Return to Grace
Bringing dignity to an El Encanto dame
Like any of the gracious, midcentury homes at the hub of Tucson's L'Enfant-inspired El Encanto neighborhood, Rick and C J Volk's new home was, as their Realtor put it, "born fine." She was refined but not fancy, roomy not sprawling, self-assured. I say "she" because the home spoke to C J—woman to woman. And though she started life unmarred, what was done to her later was not pretty. C J paints the picture: "Everything fauxed. And crackled. And muraled. And saguaros. And saguaro murals. And tin doors stamped with saguaros…"
She's not kidding about the cactus fetish. Not only did a former owner saturate the decor (think bathroom tiles painted with saguaros arranged in the shape of—guess what—a saguaro), but the property became a saguaro sanctuary, refuge to the dying and long dead—160 all told.
C J was working in Paris when her husband called to say he'd found it, the home they'd been looking for. From his description, she knew exactly the house he was talking about: the one that had always made her think, "I should like it, but I don't like it at all. It's that house that should look good, but just looks weird and lonely." The interior shots he e-mailed nearly triggered a seizure. But when she saw the floor plans, she could breathe again and knew he was right. It was the perfect location. And despite all that had been done to the home, she had good bones. She was beautiful. She'd been born fine.
C J immediately began planning how to open the kitchen, shift some rooms and bathrooms, all with an eye to preserving the home's natural gravity, that feeling of rightness that develops over 60 years like complexity in a good scotch. She found appointments befitting the home's age and stature, replacing modern fixtures with Holophane glass and an heirloom chandelier from the ballroom of New York's Commodore Hotel. She gave the kitchen a breakfast bar by topping a massive antique mercantile chest with a zinc countertop, dappled with a mellowing history of spots and spills over time. Classic arabesques replaced saguaro tiles, contemporary doors gave way to turn-of-the-century salvage from an Italian convent, and reclaimed chestnut trestles from 100-year-old barns became the planks of bedroom floors.
And then there's color. C J first created her own paints—now sold under her Citron Paint label—out of frustration with commercial products that build their hues on muddy undertones stewing up from black pigment. Citron's paints contain no black, offering their colors in luminous shades as inspired as their names (and here, a quick tour of just a few C J used to dress her home): thick socks, rillito, tarnished silver, mystery novel, hollandaise, sea glass, and Jan's rose—an homage to C J's mom. Most of the home's rooms boast five or six colors, but instead of a visual assault, C J's preternatural eye for light ensures the opposite effect.
"There's nowhere in nature that has the same color on all four sides," she explains. "We're not used to being in a box. By changing the paint with the light-reflectiveness of the wall, you create a quietness of color." She can walk into a room and read its light like you or I might take in a busy intersection. She sees where the light enters, where it bounces, and what it picks up. Where it's tinged blue by the Catalinas beyond a window or washed brown from overhanging eaves, and she knows how—with paint—to make all of that electromagnetic frenzy settle into a harmony that, whether deep and dramatic or barely kissed with color, is ridiculously comforting. And here's where her master's in physiology comes in handy.
"It goes back to old-brain functions and the phenomenon of color constancy," C J says. So she works with the brain: paler colors on more reflective walls to harvest the light, deeper shades on window-walls to make them disappear and frame the view, medium tones in between. And while she generally coats ceilings in colors that become pale blues and pinks, helping them float up, up, and away, her own high-ceilinged living room is topped with a bold, smoky mauve.
"My one disappointment is I wanted to walk in to that color," she says. "I love color and would normally have something super dramatic on the first wall you face. But here it's a light-reflecting wall. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't take this beautiful, bright, elegant room and turn it dark and funky." In the end, those concessions—deferring to what the house wanted—gave the Volks' new home a mature beauty it deserves. "I could have made this house rockin' and wild," C J says, "but I felt like she'd been so disrespected. I wanted to honor her. Here was this beautiful home all dressed up in a costume, and she just wanted to be a quiet, good old dame of a house."
Still, there is that wide living room ceiling so high you can do anything with it. And C J admits that despite the home's self-possessed beauty, she's more than just a plain ol' gal—she'll want something sexy and new from time to time. And there's a certain Citron paint—a deep, smoldering blue she named for a Jane Austen heartthrob...
Our interview almost over, C J searches that ceiling with something like hunger in her eyes. "Mr. Darcy would be so yummy in here," she says, as if it might not happen, and knowing already it will.