Nothing Neutral -- An Infusion Of Color And Fabric Makes This Tudor Cozy On A Budget

JONI POOLE GREW UP IN a cozy country farmhouse filled with antiques and overstuffed chairs. Flowery chintzes and soothing silks illuminated the interior with sumptuous color, while Oriental carpets warmed the dusky slate floors.

"I always wanted to live in the same atmosphere," says Poole, now a homemaker and mother of two. "But I couldn't afford to do it."

Then, three years ago, she visited the home of Mike and Becky Dietrich. The Port Orchard interior designers run a firm called At The Orchard that specializes in creating elegant interiors on a budget. "The minute I walked into their house I felt so happy and good," Poole recalls. She asked the couple to recreate the same feeling in her Magnolia Tudor, working in stages as her budget allowed.

The completed project, which will be open to the public next Saturday as part of the Magnolia Bluff Holiday Tour of Homes, is colorful and stylish - a sophisticated fusion of chintz and pine that still manages to be casual enough for an active family of four.

To give the home the joyful feeling that Poole and her husband, Laurent, were after, the Dietrichs traded the home's neutral palette for a bouquet of cheery, undiluted colors. The starting point was a yellow chintz that Poole had picked up in Canada. The Dietrichs fashioned curtains from the fabric, accenting the valance with swags of yellow-and-black plaid. The geometric print helps tone down the floral so the interior doesn't feel too fussy.

Searching for a compatible wallpaper for the dining room, the designers settled on a red-and-gold print from Schumacher. Although the company is known for its high-end merchandise, the paper came from one of its lower-priced lines, and cost only $27 a roll.

To link the red paper with the yellow curtains, the Dietrichs glazed the living-room walls pink. They tempered the color by covering a pair of club chairs with a black-and-white plaid ($15 a yard at Calico Corners), and adding red tole lamps and a red sofa. "If we had painted the walls pink, and then done the rooms in a pink-and-white stripe with white lace, it would have read very pink and very feminine," Becky says. "But the black, and the red of those lamps, really mediate the pink, so all it does is give the room a warm glow."

The glazing process cost only about $250. "It's a very inexpensive way to get a neat finish that has a lot of depth and richness to it, without wallpapering or doing something really pricey," the designer notes.

Instead of going out and buying new upholstered pieces, or having their old ones reupholstered, the Pooles opted for tight-fitting slipcovers, which Mike sewed himself. "This sofa was originally $3,000," says Poole. "For me to go out and replace it, I would have had to spend that again. We slipcovered it, and it cost me $1,000."

For clients who can't afford to start with a $3,000 sofa, Becky suggests buying a good used one at a garage sale and having a slipcover made for it. "People get rid of their Bakers and Drexels because they don't like the cover," she says. "And they don't understand that the cover is the least important part of the sofa: it's the line, the comfort and the quality that matters."

The Dietrichs encourage their clients not to skimp on upholstery fabrics. "If you want a good-quality woven or chintz fabric that's going to hold up to five or 10 years or more of hard family wear, you're going to have to pay anywhere from $50 a yard and up," Becky says. "But it's worth it, because it's going to last and last."

The Dietrichs offset these expenditures by trimming in other areas, such as lighting. Although Poole had her eye on a pair of $2,000 table lamps, the Dietrichs persuaded her to instead go out and find a pair of ginger jars and have them electrified. The results saved her $1,600. Other fixtures, such as the $200 sconces over the fireplace, were purchased from antique stores.

Since the Pooles weren't in a position to go out and buy all-new furniture, they recycled some family hand-me-downs. The refectory-style dining set originally belonged to Joni's mother. The Dietrichs softened the high-back chairs with covers and fashioned checked skirts for the seats.

When the Pooles bought the home five years ago, the kitchen cabinets were painted blue and beige, and the upper doors were different from the ones below. The Dietrichs trimmed out the bottom doors so they matched, then treated the cabinets to four coats of white paint. They broke up the cabinet faces by cutting holes in some of the doors and fitting the openings with panes of glass. With the addition of new crystal knobs, lace curtains and a yellow floral wallpaper, the Pooles got a new kitchen look for under $2,000.

Paint is an inexpensive way to add drama to a room. Poole painted her son Armand's room a fire-engine red, and stenciled the walls with joyous gold stars. The 8-year-old selected the curvaceous club chair, whose cow-print upholstery is repeated on the curtains. Instead of kiddie furniture, the room features an antique pine bed, desk and dresser. The pieces are durable, but stylish enough to serve adults if the space ever becomes a guest room.

When the Pooles bought the house, there was no place for kids to play. The Dietrichs transformed the unfinished concrete basement into a warm, woodsy family room by covering the walls with built-in pine cabinets and installing pine plank floors they painted with a checkerboard finish. Then they added a new fireplace with a red mantel bearing the inscription "carpe diem."

The walls are glazed a tangy honeydew green. Because the color is not repeated in any of the furnishings, it doesn't dominate the decor. "It gives the room no particular color feel," Becky says. "Instead, it just gives it a feel of color."

------------------ MAGNOLIA HOME TOUR ------------------

The Poole house is one of six homes featured on the Magnolia Bluff Holiday Tour of Homes held Saturday, Dec. 3, from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tickets are available in advance for $10 at Around the Block, 3206 West Lynn St., or may be purchased the day of the tour for $12 at Our Lady of Fatima Social Center, 3218 West Barrett St. All proceeds benefit the Association for Catholic Childhood. For information, call 284-2407.

Fred Albert reports regularly on home design for Pacific and other regional magazines. Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times photographer.