A Sarasota condo with great bones and a good layout gets a thoughtful refresh - Chic on the Cheap

4/6/2021                                                     Sarasota condo gets thoughtful refresh driven by art collection

                                               REAL-ESTATE

A Sarasota condo with
great bones and a good
layout gets a thoughtful
refresh
An apartment with great bones and a good layout gets a
thoughtful refresh that is driven by the homeowners’ art
collection
Marsha Fottler Special to the Herald-Tribune
Published 7:00 a.m. ET Mar. 21, 2021

Owners of an apartment at The Savoy on Palm, loved the
layout and location when they bought last year, but wanted to
change the personality and overall style of the 3,000-square-
foot unit. In striking contrast to most renovations today, they
and their interior designers Jill Geisdorf and Holly Eisemann
did not remove a single wall in the residence. In fact, they
added one – a shallow bump-out in the living room where

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4/6/2021                                                     Sarasota condo gets thoughtful refresh driven by art collection

they could discretely recess a flat-screen wall mounted
television.

“The floor plan was already open and every space was getting
natural light plus great views,” said designer Jill Geisdorf. “So
the challenge in doing a total re-design was not walls,
windows or relocating major appliances. It turned out to be a
much more intriguing challenge and that was coming up with
a color palette and style of furniture that would complement
the owners’ extensive art collection.”

The wife, Chelle Stoner, drove the process by taking inventory
of what she wanted to display in the apartment. She edited the
couple’s collection so that some pieces would remain in their
Minnesota lake house and some would move to Florida. “I
gave each painting a number and then wrote the
corresponding number on a sticky note,” explained Chelle
Stoner. “Then I went around the apartment with my sticky
notes and placed each one where I thought that numbered
piece of art belonged. The art came first and everything else
followed. Jill and Holly looked at each art work and saw
where it would hang and then went from there.”

The owners designated some 40 pieces of art collected over
the past 20 years. Besides wall art, there was pottery as well as
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4/6/2021                                                     Sarasota condo gets thoughtful refresh driven by art collection

carved wooden bowls and baskets. Long before her husband’s
office got created from scratch out of one of the existing
bedrooms, Chelle Stoner (and the design team) knew a
painting of a buffalo would hang on a wall opposite the desk.
A trio of Edward Curtis sepia framed prints of Native
Americans was destined to hang above the yet un-purchased
sofa in the living room. A vertical print of a young ballerina by
Argentinian artist Mauricio Lasansky would be positioned in a
transitional space at one end of the living room.

The hallway leading to the owners’ bedroom suite was
reserved for a row of Pre-Columbian figures encased in
plexiglass shadowboxes. A large print by Lasansky depicting
Abraham Lincoln claims immediate attention in Chelle’s
office and another by the same artist of DeVinci hangs above
the gas fireplace that the designers refashioned into a simple
contemporary presence inviting the art to be the focal point.

Room by room, space by space the designers took their cues
for furniture, light fixtures, area rugs and fabrics from the art
slated for that space and from Chelle Stoner, who said “I
appreciate things that show the hand of man.” What resulted
is a style that could be called refined-organic.

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4/6/2021                                                     Sarasota condo gets thoughtful refresh driven by art collection

“The color palette is warm not cool,” said designer Holly
Eisemann. “Colors of sand, earth, sky and water are the
backdrop in the rooms. We added a few spice colors for
accessories. There’s no gray in the house; taupe was our
neutral and there is very little green. We used wallpaper in the
bathrooms to bring some textural interest and some pattern.
And we changed out the light fixtures.”

The master bath was a challenge to the designers because it is
very large and clad in expensive marble with a pinkish
undertone that Chelle didn’t care for. The room was also over-
the-top elegant and she wanted that toned down. “We
exchanged a huge glamorous chandelier for something more
restrained and then we brought in several pieces of rustic
wood – a teak bench, a roughs-hewn wood bowl, things like
that. Bringing in a few natural and organic elements changed
the overall feel of the space right away.” In that space, the
designers wallpapered the toilet room in a soft gold and cream
graphic pattern.

“We kept the original stone flooring throughout the
apartment but had the floors refinished and polished,” said
Jill Geisdorf. “The walls and the ceilings we painted White
Dove by Benjamin Moore. Crown molding was already here
and we left it. In the kitchen we took down a swing door,
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4/6/2021                                                     Sarasota condo gets thoughtful refresh driven by art collection

painted the kitchen cabinets and the bar and added a new
backsplash, new sink and new lighting.”

For furniture the designers brought in organic pieces such as
a burl wood coffee table with a waterfall edge and a
contemporary sofa from Room & Board. The dining table,
from the Barbara Barry Collection at Robb & Stucky, has a
stone rough-edge top on a wood base. The light above is
modern.

When the pandemic made it obvious that the husband, a
wealth management advisor, was not going into his bank
office building, he saw it as an opportunity to let the interior
design team create the home office giving him everything he
wanted and needed. The designers took one of the bedrooms
with an ensuite bathroom and access to the private covered
balcony and transformed it into his ideal workspace.

“He was really too busy to do any shopping or looking at a lot
of options online,” said designer Holly Eisemann “but we
knew what he wanted because he was specific and so we
would bring him three or four options of say lighting,
furniture, colors, wallpaper for the bathroom and such. And
then he’d pick the one he liked best and we’d take it from
there.”
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4/6/2021                                                     Sarasota condo gets thoughtful refresh driven by art collection

But, husband and wife chose the art for the space including
one of his favorite paintings, a buffalo standing on a frozen
lake. It hangs directly across from his desk between built-in
bookcases above a ledge. The office also has a pull-out sofa.
When he closes the office for the day, visiting grandchildren
have sleeping space. There’s a formal guest suite for adults.

Chelle Stoner’s home office also has a sleeper-sofa for
grandchildren and one of her favorite pieces of art, a large
portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Lasansky. The designers
installed art lights for the major pieces in the home.

The renovation took approximately six weeks and the
designers said they were not excessively inconvenienced by
the pandemic. “We did have to wait many weeks while the
coffee table sat on a boat that wasn’t moving,” said
Jill Geisdorf, “but mostly we bought from local stores such as
Blu Home, Robb and Stucky, Design Within Reach, Just
Fans and International Design Source. And we all remained
flexible realizing there is never just one choice. If something
was unavailable, we just looked for something else.”

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4/6/2021                                                     Sarasota condo gets thoughtful refresh driven by art collection

Designer tips for a stylish refresh
involving minimal work and time
• Experiment with new strippable wall coverings for a bit (or a
lot) of pattern or texture. A powder room or laundry room is a
great place to start.

• Install a distinctive new light fixture in every major room.
Wall sconces are a great option.

• Adopt a trend. A current one is embracing navy or dark blue.
Paint lower cabinets in a kitchen or laundry room. How about
a smoky-blue bedroom. Make the ceiling a lighter blue than
the walls.

• Bring in a large green plant (ok, cheat and make it faux) in a
handsome pot to cozy up a dull corner of a room.

• Add ceiling beams or crown molding to a room with no
character.

• Bring in an area rug for a room that needs a lift from the
floor up. Make sure it’s big enough for the space. Most
homeowners buy too small the first time around because rugs
look bigger in a store than they do at home.

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