Moving the Nest

Designer Fiona Weeks and her family leave the tense life behind for sea-toned comfort

IT'S SOMETHING MANY CITY AND SUBURB DWELLERS only dream about: ditching the corporate grind and finally buying that great little gem of a place in the mountains or down on the shore.

Four years ago, interior designer Fiona Newell Weeks, her husband, Joe Weeks, and their two teenage sons, Griff and Sam, decided to go for it. After trading their colonial in Potomac for a 3,900-square-foot, 1950-era Cape Cod on the banks of the Eastern Shore's Tred Avon River, the Weeks clan has settled into an elegant, comfortable home and an easier way of living.

"We made a very conscious decision to ditch the whole Potomac lifestyle," says Joe, 48, now a Talbot County, Md., residential real estate agent who spent 25 years as a software sales executive. "There's a whole different lifestyle out here."

His wife agrees. "As soon as you cross over the Bay Bridge, suddenly all of your worries dissipate," says Fiona, 49, a native Washingtonian who co-owns Dwelling & Design, an interior design and retail shop in Easton. "Living in the city was stressful -- everyone is so competitive -- and we just felt like it was all just too much. And we wanted a better, more relaxed environment for our kids."

Joe, an avid outdoorsman who spends hours each week in his powerboat on the Chesapeake Bay's many inlets near their home, says the Eastern Shore "becomes part of you after a while. I can come home from work, take the boat out fishing for an hour or so, bring home some rockfish for dinner, then have a cocktail out back and watch the sun set. What's not to like?"

What, indeed. When choosing colors for decorating, Fiona tuned into historic Easton's atmosphere: the subdued organic tones of the river and its banks, and the intensely hot pinks of sunrises over the water. In lesser hands, the house's daring palette -- deep coral, rich brown, delicate iced celery, tone-on-tone creams and hints of bold yellow -- would be a mishmash of hues, motifs and patterns.

But choosing those colors turned out to serve practical purposes, too. "To be honest, color hides a wealth of sins," Fiona says, laughing. "I also use a lot of textured and patterned rugs because I live with dirty boys and a dirty husband coming in and out of the house. I needed something that would distract the eye from all that mess."

"That mess" inspired Fiona to meld a few of her favorite design elements with a number of tried-and-true decorating rules, such as choosing whitewashed, Swedish-inspired furniture with comfortable upholstery covered in durable fabrics; buying beautiful decorative accent pillows and wallpaper that can be creatively placed throughout the house; and scouring area flea markets and antique stores for well-made, one-of-a-kind treasures that make every room special.

Themes and hues establish fluidity between rooms. Two comfortable sofas, each upholstered in lush chocolate fabric, sit in the front living room, which is accented with cool, cerulean blue wallpaper and antique glassware in different shades, and in the sunroom, an elegant and funky space splashed with hot pink that is the family's favorite gathering spot. The whimsical dining room features a crystal chandelier in the shape of a sailboat, an oil-on-canvas floral painting done by a decorator friend and stacks of aged green and coral-colored china.

By comparison, the kitchen is notable for its restrained colors. The couple painted almost everything white shortly after moving in because "everything was either dark brick or dark, grungy knotty pine, which is so not me," says Fiona, who replaced the countertops with wheat-colored granite and updated the appliances to make the kitchen more modern. The floor is painted a pale blue for contrast. (The bathrooms, which haven't been renovated since the 1970s, are the last rooms on the couple's to-do list, and will require "a major overhaul, since every tile is either baby aspirin pink or some yucky blue," Fiona says.) The overall effect is as elegant and measured as Fiona herself, who reluctantly acknowledges that she applies the same principles to designing interiors as she does to picking out her wardrobe:

"I'm not super frilly, but I do like a light touch. I have a uniform when I dress -- solid-colored pants with something soft to give it flair -- and it's the same philosophy, I guess."

Living on the water, she says, also makes a natural case for wanting a space that's bright, airy and open. "I love looking out onto the soft blue water and the greenness of the grass going down to the slip," says Fiona. "I even managed to bring some of that into the boys' rooms, which was a challenge.

"But I managed to find the one fabric in the world that had those colors, and dragons, as well," she says of the cloth, which was used on curtains, a bedspread and pillows. "I won major points with my son Griff."

Joe Weeks acknowledges that Fiona's adventurous design streak will likely take the family house-hunting again sometime. "My wife likes projects," he says, laughing. "But this house has been great for our family. There's a tranquility out here that's tough to beat. It's pretty much perfect."

Jill Hudson Neal is a former design editor of the Magazine. She can be reached at jneal@washingtonian.com.