Southern Living opens Idea House in Senoia
By W. WINSTON SKINNER
winston@newnan.com
For the second year, Southern Living has opened its Idea House in Senoia.
This year’s Idea House, an antebellum house that has been reworked and decorated, held an event to welcome media and area dignitaries on Thursday. The official opening was Saturday.
Senoia was also the home of the 2010 Idea House, a townhouse. The Idea Houses are designer showcases of the finest trends in home design and furnishings.
“It’s the only time in history that they returned to the same location. I guess the charm of this little town brought them back,” Scott Tigchelaar of Historic Development Ventures, developer of both Idea Houses, said earlier this year.
It will also be the first time that the Idea House will not be a new building. Instead, the current project is a restoration and enlargement of a historic home.
The house featured lots of earth tone colors – particularly sand and tan. While the house has lots of new amenities, they are blended with historic elements. One bedroom features several photographs of Senoia’s McKnight family, and a vintage East Coweta High basketball photo is in another room.
A stairwell at the front of the house leads to a landing with seating areas at each end – one with a pair of binoculars. A bedroom has a woven rug overlaid with a deerskin. The overall feeling of the house is open and airy, and one visitors commented on the unexpectedly large size of the upstairs rooms.
Camp Southern Ground, the passion project of Zac Brown of the GRAMMY-Award winning Zac Brown Band, the charitable partner for the 2012 Idea House.
A portion of the proceeds of the $12 tour ticket sales from the Southern Living 2012 Idea House will be donated to Camp Southern Ground.
