I've been coming to Newport with my parents since I was a little girl. We used to rent a condo at the end of Thames St for the last week of August every year and spend time touring mansions and sailing and drinking virgin strawberry daquiris at The Red Parrot. When I was a junior in highschool my parents bought a house in Newport, high atop historic hill on John St. in easy walking distance of everything that Newport had to offer.
When my parents bought it, 66 John St was a traditional colonial house, in that it bore the marks of more than two centuries of habitation, during which it had transitioned from a single family house to a two or even three family home before making its way back down to one. The renovation had some highlights: finding colonials shoes in the masonry of the fireplaces (a good luck tradition), and some major pitfalls: finding that the entire structure was so beset by beetles that it basically had to be entirely rebuilt. In the end, the house manages to respect its colonial origins while being livable, open, and breezy, in a way that the original structure never was.
I think that the real key to the renovation was the staircase (my suggestion). The existing staircase was narrow, steep, and windowless; and, curiously, there were windows in the narrow closet that flanked the staircase. By blowing out the closet walls we were able to expand the staircase and fill it with natural light from the windows; and instead of stopping at the second floor we kept on going expanding the staircase into the third floor attic which was previously only accessible via trapdoor.
The two deep narrow rooms that formed the heart of the house (and literally housed the two hearths) remain largely intact, serving as the dining room downstairs and as a living room on the second floor.The color of the downstairs dining room is absolutely resplendent. It literally glows:
The artworks along the wall are three chinese watercolors that we had painted in Beijing (in the corner of the painting on the far right you can see I've tucked a snapshot of the artist at work). We felt that given Newport's history as a trading seaport that oriental art was particularly appropriate. The house is also full of nautical accents:
Directly above the dining room is a casual sitting room that connects the bedrooms of the second floor and provides a nice place for guests to read or gather before dinner.
There are many seascape paintings throughout the house, can you guess which is the Ash Smith original?
There used to be a small second staircase here, instead we have this cozy breakfast room off the kitchen. A favorite spot to read by the fire in the morning.
The neutral color of the breakfast nook blends it seamlessly with the kitchen:
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