When Vicki Venolia bought her Everett townhouse, it was as bland as a black and white movie, with its beige carpets and white walls.
And for a while, that was fine.
She was a single woman busy establishing a second career as a dance and fitness instructor after years of working as an executive in the cosmetics industry.
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Photo GalleryThen Swede Cairns came into her life. He lived in the townhouse next door. They shared an entryway, and she had admired the way he spruced up the common space with potted plants.
One day Swede Cairns, an electrician, came over to hang valances and help install a ceiling fan. Love bloomed as the two picked out fan parts together at Home Depot, their first date.
Cairns brought vibrancy to Venolia’s life. They were like two pieces of a puzzle fitting together, she said. She loved his kindness, his off-the-wall sense of humor. They married in a mansion in Kirkland six months later. When she made her entrance in a stunning red gown on their wedding day, Cairns could only utter, “Holy smokareenies.”
Suddenly, the white walls in her townhouse didn’t seem right in a life alive with color.
Swede Cairns, 57, moved into Vicki’s townhouse after the wedding and they painted one wall in the master bathroom – the first – a metallic gold. It shimmered against the neutral-toned walls.
“We thought we were finished painting,” said Vicki Cairns, 48. “But we’d walk upstairs and keep seeing white.”
Soon every white wall and door screamed for color. Over a period of months the couple transformed the townhouse using more than 23 colors of paint, including six shades of red and every type of metallic paint Home Depot sells.
They seamlessly melded all their belongings into one home and in the process created a funky, fun decor that’s unique and a complete expression of their love.
It’s hard to know where to look during a first visit to the Cairnses’ home. Doors glimmer with metallic paints, most ceilings sport one of five shades of blue. The entryway is copper. A living room with cathedral ceilings is all drama and glitz with deep red and metallic bronze walls. The staircase leading to the second floor pops with its black handrail.
For those accustomed to living life surrounded by safe neutral-colored walls, it might seem like too much. Somehow it all works, perhaps because of Vicki Cairns’ background in cosmetics.
“I was working with color,” she said. “You could play with it and you always knew you could wash it off. That’s the same thing with paint. There’s no risk, just play with it.”
And for both of them, decorating their love nest is no chore at all. She has found a man who loves home decoration and shopping as much as she does. And he’s handy with a hammer and a ladder around the house too. He brought his own sense of style to the relationship. Before they married, Swede Cairns had decked out his townhouse with dramatic red and black furniture offset by stark white walls.
Most couples might have struggled to merge two homes full of furniture. But the Cairnses said it was no trouble at all. They blended their belongings, casually moving his things over an armful at a time. They gave away whatever they had no emotional connection to and reinvented their new home together with the rest.
Fortunately, both prefer black, red and white; four of the rooms of their home use this color scheme, including the garage, which houses her fire-engine red Pontiac Grand Am and his sleek 1981 white Corvette. “She’s my mistress,” he said of his Corvette. “I only see her three times a year and she costs me money.”
Every nook and cranny in their home offers a surprise. The accessories they’ve chosen include both the whimsical and the traditional, such as an antique barometer in the entryway. Vicki Cairns adores shoes and she displays some of her favorites around the house as art, including some hot, spiky stiletto numbers. They favor lots of framed art and dramatic arrangements of flowers.
Every room in their three-bedroom townhouse is held together by a theme. The kitchen is all warm yellows to set off the fruit accent pieces. The master bedroom flaunts exotic animal print fabrics, an arrangement of peacock feathers and life-size statues of big cats prowling along the top of a massive headboard.
In the downstairs powder room it’s angels and shoes. A collection of miniature old-fashioned high-top shoes lines a shelf and framed angel art adorns the walls. The Cairnses painted the walls a heavenly blue and the ceiling is gold. “Shoes are Heavenly” in gold script flows above the pedestal sink and mirror.
Vicki Cairns spent months hand-painting a zebra-stripe pattern across a downstairs bedroom. She lay on her stomach to reach the corners. “I do yoga – it was helpful to be able to contort,” she joked.
His red leather coach and her Asian-influenced table fit perfectly against the zebra-stripped backdrop. An antique zebra skin they’ve named “Zonk” stretches across the floor. Shelves are filled with zebra trinkets the two have acquired in their travels or as gifts.
Vicki Cairns has a flair for mixing different fabrics together to create a harmonized look and sometimes fabric will be the starting point for decor. The guest bedroom’s purple walls draw from the yellows and purples in a comforter, for example.
The Cairnses increased their living space by extending a front patio with paving stones. They both love plants and maintain a container garden on the patio and in the outdoor entryway.
The Cairnses’ townhouse won’t suit everyone’s taste, but they don’t care. They wanted to create something that’s uniquely them. And they have.
“We don’t even care about the rules,” she said. “We really believe it’s our home, and we’re having fun.”
It seems everyone who visits can’t help loving it too.
During the home’s transformation, Vicki Cairns would give updates to her regulars at the fitness class she teaches at the Everett Senior Center.
One of those regulars, Lena Rochon of Everett, wasn’t sure how good the black and copper walls Vicki described were going to look.
“I thought, oh, I am not going to say a word. I couldn’t imagine all those things she was saying,” Rochon remembered.
Then Rochon and others from the senior center came over for a visit.
“We went goo-goo eyed over it,” Rochon said.
Vicki and Swede Cairns haven’t succeeded in eradicating all the white from their home yet. But they’re close. A few doors and some trim are still white. Most of the beige carpet remains but probably not for long. Vicki Cairns is considering a warm taupe or golden-colored carpet for the great room and stone tile for the entry.
After nearly two years of marriage, their love affair still sizzles. Both are incorrigible romantics. Swede Cairns sends two dozen roses to his wife every Friday, even if they are traveling.
They exchange cards each week and she leaves Post-Its around the house for her husband scribbled with affectionate notes of gratitude. He keeps every one.
“We both take risks with design and the way we live,” she said. “I think our home captures who we are.”
Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com.
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