Island Life: At Home with Tom Scheerer - Remodelista
Tom Scheerer has been called the Billy Baldwin of our day. Read is the author of Tom Scheerer Decorates, an impressive compendium of 15 years of work that came out last winter. Photographs by Francesco Lagnese courtesy of The Vendome Press. Dubbed the Cash Box–because it previously belonged to Mary Cash, one of the matriarchs of Harbour Island–Scheerer’s 1800 guest house is situated across from an old convent that he revived and turned into his main house. The Cash Box entry has “a junky white painted table with a convenient drawer,” says Scheerer. The Cash Box’s original kitchen is housed in its own outbuilding. But, she says, he also has a practical streak: “‘Don’t make too much trouble for yourself’ is one of his mottos. Scheerer added encaustic cement Cuban tiles over the kitchen’s cement floor. Scheerer has a weakness for old Thonet bentwood chairs: “I collect them whenever I can; I find them useful in rustic and in urbane interiors.” The Cash Box attic is now the master suite. It had a rough pine floor that Scheerer painted with “many, many coats of shiny white: the white floor bounces a lot of light into the room and off the ceiling.” The seafoam green walls are, writes Read, “a nod to a Harbour Island old wives’ tale about the wasp-repellent properties of the color green.” Scheerer found the iron campaign bed at Anthropologie. A peacock wicker chair stands next to the bed and one of the attic’s shuttered windows: “There were no windows at the dormer and gable-end openings, only shutters. I added louvered interior shutters for privacy (with a breeze). No screens. No glass.” One of the great luxuries at the Convent is a new bathroom with a claw-footed tub that Scheerer went to great lengths to get to the island. At the Cash Box, Scheerer built a simple outdoor dining area “proximate to the kitchen and porch.” The table is shaded by a Balinese parasol. “Lunch is my favorite hobby–and no sandwiches!” says Scheerer. One of the final–and best–additions made to the Cash Box: a bamboo-fenced outdoor shower.