locations for a decorating book when a friend put her
in touch with the Thatchers. They agreed to let their
home be photographed, and to have a few modern
pieces brought in for the shoot to juxtapose with the
more quaint furnishings. “It was like, wow. We can
mix it up!” says Shari. Soon after, they hired Coleman
to refurbish their space permanently.
“Your home should capture the essence of who
you are,” says Coleman. “And Randal and Shari, well,
they’re not drab people.” (Randal, for example, pens
a column for the town’s newspaper, is a hobby wood-
worker, and hosts a weekly drum circle in their barn
during the summer.)
So Coleman injected the rooms with color and
pattern, such as a custom sofa covered in a bright
botanical Swedish fabric by the iconic Josef Frank.
Then she replaced some of the reproduction pieces
with midcentury and contemporary ones, mostly
from Scandinavian sources, to honor the Danish im-
migrant who built the original home.
“Color is a unifier for the different eras,” says Cole-
man, who used bright green, pink, and blue in nearly
every space. “It ties everything together.”
Randal agrees. “It’s a nice hybrid between the
pioneer and the modern,” he says, noting that the
shock of their Seattle-to–Spring City transition has
since waned—he’s even learned how to split wood
with an axe, grow a tomato from seed, and shoot clay
pigeons. “Oh, if our city friends could see us now.”
INTERIORS Meta Coleman; metacoleman.com.GIVE
SOMETHING
OLD A NEW
PURPOSE
The two-acre property
was a big draw. (“It’s
magical,” Shari says.)
It includes an incred-
ibly preserved log
barn where Randal
hosts drum circles:
“We make what I
hope is a beautiful
noise.” A small studio
connected to the barn
contains modern- day
trappings: a TV and
a computer.
ADD
A BRIGHT
SPOTA cheery yellow print
covers the lamp-
shade, proving that
it only takes a little
color to punch up a
space—in this case
a small bedroom on
the second floor.
The Thatchers’ nieces
and nephews vie for
the room when they
come to stay. Lamp-
shade in yellow Ele-
fant textile; svens
kttenn.se.34 OCTOBER 2018 ❖ SUNSET
Home & Garden