Fresh as a Daisy
A floral designer’s Portland bungalow is as abundant, and breezy, as her arrangements.
TEXT BY SARA ANNE DONNELLY
PHOTOGRAPHED BY JEFF ROBERTS
ABOVE Vintage cane chairs from a farmhouse estate sale and salvaged windows elegantly age Michelle and Evan Glassman’s Portland dining room, which also features an Emerald Home Furnishings pine table and a Pottery Barn crystal chandelier.
Tucked behind the busy intersection of Washington and Allen Avenues in Portland, Michelle and Evan Glassman’s 1929 bungalow looks like it might have teleported from some distant glen. During their 2018 house search, the couple fell for the dwelling’s “storybook quality,” owing to its classic white-clapboard-and-green-shutter cladding, plunging roofline culminating in a snug front porch, and brick chimney running up the side. “The way it sat on the corner of the lot, it seemed very quaint to me,” says Michelle, a floral designer and former commercial property manager. “Like a little cottage you find in the woods or something.”
Fresh off their first successful renovation together, of a historic condo outside Boston, the Glassmans were looking to move to Portland, where Evan’s employer has an office, and into their next project. A dated place wrapped in a charming, well-kept package felt like the perfect fit. “It’s hard to change the footprint and, ultimately, the exterior of your home,” says Evan, an architect who specializes in 3D modeling. “So we were looking for something reasonably priced, and nice looking, that would allow us to go in and do what we wanted with the interior.”
Over the course of a whirlwind four months, the couple worked with Brunswick’s LNE Construction and a half dozen subcontractors they found through word of mouth and sites like Thumbtack and Nextdoor to refresh and modernize what Evan describes as a “closed in, compartmentalized” layout. He used the modeling software Revit to share ideas with Michelle, which included tearing down a wall between the kitchen and dining room, widening the first floor’s arched doorways, and adding an arch over the entrance to an anteroom Michelle calls the “fireplace nook.” The kitchen received gleaming white-quartz and custom walnut countertops, Spanish subway tile, a glam marble-and-gold-inlay chevron-tile backsplash, and backlit glass-front cabinets that aggrandize the modest space.
With the interior rehabbed, Michelle began decorating in her maximalist style — a boho mashup of old and new furnishings, eclectic artwork, and miscellanea (vintage tins and bottles, geisha dolls, seashells, dream catchers). “I’m always pulling from different genres and trying to make a cohesive aesthetic,” she says. The result of that philosophy is dramatic: A shabby-chic dining room with a farmhouse table and mismatched chairs, heavily carved, antique white sideboard, and vintage windows as wall art handed down from her artist-mother; a fireplace nook painted in a dark green reminiscent of a 19th-century smoking lounge; a master bedroom in the French country style with lush bedding and toile wallpaper; and everywhere, collage walls of botanical art and exotic antiques that create the illusion of a life of plein air painting and world exploration, even though most of the pieces were sourced from New England shops.
ABOVE The sunroom conjures a thrift-store boho vibe with a savvy collection of new finds, including a Target rattan pendant (layered over a shelf from Portland Flea-For-All), pine daybed and jute rug from Overstock.com, and macramé hanging by Limerick’s Christina Hill.
FROM LEFT 1) The bungalow’s exterior was in good condition, a must for the Glassmans, who preferred the scale of an interior-only renovation. 2) A Hayley Mitchell print watches over a cozy living room corner furnished with a mid-century-style Target chair, vintage footstool, and Savoy House sconce. 3) In the “fireplace nook,” a desk coated in Annie Sloan chalk paint sidles up to walls finished in Magnolia Home’s Luxe. 4) The kitchen’s marble-tile backsplash from Portland’s Distinctive Tile & Design and glass pendants from Americana Workshop in Kennebunk provide ethereal counterpoints to a walnut-topped peninsula painted in Benjamin Moore’s Deep Secret.
To unify her aesthetic, Michelle relies on a repeating palette of slate blue, forest green, and stormcloud gray. Large expanses of ivory and pale-gray walls offer respite from the layered décor and dark tones and accentuate the brightness of the home’s corner lot, celebrated in a sunroom fitted out with a pillow-laden daybed, elegant macramé wall hanging by Limerick artist Christina Hill, and an array of potted plants.
The overall effect is a home whose beauty lies, like a bouquet, in the alchemy of its parts. “With flowers, there are endless opportunities to create different themes and variations. And I think there’s a parallel between that and the way my modern bohemian style pulls from different cultures with my tchotchkes and colors,” Michelle says. “I think it’s beautiful when a space is very streamlined. But that just doesn’t speak to who I am.”
ABOVE Toile wallpaper from Designs in Blinds & Drapes in Massachusetts adorns a master bedroom accent wall. A metal HomeGoods lamp and West Elm nightstand reference the lines on the Parisian-style bed.
Fresh as a Daisy
A floral designer’s Portland bungalow is as abundant, and breezy, as her arrangements.
ABOVE Vintage cane chairs from a farmhouse estate sale and salvaged windows elegantly age Michelle and Evan Glassman’s Portland dining room, which also features an Emerald Home Furnishings pine table and a Pottery Barn crystal chandelier.
TEXT BY SARA ANNE DONNELLY
PHOTOGRAPHED BY JEFF ROBERTS
Tucked behind the busy intersection of Washington and Allen Avenues in Portland, Michelle and Evan Glassman’s 1929 bungalow looks like it might have teleported from some distant glen. During their 2018 house search, the couple fell for the dwelling’s “storybook quality,” owing to its classic white-clapboard-and-green-shutter cladding, plunging roofline culminating in a snug front porch, and brick chimney running up the side. “The way it sat on the corner of the lot, it seemed very quaint to me,” says Michelle, a floral designer and former commercial property manager. “Like a little cottage you find in the woods or something.”
Fresh off their first successful renovation together, of a historic condo outside Boston, the Glassmans were looking to move to Portland, where Evan’s employer has an office, and into their next project. A dated place wrapped in a charming, well-kept package felt like the perfect fit. “It’s hard to change the footprint and, ultimately, the exterior of your home,” says Evan, an architect who specializes in 3D modeling. “So we were looking for something reasonably priced, and nice looking, that would allow us to go in and do what we wanted with the interior.”
ABOVE The sunroom conjures a thrift-store boho vibe with a savvy collection of new finds, including a Target rattan pendant (layered over a shelf from Portland Flea-For-All), pine daybed and jute rug from Overstock.com, and macramé hanging by Limerick’s Christina Hill.
Over the course of a whirlwind four months, the couple worked with Brunswick’s LNE Construction and a half dozen subcontractors they found through word of mouth and sites like Thumbtack and Nextdoor to refresh and modernize what Evan describes as a “closed in, compartmentalized” layout. He used the modeling software Revit to share ideas with Michelle, which included tearing down a wall between the kitchen and dining room, widening the first floor’s arched doorways, and adding an arch over the entrance to an anteroom Michelle calls the “fireplace nook.” The kitchen received gleaming white-quartz and custom walnut countertops, Spanish subway tile, a glam marble-and-gold-inlay chevron-tile backsplash, and backlit glass-front cabinets that aggrandize the modest space.
ABOVE 1) The bungalow’s exterior was in good condition, a must for the Glassmans, who preferred the scale of an interior-only renovation. 2) A Hayley Mitchell print watches over a cozy living room corner furnished with a mid-century-style Target chair, vintage footstool, and Savoy House sconce. 3) In the “fireplace nook,” a desk coated in Annie Sloan chalk paint sidles up to walls finished in Magnolia Home’s Luxe. 4) The kitchen’s marble-tile backsplash from Portland’s Distinctive Tile & Design and glass pendants from Americana Workshop in Kennebunk provide ethereal counterpoints to a walnut-topped peninsula painted in Benjamin Moore’s Deep Secret.
With the interior rehabbed, Michelle began decorating in her maximalist style — a boho mashup of old and new furnishings, eclectic artwork, and miscellanea (vintage tins and bottles, geisha dolls, seashells, dream catchers). “I’m always pulling from different genres and trying to make a cohesive aesthetic,” she says. The result of that philosophy is dramatic: A shabby-chic dining room with a farmhouse table and mismatched chairs, heavily carved, antique white sideboard, and vintage windows as wall art handed down from her artist-mother; a fireplace nook painted in a dark green reminiscent of a 19th-century smoking lounge; a master bedroom in the French country style with lush bedding and toile wallpaper; and everywhere, collage walls of botanical art and exotic antiques that create the illusion of a life of plein air painting and world exploration, even though most of the pieces were sourced from New England shops.
ABOVE Toile wallpaper from Designs in Blinds & Drapes in Massachusetts adorns a master bedroom accent wall. A metal HomeGoods lamp and West Elm nightstand reference the lines on the Parisian-style bed.
To unify her aesthetic, Michelle relies on a repeating palette of slate blue, forest green, and stormcloud gray. Large expanses of ivory and pale-gray walls offer respite from the layered décor and dark tones and accentuate the brightness of the home’s corner lot, celebrated in a sunroom fitted out with a pillow-laden daybed, elegant macramé wall hanging by Limerick artist Christina Hill, and an array of potted plants.
The overall effect is a home whose beauty lies, like a bouquet, in the alchemy of its parts. “With flowers, there are endless opportunities to create different themes and variations. And I think there’s a parallel between that and the way my modern bohemian style pulls from different cultures with my tchotchkes and colors,” Michelle says. “I think it’s beautiful when a space is very streamlined. But that just doesn’t speak to who I am.”
