arts&life
at home
SCAN THIS PAGE
TO SEE A 3-D HOME
TOUR.
The welcoming front porch of Long’s Cape Cod home
A Place Of
Their Own
An award-winning interior designer nests
a home for her own growing family.
SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
BRETT MOUNTAIN PHOTOGRAPHER
details
The Michigan Design Center’s Home Tour: Smart
Solutions runs from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Sept.
29. $35/$60 for a pair with proceeds benefiting com-
munity projects supported by the Junior League of
Birmingham. (248) 649-4772.
38
September 27 • 2018
jn
I
nterior designer Carrie Long added
a bit of pretend to the reality of
remodeling and decorating the
Birmingham home picked for her own
family almost two years ago.
She moved forward thinking of her
husband, Greg Sobol, as a client of
Carrie Long Interiors in Royal Oak.
Long, who advises a range of clients
with diverse design tastes and time-
tables, believed that approach would
be a way of maintaining direction and
a steady process during the transfor-
mation of the Cape Cod residence built
in the 1950s.
The home, ready in time to welcome
this summer’s birth of son Ari, also was
completed in time to be included in
the Michigan Design Center’s Home
Tour: Smart Solutions set for Saturday,
Sept. 29.
“I want people to love where they
live, and I want guests to come in and
enjoy the home spaces they visit,” says
Long, 36, a Wayne State University fine
arts graduate who was the only Brian
Killian intern ever hired by the late
designer. “I love to make spaces that
people don’t want to leave — where it
feels comfortable, warm and homey.”
To achieve those effects, the couple
decided to enhance the outside and
gut the inside before mixing treasured
antique and modern furnishings in
the space measuring 2,000 square feet
with the top floor set aside for a pair of
bedroom suites.
“I thought of this house as a total
design with a cohesive flow from
outside to inside,” she explains. “We
changed the front of the house to give
it a more welcoming feeling. It had
been completely flat so we added a
front porch with a pitched roof and
chose Shecter Landscaping to add a
courtyard and make the property even
more inviting.
“To bring the outside in and the
inside out, the exterior and the interior
have been painted white with wood
accents. Black tones surround both
the outside and inside windows, and
wood accents are especially noticeable
because of the all-wood floors.”
In keeping with the tour theme
“smart solutions,” major renovations
transformed the former kitchen into
a laundry room-mudroom. What had
been a screened-in porch was turned
into a kitchen with a big doorwall lead-
ing to the backyard, again merging the
inside-outside perspective.
Merging “smart solutions” with
husband as client, the basement has a
section set aside for Sobol, a NEXTGen
activist who enjoys drumming. Before
taking on responsibilities as control-
ler for Carrie Long Interiors, he had
toured as a professional drummer.
Long’s eclectic choices are very