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Splashes of color transform Wauwatosa bungalow: At Home With ...

At Home With Terese Manns and Alan Trask

Joanne Kempinger Demski
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

From the outside, the house Teresa Manns and Alan Trask live in looks like the rest of the houses in their area.

Located in Wauwatosa’s Pabst Park Neighborhood, their little white bungalow was built at the turn of the century for Pabst workers.

Interior designer Teresa Manns believes a home's furnishings should be usable by everyone in the family, including pets, like the family dog, June.

But when you enter their home, that’s where you see its distinctiveness.

Walls are painted rich dark colors, and ceilings and walls are covered with eye-catching wall coverings. There are also oversize pieces of artwork in every room, and their furnishings are a mix of vintage finds and comfortable newer pieces.

Alan credits his wife of eight years with the way the home looks. And that’s no surprise, as she’s an interior designer who formerly lived in New York City and worked for S.R. Gambrel, a high-end interior design company that does work internationally.

But changes to the home didn’t happen overnight.

Teresa explained that she and Alan met when they attended their 20th high school reunion in Bay Village, Ohio, in 2007. He was divorced and had two children and she was single, so they started a long-distance romance and then married in 2010.

But she wasn’t able to move to her current home until 2014.

“I would come here every weekend and spend time with Alan and the kids (Ethan, now 17, and Zoe, now 15); but I had to stay in New York because I had a number of long-term projects in locations around the world I had to finish,” she said.  

Despite having to commute, she began making changes to the home whenever she could.

“I even made changes here before we were married — I couldn’t not do it. It looked like a bachelor’s pad with a mismatched mix of furniture, and it had all neutral walls.”

By 2009 she had shipped the majority of her furnishings to Wauwatosa and began decorating the approximately 100-year-old home that comprises about 2,000 square feet.

“I had a 700-square-foot apartment in the city, and a three-bedroom weekend cottage in Dutchess County (New York) that I used every weekend. I stopped using the cottage when I started coming to Milwaukee and I shipped all that furniture here. I kept the furniture at my apartment until 2014 when I permanently moved here.”

She said that when working on the home, she tried to focus on one room at a time to get a complete look.

One of the first rooms she tackled was the dining room, where she painted the walls deep green and then furnished the room with a pine farm trestle-style table that has a blackened zinc top with nail heads. She put a banquette on one side of the table and two vintage aluminum chairs on the other.

“I had those chairs reupholstered in a brown leather, and I have four others at the kitchen table. They were originally on a naval ship.”

She also added an antique maple day bed she had reupholstered in a gray linen fabric.

But when she found a piece of artwork she loved, she made more changes.

“When I hung it, I realized the room needed more color. I had Roman shades made in a maroon and chocolate brown color and got an antique throw that was originally from Uzbekistan.”

Because she believed a light-colored ceiling would be too distracting in the room, she also had wallpaper in tones of maroon and chocolate brown applied there.

“It reminds me of old book binding paper,” she said.

In the living room she covered the walls with a grass cloth by Phillip Jeffries that is woven in two directions to help disguise the seams.

She also purchased a light gray shelter arm sofa with lots of cushions and added a favorite piece of artwork.

“For me and my clients, I believe that all pieces of furnishing should be comfortable and approachable,” she said. “Anyone in the family, including the dogs and cats, should be able to feel at home on them. That means my home frequently looks imperfect, and I’m OK with that.”

The artwork she added over the faux fireplace is a print of a painting called “Scout” by Richard Phillips.

“I have three younger sisters and she (the girl in the photo) reminds me of all of us when we were little. She has glasses on, so you can’t see her eyes, but you can tell she has attitude and she’s also wearing a Boy Scout hat.”

She recently talked about the changes she’s made to her home.

Question: Where did you study design and work, and do you specialize in any particular style of decorating?

Answer: I graduated from Ohio University with an undergrad in business, then moved to New York and began working and attending Parsons School of Design. I later worked for S.R. Gambrel. 

Soon after I moved here I opened my own business, Teresa Manns Design, in the Village of Wauwatosa. My specialty is new construction or gut renovations, and I work with architects and builders. But I work closely with the styles my clients want.

Q: How would you describe the way your home is decorated?

A: I consider it traditional, but a lot of people would not. They would call it modern traditional.

Q: When you first saw your home, did you see potential?

A: Yes. It has oak built-ins, thick woodwork, crown molding and original hardwood floors.

Q: Why did you use mainly dark colors in your home?

A: The house has so much heavy oak trim that the walls felt like they were lacking in color when they were lighter. Now, the rooms are more balanced.  

Q: How did you change your entryway and how do you use it?

A: It’s one of the first rooms I tackled. I painted the walls chocolate. It’s one of my go-to colors. It was white. I use it a lot in the morning because there is great sunlight. It’s a great spot for coffee and to read the paper.

This sunroom area at the entrance to the home is a good place to sit and read the paper with a cup of coffee.

Q: Are there any pieces here from Alan’s original house?

A: The side tables in the living room were from his grandma. And he has a lot of books. He is in sales and at one time he was in publishing sales. I also have a lot of books on art and design.

Q: Did you make changes to the first-floor bathroom?

A: No. A previous owner did it in black and white and I liked it. It fits the house. All I did was paint the walls teal.

Q: Can you tell me about the large pieces of artwork in your dining room and kitchen?

A: I got the one in the dining room in Milan, Italy. I went there with a client to attend an art fair called Miart. We were looking for art for my client and he found one small watercolor. I found this large still life by Italian artist Gian Carozzi.

The still life in the kitchen is by Laura Letinsky, who is Canadian. It shows the aftermath of a dinner party.

Q: How did you change your kitchen?

A: I bumped out part of a wall to put the refrigerator in. I took a little space from the back hallway. I kept the upper cabinets but put on new fronts. They are a very dark brown/black.

I also added new lower cabinets and an island. Those have a cerused oak (a.k.a. limed oak) finish, which is a French treatment in which wax is impregnated with lime and gives a distressed look. They were also stained a dark brown/black. 

The countertop is Imperial Danby marble, and I added a new under-mounted farmhouse-style sink and brushed nickel faucets. I also put cork tile on the floor in two tones of brown with the help of Ethan. He likes doing interior design projects and he’s handy.

Q: How would you describe your kitchen table?

A: It’s an antique I got at Riverview Antique Market in Milwaukee. It’s mahogany and I think it was once a library table, then later used in a leather or shoe shop because it has a lot of little round hole punches in it. It also has the initials E.F. on it. We don’t have to worry about damaging it.

Q: What’s in the jars on the small shelves in your kitchen?

A: That’s my sand collection. Each jar has sand from a different city around the world and I labeled them all. I put them on the shelves and they look like spices.

I have other beach-related accent pieces throughout the house. I like the ocean. One of my best friends lives in Bermuda, so I go there at least once a year.

Q: How many bedrooms and bathrooms do you have?

A: We have three bedrooms and one bathroom upstairs. On the main floor we have a bathroom, a guest bedroom and a room we use as an office that has three large bookcases.

Q: How did you decorate your guest bedroom?

A: The walls are gray and I have white trim. The two chests in there were from my great-grandparents. I painted them cream with a brown glaze years ago. I have a linen spread and the pillows are from Fortuny and are hand-blocked.

Q: Have you done any work on the second floor?

A: No, that’s not finished. I’m working my way up.

Do you, or does someone you know, have a cool, funky or exquisite living space that you’d like to see featured in At Home? Contact Fresh home and garden editor Nancy Stohs at (414) 224-2382 or email nstohs@journalsentinel.com.