In Old Town Alexandria, some houses still have the windowless side wall and half-gable roof of the flounder house, a form built to squeeze living space onto a narrow lot. Debbi Porter Interiors is an interior design studio based in Northern Virginia that works with Alexandria homeowners from Old Town to Del Ray, Rosemont and Seminary Hill. Start with a complimentary discovery call by phone or Zoom.
Rowhouses and flounder houses in Old Town
Old Town's streets near King Street and the waterfront are lined with rowhouses, some dating to the 18th century, and a scattering of the city's distinctive flounder houses. These are wonderful houses to design, with deep window sills, fireplaces in surprising places and floors that have settled over a couple of centuries. They are also narrow, often one room wide, with light coming from just the front and back.
In a narrow house, we plan the rooms as a sequence you walk through rather than separate boxes. Colors shift from room to room but stay related, so the eye travels from the front parlor to the back of the house without stopping. We mix in antiques and older pieces with fresher fabrics and art, because a historic house can carry a lot of color and personality without feeling like a period set.
Old Town houses also tend to have small, irregular rooms, which is where custom work earns its keep. A banquette built into a bay, a window seat with storage, curtains made to fit an old window that no standard panel will cover.
Getting furniture through an old front door
This sounds like a small thing until a sofa won't make the turn on a 19th-century staircase. In Old Town we measure the route as carefully as the room: the front door, the hall, the stair width, the landing and any turn at the top. If the path is tight, we choose pieces that come apart, specify sofas with removable arms or legs or have upholstery built to fit.
Parking and deliveries on Old Town's narrow streets take planning too. Because we handle ordering, receiving and installation on full-service projects, we coordinate the timing so pieces arrive together and get carried in once, instead of a truck showing up every few days.
- Door, stair and landing measurements taken before anything is ordered
- Sectional and modular pieces for tight turns
- Custom upholstery sized to the room and the route in
- One coordinated install day where possible
Planning a project in Alexandria? Start with a complimentary discovery call.
Bungalows and foursquares in Del Ray and Rosemont
North of Old Town, Del Ray grew up as a working suburb with modest bungalows, foursquares, duplexes and even a few Sears mail-order houses. Next door, Rosemont has Craftsman bungalows, foursquares, Tudors and Colonial Revival houses from roughly the first half of the 20th century. These houses tend to have front porches, built-ins and rooms of a human size, and many owners have added a family room or kitchen at the back.
The design question here is usually how the old front of the house meets the new back. We like to keep the original rooms a little more traditional and let the addition be lighter and more relaxed, tied together with shared colors and materials. When a room just needs new life, our decorating and styling work focuses on paint, fabric, art and accessories built around what you already own.
Condos in Old Town North and Potomac Yard
Many Alexandria clients are downsizing from a larger house into a condo in Old Town North or Potomac Yard, where they can walk to restaurants and the river. Condos ask for edited furniture, good storage and lighting that doesn't depend on ceiling fixtures you can't move. We help decide which family pieces come along and design the new home around them, so it feels like yours on the first night.
Condo walls are also a chance to show off art that was hidden in a big house. A hallway can become a gallery, and a single strong painting over a sofa can carry a whole living room. We place the art and collections first, then fit the furniture around them.
