Contrasting the white exterior, Hollenbeck embraced muddy complex colors throughout the interiors. “You sort of have this crisp country house feel to it on the outside, and then you get to the inside and it’s much deeper and richer,” she says of the cooler palette with shades of eggplant, peacock, deep olive, and gray. “I went into it feeling like there will be no white in this house.”
Tucked into the redwoods in Mill Valley, California, a quaint city north of San Francisco, Holly Hollenbeck found her diamond in the rough. “The house was in really poor repair,” the principal designer of HSH Interiors recalls of the country Queen Anne–style Victorian with historic designation. The previous owners had abandoned an intended remodel after stripping the interiors to the studs, while the property became overgrown with weeds and tall grasses.
“For me, it was actually a great opportunity to get my hands on a historic home on a big lot in proximity to downtown Mill Valley, on which I could put my own stamp on the interiors without having to take out something that someone else had just done,” says Hollenbeck, before quickly adding, “My husband might have been less than thrilled, but I was thrilled.”
She spent three years turning the historic dwelling into their family home. With help from architect Wendy Posard, they reworked the interior architecture, built an 1,800-square-foot addition, and restored the exterior to its original beauty—in large part by replacing the ornate fish-scale and chevron shingles with new hand-cut replicas.
Inside, the pair aimed for “a strong English feel,” finding space for formal entry, living, and dining rooms, with an eat-in kitchen and family room, which opens to the backyard. “The multipart compound moldings, the paneling, all of those very traditional details were really important to me,” says Hollenbeck. “I wasn’t looking to faithfully recreate an 1892 Queen Anne Victorian; it was more evoking a feeling of an antique or vintage house.”
Elements from different places in time—a pressed-tin ceiling and antique encaustic floor tiles in the kitchen, cast-iron fireplaces in the living, dining, and primary bedrooms, and modern industrial light fixtures throughout—all come together to create a rich and timeless space.
After a few years of enjoying their finished home, the family realized their lives had shifted closer to San Francisco. So, when a neighbor inquired about buying the home, they accepted the offer. “I built this with our family in mind and had a lot of emotional attachment to it,” says Hollenbeck. “Leaving it to move into the city, though it made sense, was difficult for me.”
Fate would bring her back. Eight years later, the home was sold again, and when the new owners realized they had a personal connection with Hollenbeck, they reached out. Fellow Anglophiles, the new owners hired her to adjust the space for their needs without disrupting its carefully crafted style. Hollenbeck was happy to find that the interiors were largely unchanged from her remodel a decade prior, leaving much of her focus on choosing new furnishings, window coverings, paint colors, and wallpaper, with heavier attention on creating a “Zoom room” for the husband and a craft room for the wife.
She also transformed the living room from an entertaining space into a relaxing media room with fresh millwork, a Chesterfield sectional, and pocket doors for optimal peace. Hollenbeck satisfied one latent curiosity in the family room, where she balanced an antique mahogany piano with a Georgian bookshelf where she once considered adding built-ins. “It was great to have that challenge of tackling a house that I loved, but with a different pair of eyes this time.”
The primary suite—including the bedroom, bathroom, and dressing room—are part of the home’s new addition. “Prototypical of Victorians of its time, it had four tiny bedrooms that all shared one hall bath,” Hollenbeck recalls. She reconfigured the second floor to accommodate modern-day bathing habits but nodded to history with standout pieces like a cast-iron fireplace and antique pedestal tub.
