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Photography by Bruce Nelson Photography
Pergola and swing design by Pillar & Peacock. Table from Hoskins Creek Table/Brackett Vaughan and designed by Pillar & Peacock.
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Photography by Bruce Nelson Photography
The dining lounge was designed to comfortably accommodate guests. The Yew tree coffee table was made from a slice of a tree that was felled on the property.
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Photography by Bruce Nelson Photography
The mudroom created a functional utility space for laundry, storage and beds for the family dogs.
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Photography by Bruce Nelson Photography
The kitchen banquette was made out of bed rails Pillar & Peacock found on the property.
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Photography by Bruce Nelson Photography
The family room provides private space for the owners.
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Photography by Bruce Nelson Photography
The guest bedroom provides under-the-bed storage for guests.
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Photography by Bruce Nelson Photography
The smokehouse bar was repurposed from an old mill on the property. The backlit bar creates an illusion of filtered outdoor lighting. The overall effect is classic southern charm.
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Photography by Bruce Nelson Photography
Brandeis Short and Adrianne Bugg of Pillar & Peacock.
Why would a young design team take on a 250-year-old plantation house rehab project that necessitated a strict budget and tight timeline, all the while being filmed doing it? Because that’s reality TV circa 2015. Welcome to the DIY Network – that’s “do it yourself” – and the popular show American Rehab. No surprise that Virginia, with its rich history and superb housing stock, was an easy choice for the show’s producers to focus on for the summer season.
Mount Airy, built in 1764 by Colonel John Tayloe II, has been in Tayloe Emery’s family for ten generations and some of its rooms hadn’t been touched since the home was built – think crumbling brick walls and dirt floors. With two young boys and six dogs, Tayloe and his wife, Catherine, knew they needed a full restoration of the Virginia estate.
When the show’s producers began scouting Mount Airy last summer, a few locals got wind of the project. A friend wasted no time in notifying local interior designer Adrianne Bugg of what she’d heard through the grapevine. Bugg, in turn, ran with the information, contacting the producers to let them know that her small business, Pillar and Peacock, had experience with historic houses.
Partner and fellow VCU graduate Brandeis Short—they refer to each other as A and B, admitting they speak to each other more often than to their husbands—works remotely from Florence, Alabama. She was on a plane to Virginia within days. The producers were doing walk-throughs with potential designers every hour and a half, with Pillar and Peacock’s slot the last of the day.
“They asked us if we were even willing to take this on,” says Bugg from her Irvington office. “We were sold. We wanted the project right away, so we stayed up late that night writing out a plan of attack, with inspiration images and all. The next day, we got the job!”
“They had to hire someone quickly because the timeline was really fast on this,” says Short from Florence. “That was June and we started designing in July. There was lots of work before the filming even began.”
It was a huge project, reworking thirteen spaces over the course of what would become ten TV episodes. They began by taking measurements and then worked with local businesses such as Courthouse Construction in Gloucester and Tall Pine Builders in Topping.
“We’d be demo-ing one day and tiling the next day,” recalls Bugg with a laugh. “Every space we worked on, I remember thinking there’s no way we can do this in a matter of days, yet, with every space, we did.” She admits to calling in lots of favors, such as from Hoskins Creek Tables when they needed last-minute tables for outside.
Sometimes, they had to substitute elements of their design for budget reasons. “We had two clients,” says Short, “the homeowners and the production company. We were designing spaces with six to eight projects per space, things they could film the homeowners doing on camera. It wasn’t just about the end product. We had to think, ‘How can we create a project and use the homeowners?’”
Because of the house’s age, it was also necessary to work with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources to get all design ideas approved in advance. They had to use historically approved paint colors, ones that also fit the aesthetic of the Emerys.
Television has its own rules about color, they soon learned.
Neutrals don’t look good on camera because they wash out, while deep, dark, saturated colors read as black onscreen. “Designing for TV is different than just designing,” says Bugg. “We had to honor the history of the house but also do something that Catherine and Tayloe would be happy with. They’re the ones who have to live with this.”
There were other adjustments for the designers. “There’s just a learning curve for TV,” says Short. “It was a very tight budget, although we’re used to working with a budget. We were kind of naïve in the beginning, thinking the homeowners would be doing all the labor. Turns out they do a lot of work, but we still needed money in the budget for things like painters and labor for tiling.”
For homeowners Tayloe and Catherine Emery, there were plenty of adjustments, too. “Tayloe and I had to wake up every day with a lot of energy,” says Catherine of the twelve- to fourteen-hour days during the nearly nine-month shoot. “It took a lot of time to do one small thing. We’d say something on camera and they’d like it, but they’d ask us to say it again with feeling. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it.”
Shooting schedules varied week to week and while the filming took a break from mid-December through late February, Bugg and Short did not, instead using the time to fine-tune their designs, order materials, and prepare them for staging.
“It was crazy there for a while because we were still working with our regular clients too,” recalls Bugg. The Mount Airy project ended on March 20 and by March 29, they were installing their designs in a 3,500-square-foot house in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
“American Rehab: Virginia” began airing July 8 on the DIY channel and immediately caused viewers to weigh in about the restoration choices on Mount Airy’s Facebook page. Opinions aside, for Pillar and Peacock, it represented a major notch in the company’s collective belt.
“It instilled more confidence in potential clients about us,” says Short. “It’s a huge experience to have on our resume that we were able to handle a project of that scale.”
Bugg concurs. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Being a newer business, it was great for us, a way to dive in and get to know the local contractors. We created relationships that are resources we now have for jobs going forward. As Pillar and Peacock grows, we’ll always love to talk about this project.”
Pillar & Peacock • 804.306.3275 • interiors@pillarandpeacock.com • pillarandpeacock.com
This article appeared in the Fall 2015 issue of The Local Scoop Magazine, pg. 56-63.