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Alise O'Brien
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a bright, airy dining area
When John Fletcher bought his 1930s bungalow in Bel-Nor, he told the real estate agent he wanted "a grandma house that hadn't been touched." Translation: charm, character, comfort and a small- scale, modest simplicity.
"My work life, which is very busy, got so hectic," he says. "I listened to my heart and soul and realized I had to create a respite for myself. We are all too busy." He set out to create a house that would make him feel year-round the way he does when he's at the ocean. A bowl of white sand brought home from Sunset Key dictates the shades of white in the house, his McCoy pottery collection the misty aqua and sage-celery green.
"I used to collect all the colors," he says. "But as we grow up, we whittle down our taste."
An interior designer and set stylist, Fletcher grew up in southern Illinois and became a child actor. He wound up in New York and acted professionally for almost 15 years, his career spanning a Woody Allen film and a stint as McDonald's Midwest spokesman. "I taught you how to sing, 'Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese ...'" he notes. "But I grew up. I didn't grow tall, I didn't grow handsome, I was just round and pleasant. When I was 30, a friend said, 'You have got to get to 45 as soon as possible.'"
Determined not to endure 15 years waiting tables and calling himself an actor, Fletcher turned to his other passion: interior design. He studied at the Parsons School of Design, began photo styling to support himself and fell in love with the immediacy of the work. Now he splits his time fifty-fifty between designing interiors and styling ads.
He's acquired a national reputation, but not for any signature "Fletcher" style. "Oh, honey, I don't trend," he says. "I get to know my clients and I help them better define who they are through their environment. So many people don't know. They go to buy a sofa, and they say things like, 'Will it wear? Does it show dirt?'--all practical things, having very little to do with who they are."
Fletcher first saw St. Louis when he was flown in for a styling job. "St. Louis gently revealed itself to me," he says. "There was this fabulous park, the Fox Theatre, wonderful art galleries, sports if you care, lovely people and huge grocery store aisles, all in a very manageable small city."
So he moved here. Then his career exploded and he turned his grandma house into a tranquil ocean refuge smack in the middle of Bel-Nor. On impulse, he summoned in feng shui consultants who nodded approvingly at the morning sunlight pouring through the kitchen window, but suggested blocking the hallway "so the energy from the front door won't go racing right out the back door.
"Now, I don't live feng shui," he says hastily, "but I've got to tell you, we are all about energy. That's all we are--big balls of energy, molecules vibrating. And the flow of energy is especially important in one's home. If you are constantly--either psychologically or literally--banging into things, what is that about?"
Fletcher was willing to keep the energy from flying out the kitchen door, but didn't want to block the sunlight spilling from the kitchen into the hall. So he found a pair of doors and cut them down to the solid paneled bottoms, which he hung as swinging doors (saloon style) at the kitchen entrance. He put the paneled side toward the kitchen and painted it to match the cabinetry, pale aqua with sage-celery trim. To dress up the plain side, he centered blue frosted glass panels on the doors and attached pale green glass doorknobs from Restoration Hardware "so it's the same, but different. That's the trick in this house: to marry new and old, same and different."
Inside the kitchen, Fletcher shifted the entrance to the dining room and closed off the door to the "grandma pantry," giving himself a 6-foot run for storage and counter space. A retired carpenter from Fletcher's hometown of Metropolis, Ill., built a huge, spectacular hutch (a Fletcher design). Above the counter, frosted glass doors with aluminum trim (ordered from Ikea) show the soft silhouette of aqua and green dishes inside the lit cabinet, "which makes a great night light."
He did keep the original cabinetry on the back wall of the kitchen. "There's a little moment here," he murmurs, pointing to the decorative slots cut into the cabinet for air circulation. "Instead of all new streamlined cabinets, there's something about where we came from, and that's grounding for me." A little grounding is enough, though: He cheerfully annexed the dead space of the old pantry and telephone nook to create a powder room, wallpapered in a sage-celery harlequin pattern.
The living room is an island of white sand: white rug; a white Lazar sofa angled into the bay window with a woven sofa table behind it; nubby white slipper chairs with aqua pillows. Around the room are artists' ceramics, huge seashells from Fletcher's collection and blue glass balls that look hand blown by an artisan, but are actually pre-World War II Japanese fishnet floats.
Fletcher initially placed two chairs across the living room from the black granite fireplace, their backs creating a barricade that defined the living room space. "I didn't have a foyer," he explains, "so I wanted to create an arrival moment. At some houses, you open the door and fall right into the living room." He sighs. "But what I called defining the space, the feng shui experts called blockage. So we moved the chairs to open a pathway into the room."
The better to reach his "love relationship corner," they told him. In the school of feng shui, the "love relationship corner" is the far right corner at the back of the house. "I am so single," he says. "It was worth a try."
Now a woven chair--Milling Road by Baker--sits beside a Warren Plattner sculpted table, back to the doorway, and the slipper chairs face the sofa. Fletcher refinished an antique cabinet to look like driftwood, and above it he hung six black-and-white art photographs, studies of rocks, their hard surfaces softened by light. "Everything in this house is about light and simplicity," he says.
The sunlit dining room bears him out, its textured white shag rug like sand you squirm your toes into, its table a glass circle on a square wood pedestal covered in grass cloth, mitered at the top to create a subtle geometry. Fletcher was ready to have the chairs custom made until he saw simple white ones on a trip to Pier 1--"just the right scale and fabric. One of those brilliant little stumbles."
Above the table hangs a George Nelson chandelier from Design Within Reach. A custom-designed wall cabinet uses frosted glass doors from Ikea, glass shelves from County Glass and white melamine cabinetry from St. Louis Closet Company. Inside the cabinet is everything he needs to entertain: round woven mats, white chargers he places just to one side of the mats, off center; World Market bamboo forks he tucks into the napkin rings; green salad plates from Bed Bath & Beyond; square plates from World Market; grass-striped sushi plates from Crate & Barrel; green goblets from Pottery Barn. "I never buy sets of anything," he says. "Same but different."
Off the dining room, a door, shaded with rice paper, leads to the screened porch. "I added this the minute I bought the house," Fletcher says. "I grew up with a screened porch. I remember as a teenager sitting out there talking on the phone for hours. Now I have my morning coffee here. And that red chair was from my grandma's house." He pauses, startled. "There really is a grandma theme here, isn't there?"
Upstairs, Fletcher forsook the larger bedroom for feng shui: "The master should sleep at the back of the house, overlooking the private gardens," he quotes dutifully, swearing he now prefers the smaller room. He put his bed in front of the back windows and for "protection" (feng shui suggests something green) he designed a natural maple headboard with a planter that holds wheat grass. "Somewhat retro, somewhat Zen," he shrugs. A leaning oak bookshelf from Intaglia with a wenge (African ebony) finish anchors the otherwise floating room, done in shades of white sand in silk, linen and leather.
"The consultants said, 'Have only in this room what you love, what you want and what you need,'" he says. "They also said to always keep the bathroom door closed, because it is a room of elimination. So I put in an opaque frosted glass door, because otherwise the hall would go dark."
And this house is all about light.
