boys were 16.

“That was a turning point for him,” explains his mother. “On the day of Taylor’s funeral, they had a double-header for the state playoffs. Nick asked the coach if he could come late so he could go to the funeral, so he got there at the beginning of the second game when they were down three, but with everything going on in his head and his heart, he shut the other team down. [Markakis pitched in high school.] I think he was playing for Taylor.”

Though no one is willing to say it for the record, the purchase of a substantial four-bedroom home is a statement that Markakis is committed to playing for the Orioles for the long haul, despite the fact that he has yet to sign a multiyear contract and could be traded at any time. When asked to confirm whether this home means Baltimore gets to keep him for at least another few years, his mother says, “yes” without elaborating.

“Seeing Nick’s success is surreal,” she says. “It doesn’t seem possible even though this is something he has always wanted to do. I just want him to do well like any mother. For now, he is living his dream.”

If you think your neighbors are bad, with their loud music and sloppy trashcan-lid replacement, consider the tales told by the still-jittery people who lived near a Mt. Washington family we’ll call The Smiths.

The tales told and recounted by neighbors (who almost all requested anonymity) are many, and include harassing calls to the police (to report neighbors as burglars when they were entering their own homes) and vehicular taunting (one family member used to gun the engine of his car—sans tailpipe—throughout the dinner hour in the summer).

The Smiths did love their cars. After two family members broke the windshield of another car during a fight, they replaced the glass with an ill-fitting plastic sheet that the driver had to peer over. Yet that wasn’t the car’s main problem: All four tires were flat, recalls Michael Gold, 43, who moved in across the street from the Smiths in 1998.

But neither the lack of windshield nor working tires stopped the Smiths from using the car as their regular transportation. “They were screaming around the neighborhood in this car on the rims—looking over this piece of plastic,” says Gold, a scientist who moved to Pittsburgh in October 2006. “Sparks [from the wheel rims] were flying everywhere.”

Many family members irritated neighbors, but some residents fondly remembered the Smiths’ 80-something grandmother, who had lived on the street for half a century. “[Mrs. Smith] was a nice woman, very kind,” says neighbor Diane Sheckells, 47, who moved into her in-laws’ house around the time the Smith house burned down.

Yes, burned down. The family’s ample Victorian in western Mt. Washington was destroyed by fire in early 2005, ending the active problems with the family—but the charred pile of rubble lingered for more than a year, visible amid high grass and vine-covered bushes.

“It was such an eyesore,” says Julia Pearson, 39, a four-year resident on the block of compact two-story bungalows. “They never really came back to deal with the property. They never came back to mow the lawn. Except the day the house was taken down—they came to get a rose bush and a lilac bush.”

Days before a showdown in court about the destroyed home—where four generations of Smiths once lived—a demolition crew tore the house down to the ground.

“Everyone is very happy about it being an empty lot,” says Pearson.

The rubble was removed, but the lot is still unkempt, said Sheckells, a city schools employee. “It’s becoming such a doggone eyesore again, because of all of the weeds that are growing,” she adds.

Nightmare neighbors: They steal your parking spot, harass you about noisy renovations, let their dogs use your lawn as a toilet, and make obscene gestures. Heck, they may even use their front yard as a helicopter landing pad.

What can you do to stop them? Mediation groups can help work it out, and they offer several tips toward solving neighborly disputes. But squabbles sometimes end up in the hands of lawyers or police, who may not always help much.

Baltimore County fields mostly noise complaints, police spokesman Corp. Mike Hill said. Police there don’t mind enforcing the law, which slaps up to a $500 fine or up to 90 days in jail for noise that “unreasonably disturbs the peace, quiet, and comfort of the neighboring inhabitants.”

Hill’s best advice? “Try to get along,” he says. “Sometimes just talking to the neighbor and coming to an understanding is all that needs to happen.”

In Howard County, an even worse feud rages on among two men in the Village of River Hill, in Columbia. Neighbors Timothy Cerny and David Elliott are due in court this month, capping off two civil suits, 13 criminal cases, 13 peace orders and nearly 100 visits from Howard County police since 1999. The dispute began, The Sun reported, over a proposed pool in Cerny’s backyard. In the current court case, Cerny, 47, faces a second-degree assault charge for allegedly spitting on Elliott, also 47, during an April screaming match that Elliott caught on videotape, the paper reported.

The Baltimore City rowhouse is a breeding ground for neighborly disputes, said Caroline Harmon, director of the Community Mediation Center on Greenmount Avenue in Baltimore. The private, nonprofit center intervenes in more than 1,000 conflicts a year from across the region.

Many people who come for mediation have called the police more than 30 times. Preventing that number of calls, Harmon said, translates into savings for both police and taxpayers.

“We offer people a way out, rather than going to police” with disputes over yards, porches, parking, trash, music, noise, and animals, Harmon says. “A lot of the issues have to do with Baltimore as a city of rowhouses, and that people are living 10 feet away from each other.”

Harmon has three simple tips to try to repair (and prevent) damage: Speak directly. Many disputes involve messages through family members or other neighbors. Said Harmon, “If people talk things out face to face, they can make it better.”

Spend time listening as well as talking. Talk about how the situation affects you, rather than how horrible the other person is.

And avoid saying “always” or “never,” or other phrases that escalate disputes.

For the people of Baltimore County’s Greenspring Valley, Nightmare Neighbor Number One was Martin Grass, the former chief executive of the Rite Aid drugstore chain.

Starting in the late 90’s, Grass commuted via helicopter from his gated home to work at Rite Aid headquarters in Camp Hill, Pa. Neighbors contested Grass’s landing the chopper in an area zoned for agricultural use.

“When it would come in, the whole house would shake, and it would wake up my kids,” says Deirdre Smith, 46, whose 1820’s farmhouse has been in her husband’s family for five generations. The chopper would come and go at all hours, and Smith blamed it for making her chickens curtail their laying. “It was very frightening and upsetting.”

Smith and her husband tried to solve the problem with a neighborly approach, but they received an unexpected response.

“He took my husband up in the helicopter to try to show him how cool it was,” recalls Smith, whose 70-acre farm is across the street from the disgraced executive’s former home. “He had a definite attitude that he had the right to do whatever he darn well felt like.”

The chopper use stopped in 2004, when Grass was sentenced to eight years in federal prison for accounting fraud.

Some neighbors get so worked up that they hire a lawyer to scare the other guy.

“People feel more strongly about their property than their kids or their other possessions,” says Stephen J. Kleeman, a Towson lawyer representing a rowhouse resident whose neighbor’s dogs allegedly urinated and defecated on his house. “When they get worked up about it, it’s just impossible to derail,” Kleeman says.

But not all attorneys like to take this kind of case. Hampden lawyer Alan F. Deanehan won’t handle criminal cases or family law, and he says he won’t do residential disputes, either. “The neighbors from hell is not my purview,” he says. “I try not to do anything I can die from.”

While nightmare neighbors might seem humorous to someone who has never had them, what’s really funny is how far people will go to catch each other in the act, Ellicott City attorney Mike Henderson says.

“They yell at each other, and they chase each other around with video cameras,” Henderson says. “I’d rather have a divorce case than a property line dispute because people are much more likely to agree on something.”

Realtors don’t like to touch these conflicts, either.

“It really does go against our code of ethics to talk about stuff like this,” says Ilene Kessler, president of the Maryland Association of Realtors. She hesitated even to offer advice on how to avoid ending up with nightmare neighbors.

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but I can’t tell you how to act,” Kessler says. “I can’t even tell my children how to act.”

One woman’s bad neighbors aren’t humans but rats, both dead and alive. Rats in the kitchen. Rats in the garbage. Rats in the attic. Rats running along a brick fence extending the length of the group of rowhouses.

“I’ve seen pictures, and it’s not mice, it’s rats,” says the woman’s lawyer, Shauntese Curry Trye, who has a case pending against the management company that owns the group of rowhouses the client lives in. The company blames the next-door neighbor.

Sometimes family ties complicate neighborly disputes. Attorney David Jacobson—a Roland Park resident whose neighbors once had a battle of abandoned junky convertibles—handled a case where land was passed down from grandparents. Hostile grandchildren subdivided the lots and built homes, which they separated with fences. One grandchild allegedly jumped the fence around his visually impaired cousin’s house and dug holes along it so his relative would fall during his walks, Jacobson says.

Jacobson says there’s an old adage among real estate lawyers, but this time it didn’t hold up: “Big fences make good neighbors.”

As more single women become homeowners, it is increasingly important that they understand the language, customs, care, and feeding of the typical building contractor.

Mary Ellen Iwata, a vice president of program development for cable HGTV, bought her first home in Roland Park because it was a little house in a great location, perfect for her on-the-go lifestyle. What she didn’t like were the cramped rooms and dark pine accents. After living in the house for a few years, she decided she was ready to open up the first floor’s floor plan and move the kitchen—but she didn’t know where to start. A couple years later, though, she’s something of a battle-scarred expert.

First she found an architect to create a set of plans. Then she hired a contractor. “I did the whole thing the way that I hire people at work,” she explains. “I interview them, check their references, and then hope it works out.” What came next was a demolition derby of construction that lasted more than six months, leaving Iwata without a kitchen. She lived upstairs and in her small office, where she had a mini-fridge. “I ate a lot of carryout,” she says, chagrined. “In retrospect, people tell you to multiply everything they [contractors] tell you by two.”

After the kitchen renovation, Iwata took the lessons she learned from her first project and applied them to the next: installing a first floor powder room and renovating her office. “I think the most important thing is not to let anyone talk you into something that you’re not comfortable with,” she explains. In her kitchen, Iwata even asked the architect to create the layout in large, brown paper cutouts that she could lay out on the floor to visualize the finished project. “You have to ask a lot of questions up front and not be afraid to sound stupid, because it’s your house and your money,” she counsels. “Ask until it’s really clear.”

Hiring a Contractor
“The general public is terrified to remodel, particularly women living alone,” confirms Kathy Wheatley, CEO of Wheatley Associates, one of the few women-owned remodeling firms in the area. Yet she finds that about 95 percent of the company’s calls are from women, because women tend to make the decorating decisions, whether they are single or married.

She and other experts advise that when hiring a contractor, avoid the Yellow Pages and opt instead for references from local trade associations, friends, and family. Or get referrals from a locally owned lumberyard. Once the search is narrowed down to about three possibilities get—and check—references. Remember that this person will have access to your home, so you need to trust them and feel comfortable with their presence. When all else fails, go with your gut.

“Ask to talk to their suppliers, too, because the suppliers know who pays on time and if they’ve been around for a while,” says Jim Lapides, communications manager for the National Association of Home Builders Remodelors Council. “The most important thing to look for is longevity. Make sure they have a brick-and-mortar location, real business cards—basically that it’s an established business.”

Lapides explains that because licensing can vary by state or even city, you must check with the licensing bureau in your area to verify its requirements. Touch base with the Better Business Bureau or district attorney’s office to make sure the company has no complaints against it, and make sure the company carries insurance to protect you, the homeowner, against work-site damages or injuries.

After the contractor is selected, it’s time for contract negotiation. “The biggest thing is to have open communication and get everything in writing,” says Lapides. The contract should outline the start date of the project and an estimated finish date. Include as much detail as possible. For example, don’t ask for a door to be installed; specify the make, model, and color of the door you want. Twenty percent payment up front is reasonable, says Lapides. “Make sure the contract details payment and do not give the last check until the project is complete.”

Avoiding DID Syndrome
Baltimore writer Allegra Bennett learned about home renovation the hard way when she was left with a fixer-upper home after a divorce. She turned her own experience into a series of books, including How to Hire a Contractor, and a quarterly magazine, Renovating Woman. The do-it-yourself diva says that women are often plagued by Damsel in Distress (DID) syndrome, which makes them trust the first set of muscles they see when things go wrong.

“You cannot treat a contractor like you are on a date,” she says. “Sometimes we don’t know how to make the separation. We’ll hire someone because he’s cute, he sounds nice, or he doesn’t look like he’ll rip us off. Those reasons don’t make sense for picking someone who’s doing work in your house that you are going to be paying for.”

As a defense mechanism, Bennett says, learn the lingo of the project you are beginning before hiring a contractor by going to a hardware store and asking questions. Whether you are remodeling a kitchen or replacing an electrical system, know what to expect, how long it may take, and what obstacles can arise during the project. If a project calls for half-inch plywood, find out what that looks like so you’ll know the difference if the contractor installs quarter-inch instead.

“Educate yourself so you aren’t intimidated,” says Bennett. “We [women] don’t want to cause trouble, so if he puts in the wrong railings, we tend to accept it. You need to say, ‘That’s not what we talked about and it needs to come out.'”

The Reality of Delays
One of the biggest headaches of a remodeling project is the inevitable delay. While a contractor not showing up for days on end may be a sign of a larger problem, there are acceptable reasons that a project may fall behind schedule. Weather is the most likely culprit, or inspectors who do not arrive on time. “The inability to make decisions slows the process down,” says Wheatley. “Custom cabinetry can take 12 weeks to come in, so if the client hasn’t chosen yet, the job will come to a standstill waiting for the cabinets.”

To ensure a smooth process, it helps to look at the contractor-client relationship as a partnership, not a bomb waiting to explode. Establishing a relationship of mutual trust and respect helps. Bennett says, however, that doesn’t mean you need to play hostess to the work crew.

“Look them in the eye and speak directly and firmly without being ugly,” she says. And no whining either. “Otherwise, they’ll short-change you, either because they think you’re a push-over or a pain.”

It’s a Wrap
Parts of Mary Ellen Iwata’s house are still works in progress. Brown paper covers the floor to protect it from workers’ feet and plastic covers some of the windows. Renovating her home has forced her to reorganize her priorities, pay more attention to details, be more forceful in expressing her vision—and spend more time cleaning her home. “It’s like living with a bunch of men you don’t know,” she quips.

While the project frayed her nerves at times, the results still made all the headaches worthwhile. “The light at the end of the tunnel is what keeps you going, and knowing that eventually it will look a certain way,” she says. “You know that at the end of a rough day, you can look at what you’ve made with the help of all these crazy people.”

By mid-spring, they’re already large and in charge along Maryland’s highways: giant vines with a thousand tentacle-like tendrils, some with trunks as thick as a man’s arm, that climb to the top of the highest trees, then drape their leaves like a curtain of green all the way back down to the ground.

Pretty from a distance, maybe, though anybody who knows vines can see they’re strangling the trees. But not all naturally occurring vines need to be a menace to your garden or property.

Vines, which often appear out of nowhere, can bring a magical aspect to a yard or garden, but the trick is always controlling their growth.

So don’t automatically rip out your vines, thinking they’re going to take over your little backyard world, until you read their rap sheets. Here is a handy summary of vines, some of which occur naturally, and others that are available in pots at nurseries and garden centers.

Heavenly Blue Morning Glory
Without a doubt, this is one of the most desirable and controllable vines grown by gardeners who want to add an old-fashioned touch to their cottage garden.
“I think there’s nothing more heavenly than the Heavenly Blue morning glory,” says Jane Baldwin, past president of the Cylburn Arboretum Association.

This annual is grown from seed toward late April, when all danger of frost has passed, in rich, soft, well-drained soil, in full sun. Plant about six seeds spaced 6-10 inches apart around a pole, trellis, or arbor. Press the seeds into the soil, then water generously.

Seedlings should emerge in 7-10 days. Once their tendrils appear, make sure to guide them toward the structure that they are to climb. Each small morning glory plant will develop into an 8-to-10-foot vine, displaying many 3-to-5-inch bright-blue flowers, with a dab of white in each center, beginning sometime in June.
There are many morning glory varieties on the market in seed form, ranging in color from white, pink, hot pink, and pink with stripes to shades of purple with white centers.

The Great Bindweed
This white-blooming vine looks similar to hybridized morning glories and pops up without invitation in neighborhoods and along roadsides, growing in almost any kind of soil that gets full sun.

By mid-to-late spring, if we look carefully at the bases of all plantlife in our gardens, we will find the beginnings of this very invasive strangling vine, as it gradually winds and binds around everything in its path, reaching up to 16 feet in height, depending on the intensity of the sun. Vines will produce blankets of pure-white blooms on tighly woven vines at the height of summer. The Great Bindweed is considered a nuisance by most gardeners, but it looks attractive when forced up an arbor or trellis.

Moonflower
Grown from seed in organic-rich, moist soil, this annual vine thrives in full sun and produces fleshy, dark bluish-green leaves with oversized white blooms that unfold only during the night. Many lost and restless insects fly into the large cup of the Moonflower and curl up for the night.

This hybridized vine can be grown in oversized pots and forced up a trellis, where it reaches a height of eight to 12 feet by mid summer, then starts to fade by September.

Wisteria
Prized for its scented, purple, pea-like flowers, produced on long strands that cascade down from the stems, the wisteria is a favorite among gardeners. Bees are drawn in by the heavily scented blooms. When bought in pots as small plants from the nursery, the new climbing, twisting stems of the wisteria look almost fragile. But over time, they become woody and even resemble tree trunks, especially at the base. Many ordinary fences or trellises have been crushed by the weight of this robust vine.

Trumpet Vine or Trumpet Creeper
A native to the Southeastern United States, this vine has escaped cultivation and now grows wild throughout much of the country. But come spring, vine-lovers can still find the trumpet vine for sale in pots, supported by stakes, at local nurseries and garden centers. This vigorous perennial grows rapidly, and climbs via sticky aerial roots to 30 feet in height. It should be planted against solid structures, such as a sturdy pole supporting a birdhouse or an arbor that won’t collapse under its weight. It thrives best in full sun and average soil. By late June, this vine produces heavy clusters of large, trumpet-shaped, bright-orange blooms at the end of long canes.

Silver-Lace Vine
Often visible from afar, this twining, deciduous vine is a rampant grower and is ideal for covering unattractive fixtures, such as wire fences, bare embankments, tree stumps, and rusty sheds. Its striking features are a mass of tiny white, fragrant flowers that, in great numbers, give this vine the appearance of floating white lace. Often, over time, this vine grows into itself and winds around its own strands of vine, which creates a thicket high above the ground and an ideal sanctuary for birds to nest in.

Jackman’s Clematis
This old-fashioned hybrid is a favorite among gardeners. They love its 4-to-7- inch, deep violet flowers, which appear all summer long. The Jackman’s Clematis (and all other clematis varieties) is finicky about where it gets planted and it requires full sun for the upper growth and cool shade for its root system. So, ideally, it should be planted at the base of a shrub, in light, organic, well-drained soil, sometime during late spring.

“This vine should be clipped back every fall to about 6 to 8 inches and well mulched after the ground freezes,” advises Baldwin.

Boston Ivy
A native of Asia, this climber tolerates most soils, even poor soil conditions. But, for maximum, healthy growth, it should be planted in full sun or part shade in organic-rich, moist, well-drained soils. It can navigate smooth surfaces, due to sticky discs at the end of its tendrils and gradually covers a complete side of a house, reaching heights of up to 60 feet. Initially, branches are thin, but turn woody and thick with age.

The Boston Ivy’s leaves look much like maple leaves, are shiny and medium-green, then turn red, orange, or yellow before dropping to the ground in the fall. At that time, when the ivy branches are bare, clusters of dark blue berries—formed like bunches of grapes—become visible.

Boston Ivy is usually grown as a ground cover or to cover unsightly walls and structures. It may be planted any time of year, as long as the ground can be worked.

Trumpet Honeysuckle Vine
This attractive, twining vine should be planted in full sun or part shade and in ordinary but well-drained soils as soon as it appears at nurseries and garden centers in early spring. Rich soils encourage stem growth, but reduce flowering. The trumpet honeysuckle can reach heights of up to 50 feet, if it has something that high to climb toward. Its tubular red flowers grow in clusters at the tips of branches throughout summer and attract hummingbirds.

Yellow Jasmine
This shrubby vine produces 1-to-2-inch long, bright yellow trumpets in the middle of winter when the plant is still without leaves.
If you leave it unattended, it will creep along, setting roots wherever it touches the ground. In doing so, it controls erosion and makes an excellent ground cover. But, if forced up a trellis, it can reach up to 15 feet.

English Ivy
This species offers a wide variety in foliage, including rounded leaves, twisted and crinkled leaves, and leaves splattered with white, yellow, or pink. It climbs its way up objects via sticky aerial roots, which cause particular damage on brick facades and can reach more than 60 feet in height.