On-Site Amenities

This is a recent article on the home in the Palm Beach Post:

Sunday, December 7 Where the pros live: Old Northwood By Barbara Marshall, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Record albums of almost-forgotten '60s bands, melted like Salvador Dali's watches and given new identities as serving bowls.

The old family dining table, painted black and paired with plexiglass chairs, dressed in diaphanous slipcover gowns.

Curtains and chair fabric made of bright blue and acid green silk sewn into grids and thick stripes. Lamps as globular as Sputnik-era satellites.

Is this any way to treat a historic house?

It is if you can pull it off with as much assurance as Stephen Pararo has in his newly renovated house in the Old Northwood neighborhood of West Palm Beach.

Call it a modern historic house. Or maybe a historic modern house. Either way, it's as swanky cool as an icy martini with a lemon twist.

Despite a career designing the traditional interiors that earned him spots in magazines like Architectural Digest and Veranda, Atlanta interior designer Stephen Pararo wanted an edgier look for his 1922 house, which he and partner Jim Moss use for weekend getaways.

Recently, Pararo become interested in mid-20th century design, the era in which he grew up and the last time modernism made inroads into American living rooms.

To make it more personal, he set about mining his own -- and Moss' -- history.

We wanted to combine things from our past, and since we're both 1950s vintage, we started there, says Pararo, the owner of Pineapple House Interior Design in Atlanta. When I started my design career, I hated the modern style. That's what my mother had. But after all these years, I've come back to her way of thinking.

As the ultimate homage, he even incorporated his mother's round dining table in his home decor. It has those clean lines that people turned their noses up at in the 1980s and 1990s, says Pararo, a Tallahassee native who speaks with a soft North Florida twang and has the kind of manners associated with an old-fashioned Southern upbringing. Now people are going for it again.

As veterans of 20 home renovations, Pararo and Moss initially weren't anxious to do another one. Pararo was busy with clients in Atlanta. Moss had guests to pamper at the Gaslight Inn, a bed-and-breakfast he owned in Atlanta's Virginia Highlands neighborhood. (It has recently been sold).

Then Pararo began working in South Florida about six weeks a year and needed a home base here. Moss, who had spent summers in Miami as a child and had nostalgic longings for Florida, was delighted. The gregarious Southerners went looking for a convivial urban neighborhood that met their requirements of easy proximity to shopping, restaurants, the beach and a downtown nightlife. After deciding Fort Lauderdale wasn't neighborly enough, they put a deposit on a CityPlace apartment. Then real-estate agent Randy Bianchi of Paradise Properties insisted they see one more home, this time in Old Northwood.

We walked in and knew instantly that this was it, says Pararo. The house was well-built, with good-sized rooms. Northwood has the in-town, urban feeling that we like, and of course, I fell in love with the immaculate old Dade County pine floors.

Like so many Florida newcomers, they were giddy at discovering mangoes ripening on the old tree in back and a grapefruit tree spreading thick shade over the front yard.

That ruby red grapefruit is the best I've ever had, says Moss, whose palate helped seal the deal.

Renovation No. 21 begins

And so, renovation No. 21 began. But before Pararo, an architect as well as an interior designer, reworked the home's floorplan, he took one more step out of the box. He hired his own company to carry out his decorating ideas.

Meegan Jowdy, one of our designers, suggested this was a good opportunity for me to be the client and experience what our clients experience, laughs Pararo, who says it was a relief to turn over the design details while he was consumed with the nuts and bolts of the renovation.

Jowdy's instructions were to create a cool, crisp environment, and use modern furniture and a color scheme based on blue and white. Before long, Jowdy had dubbed the house, La Casa Azul -- The Blue House.

Jim and I had been to Greece and saw how well a simple, crisp, blue-and-white environment works in a sunny climate, says Pararo. Since this is a second home, we didn't feel we had to have things like a formal living room. We just wanted to have fun with things we already owned, and to update them, and us, with some 21st-century pieces.

Stephen has a modern loft in Atlanta with fairly traditional furniture, says Jowdy. This time, it was going to be the opposite, a traditional house turned inside-out with very modern furniture.

Most of the fabric work was done in the firm's workroom by a small army of curtain makers, upholsterers, furniture makers and refinishers, as well as decorative painters.

While Jowdy worried over the details of furniture, drapery and upholstery, Pararo got busy reworking the layout of the house. He flipped its focus from the street to the back yard, installing a pool and transforming the small expanse of grass into a paved courtyard.

Because Old Northwood is a historic district, Pararo had to adhere to city codes that limit changes to the front façades of historic properties.

The city is rightfully concerned with historic preservation, but to make the renovation process one year instead of two, I kept the changes to the back of the house, he says. Anyway, it made sense to open up the house to the outdoors in the back.

Pararo installed French doors at the rear of the living room to provide a view of -- and access to -- the new pool. A former laundry room at the back of the house became a light-filled breakfast room, where another set of French doors swing open to the courtyard.

I like a small, city lot because it's difficult to give large yards this kind of cozy domestic feeling, says Pararo. This is where we'll end up eating and entertaining when we're down in the winter.

He removed doors between the living room and a front sunporch, creating two large rooms that flow easily into one another. The home's biggest problem, however, was the confining configuration of the second-floor bedrooms, a characteristic of many older homes.

Originally, four tiny rooms and a bathroom opened to a central hall. Guests would have to leave their rooms and cross the hall landing to enter the bathroom. Pararo's solution was to eliminate one bedroom and gut most interior walls. He then carved out three bedroom suites, each with its own new bathroom and closet.

A sleeping porch

The biggest change, and the one that makes La Casa Azul so inviting, is a Key West-style, two-story screened porch attached to the back of the house. On the first floor, the porch forms a protected sitting area off the living room, with a view of the pool. Upstairs, the porch is a second master bedroom, entered through a set of French doors. The al fresco sleeping quarters look out over the pool and heavily planted yard.

Despite Jowdy's frequent consultations with her boss, Pararo still didn't know exactly what the house would look like furnished.

After a year of work, on a sultry Tuesday afternoon in August, Jowdy -- having ordered Pararo and Moss to stay in Atlanta -- arrived in West Palm Beach with a crew of eight. She led a caravan of a tractor-trailer and two company vans. In three days, working nearly around the clock, Jowdy and her crew had installed every curtain, placed every piece of furniture, fussed over each accessory, made every bed and even stocked the refrigerator. The house was completely finished, with a gourmet lunch laid out Friday afternoon when Moss and Pararo arrived from the airport.

A few weeks later, showing their first houseful of guests around, Pararo was still marveling at what his employees accomplished.

There's a phrase we used to use in North Florida when something is really, really good. We'd say, 'They really whomped it up, didn't they?'

Coming from Pararo, with his courtly manners and finely honed sophistication, the expression is a surprise, like pulled pork slipping from a dainty finger sandwich.

But he's absolutely right. They sure did whomp it up.

barbara_marshall@pbpost.com

• Pool
• Fireplace
• Patio/Deck
• Hot Tub/Sauna
• Air Conditioning
• TV/VCR
• Washer/Dryer
• Dishwasher

• Refrigerator
• Stove
• CD/Radio
• Barbeque
• Linens
• Parking
• Microwave
• Store Nearby

• Phone
• Coffee Maker
• Heating
• Toaster
• Blender
• Ceiling Fan
• Iron

Activities and Attractions

Palm Beach County Visitors Bureau http://www.palmbeachfl.com

• Beach
• Golf
• Tennis
• Boating
• Bicycling

• Fishing
• Hiking
• Snorkeling/Scuba Diving
• Kayaking

• Restaurant Nearby
• Casinos
• Surfing
• Diving

Rates