Comfort By Design: Heading home to tradition and beauty.
Sunday, April 21, 2002
When the home inspector saw Elisa and David Umfrey's Orchard Park home
11 year ago, he was under whelmed. "Why are you buying such a dingy house?" Elisa remembers him asking before they moved in.
The stay-at-home mother of two children, Leah, 11 and Karin, 8, and her husband, physician David Umfrey, have created such a light, vibrant home, it's difficult to imagine it was ever "dingy." Adding bright wall coverings and lighting to the entry foyer helped. So did the yummy pink wall color and high-quality plush wool rug in the living room, visible from the foyer. On the dreary winter day we visited, the room positively radiated Texas- or Florida-style warmth.
Designer Joanne Mitchell helped Elisa Umfrey transform the house. Her first job? Convincing Elisa that the living room window treatments would not block out the sunlight that Mexico-born Elisa craved.
"It was so shady, we had cut down 150 trees," says Elisa. "With the dark woodwork, I still had in my mind how dark it was. I was locked in my mind in the darkness. I could not get out of that box."
But the bare windows at night bothered her. "There were too many black spots." So Mitchell designed striped taffeta drapes, tender mauve and green, with a softly pleated valance.
"The taffeta needs to sweep the floor a little bit, to show its sumptuousness," says Mitchell, "but not too much because they need to be easy to open and close."
"Elisa has a really good sense of colors, and she's open to lots of ideas," the designer says.
Using mostly furniture the Umfreys already owned, Mitchell added a few eye level lamps, to give the room warmth. Existing toss pillows were trimmed in tassels that brought up the raspberry rug color.
While her daughters play the piano, Elisa sits in the living room and listens, or she reads the paper. "We use this room every day," she says. "I don't believe in having rooms that you don't use. I wanted to make it attractive to the children; I don't want them saying 'Oh, I can't go in there."...
Elisa Umphrey, listening to her daughter's music, chose the reaspberry rug and wall tones for their "baroque, Mexican feel."
