What do you do when the city zoning commission stands in the way of building your dream office? If you’re AD100 designer Sarah Sherman Samuel, you follow through with your signature flair. She and her husband Rupert bought this 1920s Tudor-style home in East Grand Rapids, Michigan, with the intention of converting it into SSS design offices, but they found out shortly after renovations began that their plans ran afoul of zoning restrictions. “We wanted to keep this place forever because of all the character,” Sarah says, but the couple ultimately decided to finish the remodel and sell the home instead (which just hit the market for $895,000).
The project was the couple’s first soup-to-nuts renovation under SSS Builds – the new restoration and renovation division of Sarah’s interior design business – and came as Rupert, an advertising veteran of over 27 years, felt a call to leave his desk job. and get your hands dirty on construction projects instead. With a builder’s permit now under his belt, Rupert manages SSS Builds and acts as general contractor on projects. But the couple also got an assist from a third family member, Sarah’s father, to put the finishing touches on this building. “Pop Pop,” as the interior designer affectionately calls his father Lee, is an avid woodworker who did some of the finer details—from the cabinet with the refrigerator to the top of the walnut island in the kitchen.
Aiming to add character to the home while restoring its beautiful original features (such as windows and plaster moldings), the renovation required peeling back layers of flooring and tiling in the kitchen and bathroom (collected over several successive renovations) and knocking down a wall between the dining room and kitchen to increase the flow, adding splashes of color and warm patterns on the walls, plus battling a rogue raccoon that enters through the chimney. Below, Sarah Sherman Samuel shares a highlight reel of seven of her smartest design moves worth taking note of for your own home.
Anti-wallflower wallpaper
Not one to shy away from a romantic print or color scheme, Sarah mixed and matched two playful wallpaper prints on the walls and ceiling to wrap this bedroom in cheery patterns, then doubled down with matching window treatments and yellow trim. “I wanted to go for layer upon layer and pattern upon pattern, which I think is fun and also indicative of a Tudor, but to do it in more modern versions of something you saw back then,” she says. Even the ventilation cover is painted yellow, so that the eye can instead rest on the soothing neutral elements of the armchair and rug after wandering around the room.