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Business welcomes you into historic house
n Oct. 1, the ResideHome interior-design studio moved from its longtime location at 340 Read Street (at the corner of Guadalupe Street) to the historic Digneo-Moore House at 1233 Paseo de Peralta. “In June, we had a conversation over lunch with Dave Holland, a good client and the current owner of the Digneo-Moore house,” Jeff Fenton said in mid-September. “We talked about how much we’ve enjoyed this building and being in the Railyard, but that in a perfect world we could use another 1,000 or 2,000 square feet, because the business has been growing consistently for the last five years.”
Reside Home co-owners Fenton and Chris Martinez jumped at the chance to occupy larger quarters in a venerable house. Its interior walls are in place as they were built. The house totals 3,700 square feet including the second floor and basement, compared to 2,500 square feet in their previous digs. “There are also 14 private parking spaces and a 500-square-foot carriage house that we will use to launch our Reside Casita brand, an upholstery line geared toward first-time homebuyers, airbnb, VRBO, people who want a great look and affordability,” Fenton said. The firm will continue using Jonathan Haggerty, who has the company Pillow Talk, for its custom sewing. “We’ll have a sewing room to produce a lot of our own pillows, banco cushions, bedding, bedskirts, and slip covers, anything that’s not attached to a frame.”
Martinez said one of the first priorities was rippng up all the carpets to reveal the original wood floors in the building. Walls are being painted in black, orange, red, purple, and other “beautiful saturated colors” that he said “have a nod to 1911 but with a more modern twist.”
“This building allows us not only to continue to grow our retail business but our design business, and we’re also really going after gifts as a category,” Fenton added.
To their dominant product lines Burnhardt andMitchell Gold + BobWilliams, they are adding Highland House. “They’re a little more of the higher end, but they offer a range of fabrics that’s unmatched. And then at the entry level will be Design Casita.
In our discussion on Read Street, Fenton said that building’s one large space always made it difficult to show “vignettes” or settings of furniture and accessories. “Every vignette leads into the next and people have a hard time seeing the different rooms we try to create. Upstairs in the Digneo-Moore House, there are five individual rooms and downstairs there are three. That will allow us to show in a muchmore defined way specific vignettes, showing classic, transitional, and contemporary looks.”
“We say this will be Reside Home in a home, and it’s a great way for people to come in and see how they can live, room by room,” Martinez said. “For our design clients, the former dining room will be our work room. We’re going to have larger, counter-height tables so we can present all of our fabrics and finishes, so we can take clients from idea to beautiful home. We do that now, but we will have a dedicated room for it.”
“I think when people walk in, they’re going to be absolutely overwhelmed and blown away and excited,” Fenton said. “It’s going to be something newfor Santa Fe.”