Designer Kelly Hohla was taking a tour of an early-20th-century home in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood when a passerby walked onto the property.
“They thought it was a park!” she says. It makes sense: “The house sits on six city lots, and it’s surrounded by what feels like a huge English garden,” says Hohla.
The San Francisco–based principal of Kelly Hohla Interiors would come to spend more than two years remodeling the home, which hadn’t changed much in the 30 years the previous owners lived there.
“The primary bathroom had pink tile and a weird pedestal sink. It was like my old bathroom in San Francisco except the space was 10 times as big. I’d never seen such a large room done in that style before,” she says.
Many elements of the home needed to be preserved: the entry stair rail, the faux painting in the entry, and the fireplaces, for example.