For Marcella Hawley, getting the kitchen of her dreams in the home she’s owned for more than 25 years is the culmination of a lot of creative vision, hard work, and collaboration. The charming, 1929-built house she shares with her husband, Doug Scronce, is an explosion of color, pattern, and curated collections—a maximalist fever dream that reflects Hawley’s dynamic, bubbly personality.
A creative at heart, Hawley is a graphic designer who has worked for both Martha Stewart Living and Mary Engelbreit’s Home Companion. Her greatest design inspiration comes from her late mother, Susan Smith. “Our house was patterned with wallpaper everywhere. Her story weaves all through mine,” Hawley says.
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A love of floral patterns, in particular, grew from her gardener mother’s obsession with flowers, specifically, rare varieties of daffodils. Floral curtains and pillows accent each room of the house. In 2014, when the kitchen remodel was just an idea, Hawley stumbled upon a large-scale pomegranate floral wallpaper on Instagram and fell in love with it. She took a screenshot and bookmarked it for the day it might become a reality. “The color scheme was so quirky. I’ve always been drawn to these weird yellows and browns,” she says.
Victoria Dreste, a friend who also happens to be an interior designer, helped Hawley identify the paper as Carnival by Christopher Farr. Even without a sense of how she’d use it in her home, Hawley decided to purchase multiple rolls.
Then, in 2020, when Hawley was finally ready to embark on the remodel, she visited Karr Bick Kitchen and Bath, where she met designer Wendy Kuhn.
“I brought the wallpaper, found a terrazzo countertop sample at Karr Bick, and provided a thick folder of inspiration images, and Wendy got to work with her creative genius,” says Hawley. “She nailed it, creating the structure and the core design of the kitchen—my North Star—a cohesive palette and an upscale mix of English country, artistic, and midcentury vibes.”
Ultimately, Karr Bick’s bid was far over Hawley’s budget. Yet Kuhn believed so much in the project that she graciously gave Hawley her blessing to take the drawings she created and get it done however she could.
Part of Kuhn’s vision included moving the stove to the far end of the galley kitchen and creating a unique hood to serve as a focal point, backed by a full wall of tile. With Kuhn’s inspiration, Hawley designed the wooden hood herself online at Hoodsly. She worked with Wendy Weller of House of Paint & Design Co. and Casper Machino of Flanagan Paint & Supply to create a custom glaze-over-paint finish for the hood, using Benjamin Moore Advance high-gloss in Sierra Hills, a warm neutral with brown undertones, and layers of water-based glaze tinted with Soul Mate, an earthy pink. As the finishing touch, Hawley designed a one-of-a-kind frieze of Victorian-era fireplace surround tiles from England, inspired by a project her mother did in her childhood home.
“I hunted down each tile individually from dealers on eBay who specialize in antique majolica glazed tiles,” Hawley says. “I designed a prototype of the entire thing in Photoshop, playing around with countless variations of tiles before I settled on the 11 finalists.”
The rest of Hawley’s kitchen dream team included: Meredith Frank at Premium Kitchen & Bath, who delivered the perfect cabinet design using simple white oak shaker cabinets with angular, midcentury-modern-inspired feet; finishing carpenter Doug Hopper, who did all of the millwork, plus the trim, door, and shelf installation; and the professionals at Stone Fabricators, who searched out of town to source the discontinued Malmo terrazzo for the countertops and backsplash, as well as a perfect onyx remnant for the vanity in the adjoining powder room, which also received a glow-up.
While it was a true team effort, Hawley credits Kuhn’s foundational vision for the stunning result. “Working with a talented kitchen designer can help you greatly, especially if you have disparate tastes like I do,” she says. “She took my chaos and clarified it, elevating everything beyond what I would have come up with.”
Not an Inch to Spare
With a limited quantity of Christopher Farr Carnival wallpaper, there was no room for error. The paper had to be expertly installed, and the paint colors would need to be the perfect complement. Casper Machino of Flanagan Paints took inspiration from the colors in the wallpaper, which allowed Hawley to select subtle shades of pink and beige, including Benjamin Moore Sandy Shores for the trim and interior doors and Sierra Hills for the single upper cabinet, shelves, and range hood. “We worked off the other colors [in the house],” Machino says. He introduced Hawley to Wendy Weller of House of Paint & Design, another friend and client, and the two women formed a quick friendship. When it came time to install the wallpaper, Hawley entrusted the work to Weller.
Weller took the limited rolls of kitchen wallpaper, along with a small quantity of printed grass cloth paper called Tartan by Aux Abris that Hawley secured on eBay for the nearby powder room, and hung them without an inch to spare.
“We had to get creative. We were piecing it together,” Weller says. “There’s a thing in wallpaper terminology called the ‘kill spot,’ and it’s where the wallpaper starts and ends. We don’t like kill spots, and we mask them in a way that they’re undetectable.”
Hear more from Hawley on the House of Lou podcast.
