Family Style in John’s Island

If you’ve ever seen a Chuck Close portrait from the 1970s, then you’d recall registering the large image at first, but then your eye closes in on the tiny, pixelated mosaics of color and detail that create the perceived larger image. When your eye returns to the portrait, the overall impression is subsequently infused with a new depth and richness—and appreciation for the artist’s ingenuity.

“Calm” is the big picture of the Schaefer home in John’s Island. Your first impression of the new build’s interior design is one of quiet elegance and serenity, ceding to the river view and lush green vegetation beyond. But look closely, and what is revealed is a myriad of textures, finishes, treatments, and details that, when you pull away, conspire to create a portrait of calm.

Calm, it seems, can be exciting.

The designer who conceptualized and implemented the calm for over two years as the house took shape on paper and then rose from the ground up is Carolyn McNerney, based in Darien, Connecticut. Since she is 30 years younger than her clients, McNerney’s greatest challenge was not the scope of the project, but the task of gently convincing her traditionally minded clients to take some risks and embrace a more modern design aesthetic than that which they had known for decades in a 100-year-old house in Atlanta. It was especially tricky because her clients are also her parents, Ruth and Garry Schaefer.

“I love color, but I really just wanted neutrals, to see the colors of nature,” says Ruth, who favored light blues, greens, and whites for the common rooms and primary suite. Even when it came to the exterior landscape design, charged to Mark Sartain, she wanted a simple green-and-white palette that enhanced the white stucco house, with its light blue shutters.

In the back, Sartain framed the river view with a quartet of Christmas palms planted strategically around the swimming pool. In the front, he took his cue from the circular driveway and the existing oak trees. “We concentrically designed around the oak trees, trying to get a pure form—the circle,” he explains. “You don’t really see it in real life, but it feels right. The site tells you what to do.” Circular in the front, rectilinear in the back: simple, calm.

With the colors of nature as the foundational palette, McNerney and her mother worked to find the right blue (Benjamin Moore’s Soft Sky) for the shutters, which would be carried into the interior of the 5,900-square-foot house, touching nearly every room in some way, large or small.

Before the selection of wall-paper or tiles, the house needed to be designed. In 2019 the Schaefers had engaged Vero Beach architect James Stein to do a renovation on a property they had acquired in John’s Island. Around the same time Stein presented the first plan, a half-acre vacant lot 10 houses away came up for sale; it was on the river. They wanted a water view and snapped it up.

The challenge for Stein was the neighborhood. “This little neighborhood they’re in, a lot of the houses were built in the 1980s and ’90s—smaller, a quieter feel, not conducive to having a big box,” he says. To accommodate the clients’ requirement for a second floor, Stein designed the upper level built into the roof structure—the attic space. “From the ground it presents like a one-story house.”

The style is a “relaxed Georgian” with five bedrooms, an office, and a bunk room. The Schaefers wanted to see through the house to the view upon entering. Stein specified dark-framed NanaWall glass doors that open up entirely to the back. Garry wanted white. But, Stein explains, “White stops your view; that was really important, to have dark windows and doors. Ruth and I convinced him to trust us on this one. When it was finished, he said ‘You were right’!”

Darling Construction brought the project to life.

Because the couple also spends time at their home in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod, Stein incorporated an “obtuse nautical reference” in the form of shiplap sprinkled throughout the house. “It gave them a tie to the other architecture from the cape,” he explains.

While Stein was drafting the new house, the Schaefers’ daughter Carolyn and her young family moved to Darien, where she started her own design firm. A University of Virginia graduate, McNerney worked with several prominent designers, earned her certificate in interior design from Parsons School of Design, and launched Carolyn Kelly Interiors in 2021. She had learned a lot from her mother, who had done numerous renovations to their family home and dabbled in interior design herself. But, building and decorating a home from scratch, Ruth knew she needed help.

“To be able to collaborate with Carolyn took so much of the pressure off me,” she says. “Because she’s 30 years younger, she knew of new sources that I didn’t know. She exposed me to new designers. She dealt with the headaches.”

Stein, who has collaborated frequently with McNerney, says, “It was interesting to me to watch Carolyn pull Ruth out of her shell; Carolyn gave her interesting, fresh ideas.”

With a quiet envelope on the first floor established with white walls, white shiplap, and white oak floors, McNerney approached each room as “its own little design exercise,” according to Stein, while keeping “calm” and her mother’s palette in her sights. One sees the scheme quietly announced upon entering the foyer.

“My mom and I fell in love with this wallpaper by Meg Braff. It sets the tone for the whole home,” says the designer.

The open living space is very neutral, but zoom in and take in the details, the most spectacular of which is the fireplace treatment. Tiny little tiles of mother-of-pearl coat the fireplace floor to ceiling, shimmering in natural light. A closer look at the dining chairs reveals leather on the inside, a neutral zebra on the outside.

More details: a rattan accent on the pendants suspended above the kitchen island; caning on the cabinet fronts in the bar, with wood and polished nickel pulls; resin mirrors; bamboo flourishes; a lacquered table, the base of which is a custom blue to match the faux leather banquette and fabric.

Everything had to function for her parents, but McNerney had to plan for when she and her siblings, with a total of six children aged 4 and under, all descend at once. All fabrics and finishes are durable and high performance; those that weren’t were treated. For the TV den off the kitchen, McNerney designed a huge custom U-shaped sectional so the whole family could pile in to watch a game or movie.

For the primary bedroom, the designer knew her mother loved blue. “I wanted to make sure it was soothing,” she says. There’s an ivory grass cloth on the walls with a fun Peter Fasano fabric that’s repeated throughout.

The bathroom has floating vanities; an oyster shell wallpaper that from a distance reads as blue, then up close reveals the oyster shells; two water closets separated by the shower; basket weave marble tile floor; Dolomite subway tiles; and fixtures in Kohler polished nickel.

Ruth Schaefer’s favorite room in the house is the cabana bedroom, a guest room accessible only from the lanai. It’s wildly fun in a busy green quadrille wallpaper. “I think she knocked it out of the park!” she says. “Great for a guest. But you want something calming for yourself.”