Gannett News Service
Sandy and Chris Gavin, with their children Quinlan (left) and Reagan, have decorated their home with plenty of bright colors and Sandy's artwork. Sandy painted their dining room table, after Chris built it.

Nontraditional house 'an oasis in the ordinary'

YVONNE EATON, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

Originally published Saturday, March 23, 2002

When Sandy Gavin and her husband, Chris Gavin, were moving to the Louisville, Ky., area from California two years ago, she knew she didn't want a traditional house.

She found what she wanted -- on the Internet.

The 3,000-square-foot house sits on a fall-forward lot instead of a fall-away one. This translates to an inverted house with the main living space -- living and dining rooms, kitchen and master bedroom -- on the second floor. On the first floor are the garage, family room and two bedrooms.

A third-floor bedroom has been turned into a studio for Sandy Gavin.

The builder, Chip Chapman, says he wanted "the exterior living area to turn its back on the street in an atmosphere of a big subdivision and a corner lot." The exposure of the lower level is toward the front.

Chapman says the house doesn't have an enormous number of windows, but the ones there are large. "I built it with wall space, too," he says. "I thought it would be nice for art."

"He did a good job of putting walls where you wouldn't want to see something," Sandy Gavin says. They also were great for displaying her art, which ranges from representational to abstract.

Gavin also is a part-time aqua fitness teacher at the Oldham County (Ky.) YMCA. Chris Gavin is a flight operations industrial engineering manager at UPS.

The color in the house comes not only from art, but also from the walls and some of the furniture. "I like paint," Sandy Gavin says. "I'm not afraid of any color. I can paint over it if I don't like it."

In the living room, though, she went with white walls and a pale green ceiling. The carpet throughout the house is off-white.

But with the openness of the public areas -- a planter with a fountain divides the living room from the step-up dining room -- one can see the yellow dining room walls and her paintings of fruits and vegetables there.

She chose some darker colors for the living room, which has a brown leather contemporary sofa and chair, an oversized chair in a brown textured fabric and dark-green velvet drapery panels.

An antique chest from India sits in contrast to the room's contemporary furnishings. On the wall behind it are two of Sandy Gavin's abstract paintings -- inspired by Jackson Pollock -- done on two 4-by-6-foot pieces of wood. Sandy Gavin couldn't find a dining-room table she liked, so she told her husband that she'd paint it if he would build it. The result is a 6-by-6-foot table that looks as if it's hinged in the center. Sandy Gavin divided the top into four squares and painted them eggplant, pear, red pepper and orange. Black and red border the squares.

When Chris Gavin saw the ladderback chairs with rush seats, he wanted to know why she'd brought them home. "But they were $20 each," Sandy Gavin says. She painted each a different color -- yellow, purple, black and green -- then added more color and designs to the frames.

She also replaced the knobs on the seat backs with finials. Three sets are metal, all different, and the fourth is blue crackled glass.

She paired the chairs with four contemporary ones of metal and wood with woven seats. They came from a dinette set.

In a dining room niche sits a custom-built table by artist Bates Fischer. On the top glass covers are roosters punched out of metal. A raku pot sits on the table. On the wall behind it is another bright painting by Gavin of a couple in a coffee shop.

More of her work can be seen in the wood cornice above the dining room's sliding glass doors. A painting of two girls racing in the water represents the Gavin daughters -- Quinlan, 8, and Reagan, 5.

The dining room and kitchen floors are a marbleized laminate that picks up on the marbleized wallpaper and faux marble countertops in the kitchen. The lack of hardware lends a contemporary look to the maple cabinets.

The family room also has a contemporary look, with an off-white leather sofa, chair and ottoman and two chairs in wood and red fabric. Three of the walls are lobster red and another is white.

Chapman says of the house, "It's almost like an oasis in the ordinary."

Both inside and outside.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

back to Home index