Study in Light: The Harrison Home From the Summer 2008
Issue
Ashton and Dave Harrison have a great formula for bringing their second home at Virginia’s Wintergreen Resort to life: Just add light, fun and friends. It’s a natural for this Richmond couple who, as it happens, are pros in the illumination business.
The concept of light – as in unique lighting, outside light from the deck and the unobtrusive light wood of the construction itself – was of great importance to Ashton and Dave Harrison as they conceived and built their Virginia mountain home at Wintergreen Resort.
Ever since she was in college and worked at Virginia’s Wintergreen Resort as a ski instructor, Ashton Harrison of Richmond has had a love affair with the Blue Ridge Mountains in the state’s Nelson County. But even though she and husband Dave visited the resort often, they never had a getaway home in the mountains until six years ago.
“We both love cool weather and mountains,” says Ashton, and after falling in love with the relaxed pace of life at the resort, the couple decided to build their own dream home there two years ago.
“Dave has wanted a timber frame house since we got married,” Ashton says, pointing out that she focused on a house suited to entertaining friends and family. “I wanted something comfortable that could hold a lot of people, that was easy on the eyes, and not too busy. When you come in here, you can relax.”
Part of the relaxing mood of the couple’s Hardie [fiber cement]-sided home with timber frame interior styling is the result of its rusticity and soothing yet rich earthy colors, all of which are enhanced by unique lighting, courtesy of the Harrisons’ business, Shades of Light, based in Richmond.
Building a Business and a Dream
Ashton started Shades of Light in 1986, after working for This End Up Furniture.
“I knew there was creative lighting available,” she explains, “but nobody carried it.” So she started a retail and mail-order business serving up lighting options ranging from the truly modern and unusual to reworked antique fixtures, with inventory ranging from chandeliers draped in silk to refurbished antique candlesticks given electrification.
Dave, a former stockbroker who grew up on Long Island, joined his wife in her business venture in 1990.
“I was tired of cold calling,” he says, “and she needed help.” Ashton is president of Shades of Light, and Dave fills in the areas that don’t interest her. One of his favorite aspects of the business is photography. A self-taught camera man who started taking pictures professionally in 2000, he provides 50 percent of the illustrations used in the retail catalog.
The Harrisons’ love of lighting (not to mention their business – Shades of Light) is reflected in the elegance of this clean turquoise-and-white setting.
Together the Harrisons have built Shades of Light into a highly successful business with two retail stores in Richmond, one in Virginia Beach, and a catalog order operation. They currently have 60 employees and are looking to expand even more.
“We try to find lighting you don’t see in the general market,” says Dave. They specialize in design lighting, have added some curtains and rugs to their stock and are a favorite resource for interior decorators.
The Perfect Showcase
Today the couple’s Wintergreen house is the ideal display for their business, incorporating Shades of Light’s unique offerings, many of which are Ashton’s designs. In the Harrisons’ expansive kitchen with its rusty-red cabinets, kick-plate lighting provides ambience as well as practical night lighting on the floor, while lights over the bar – which separates the kitchen from the dining area – are suspended from pulleys that extend over the countertop.
According to Ashton, however, lighting a timber frame home can be a challenge.
“You have to plan the lighting before you build,” she says, pointing out that wiring goes in with the framing, not after.
This bedroom illustrates well the conviction from Ashton Harrison that in timber frame construction, “you have to plan the lighting before you build.”
Much of the home’s lighting is geared toward creating atmosphere. In the great room, for example, with its tall fireplace of indigenous stone, track lighting in the ceiling spotlights artwork hung around the room, and fan fixtures shine light up to the ceiling for soothing night effects.
It is the lighting, in fact, that steals the show in the Harrisons’ home, and that’s exactly what the couple intended. Furnishings are deliberately casual and understated, for the most part designed for comfort, while others – like the couple’s 100-year-old walnut dining table that can seat up to 17 guests – are particularly special. Most of the home’s bathroom sinks are set in old furniture cabinets, and antique, now electrified candlesticks are featured in some bedrooms.
For Friends and Relaxation
Ashton especially appreciates the home’s openness. Designed without hallways and brimming with sleeping areas, every inch of the space is useful and made to accommodate the couple’s many visitors, including friends, grown children and two grandchildren, ages five and seven. On skiing weekends, the Harrisons fill up the house, often entertaining as many as 18 guests at a time.
Apart from the Harrisons’ own master bedroom with its soothing Nordic blue walls and antique snowshoes used as headboards, there are three other sleeping areas in the home, all of them opening onto private decks with hammocks and patio chairs so that everyone, not just the Harrisons, can enjoy the westward view. The lower level, in addition to sporting extra bedroom space and overlooking an outdoor hot tub, features a unique recreation room with African-tiled fireplace, antique mantel and hardy cork flooring.
Furnishings in the home are deliberately casual and understated, to add to the Harrisons’ goal of feeling relaxed and revived upon entering.
Even in the bath, the lighting is a dominant and defining feature, accenting other elements perfectly.
A favorite gathering place is the main floor’s deck. Not only does the western exposure draw in loads of light and warmth in winter through floor-to-ceiling windows, but it makes it possible to enjoy the deck in the midst of the cold season. On sunny winter afternoons, the deck offers post-skiing sunbathing for the spirit.
But though the Harrisons love to ski and enjoy golf and tennis as well, Ashton claims there’s another reason for the couple to come to Wintergreen.
The Big Attraction
“Most of the time,” she says, “we get up here and just kick back.” That’s why she especially loves having a home in the mountains – it means she doesn’t have to pack and plan ahead. “Now we can come up here on the spur of the moment,” she adds.
Ashton and Dave Harrison visited Virginia’s Wintergreen Resort for many years before giving in fully to their love of cool weather and the mountains to build their own home.
With a little laugh, Dave points out the couple’s other favorite pastime: eating.
Ashton agrees good-naturedly, “He’s a real chef. I’m not really inventive, but Dave can make a steak taste unbelievable.” The couple sometimes takes cooking classes together, which pays off for all the entertaining they do.
They also travel frequently, both for pleasure and business. They scour the country looking for unusual antique lighting they can refurbish or incorporate into new designs. Self-taught with no formal training in art or design, though the daughter of an artist, Ashton designs many fixtures for Shades of Light herself.
But even though she is in many ways surrounded by the fruits of her labor at her Wintergreen house, Ashton maintains, “Being here is really all about R & R.”
Dave agrees: “It’s cooler. It’s slower. There is no pressure or obligations.”
Read the complete
article in the new Mountain Homes, now available
at bookstores, on newsstands or by calling (800) 548-1672.
Or CLICK HERE to get
your FREE COPY NOW!
