Great Details : The High Ceilings and Thick-Plastered Walls of This 1930s House Give It the Character These Two Actors Were Looking For

In the home of actress Markie Post (NBC-TV’s “Night Court”) and actor Michael Ross (Rum Tum Tugger in the Los Angeles production of “Cats”), there’s furniture from both of their lives before their marriage four years ago plus things they’ve purchased together. And the couple have been able to make a diverse assortment of styles--soft-colored feminine, country-style things that were hers and dark, mostly Oriental-influenced furnishings that he brought back to the States after living in Hong Kong--work well under the same roof in their Toluca Lake-area home.

“Markie really pulled it together,” Ross says. “She has a knack for knowing what works.”

“When we first saw this 1930s house,” Post says, “we liked its character. We didn’t have to make major improvements; we just painted rooms and highlighted some of the great details--high ceilings, large windows, thick, textured-plaster walls. Rooms have been painted soft pastel shades.”

The living room contains the two sofas that Post and Ross brought from their bachelor days--one is rather traditional with a floral-print fabric, the other is more contemporary with white corduroy upholstery. Post admits: “We realized that ordinarily one wouldn’t use these two sofas in the same room, but I had an idea that seems to unify the whole room.”

What Post did was create a soft, balloon-type curtain in a pastel plaid fabric that blends with the lavender color of the walls and the soft fabrics of both sofas. With the addition of a pastel-colored braided rug, a prized antique quilt and various accessories, the result is a very individual room with a great deal of warmth and homey charm about it.

As a matter of fact, each of the rooms in this house has been carefully personalized. The guest bedroom is what Post and Ross call their “romance room.” It contains an antique wooden bed, a quilt and a variety of memorabilia hanging on the wall above the bed, including the antique lace headpiece that Post wore at their wedding.

In their own bedroom, a large, pine-framed bed features quilts on and above it. And the master bathroom sports a stenciled wall treatment that Post designed and painted. “I am always ready to try to do things myself, because it certainly makes a house more personal when you do as much of it yourself as you possibly can.” PRODUCED BY ANA ERICKSEN