When Jacalyn and Steve Beam were searching for a new house, the fact that they found a custom-built Centreville home was a stroke of luck. The 6,800-square-foot French Country-style house, which features contemporary elements Jacalyn refers to as “wonky” angles, didn’t require an overhaul or any architectural changes, aside from converting all the wood-burning fireplaces to gas. Jacalyn says the kitchen and electronics, for example, were already state of the art when the couple moved in.
But that doesn’t mean that the space wasn’t transformed. The expansive six-bedroom, five-bathroom house quickly emerged as a reflection of the couple’s family histories, adventures around the world—and Jacalyn’s prodigious artistic output. She is an established and prolific plein air painter whose outdoor scenes have been widely shown and published.
“Everything inside the house was very contemporary or deco, and we’re not,” Jacalyn Beam points out. “We like contemporary and appreciate it, but it’s not what we collect. We [prefer] a variety of time periods, things that we’ve collected over a lifetime either through traveling or families or auctions—wherever we find things that we like.” Americana pieces, sometimes imported from Europe, are represented in their collection.
The couple did not work with an interior designer. “I have nothing against interior designers,” she notes. “I think they’re great, but I don’t want somebody else to tell me what has memories for me. Everything in the house has a particular memory from times when Steve and I traveled or things we’ve bought together, even when we were dating.”
Case in point: The living room contains a conspicuous grandfather clock. “Steve’s father and grandfather were both clockmakers,” Beam says. “Sometimes Steve’s father would have me repaint the moon dials”—a decorative and functional element that displays the shape of the moon in the sky as time ticks on. The home is filled with such family heirlooms.
Beside the grandfather clock sits a charming writing desk. “That was my father’s great aunt’s,” she explains. “It’s inlaid with pearl, and that’s what they used to call a ladies writing desk, because back in the old days, they would write a lot of correspondence to their friends in Europe. They traveled a lot during the late 1800s and early 1900s.”
A pair of reproduction Southwood sofas anchor the room, offering guests a prime view of Beam’s paintings of Yorklyn and Delaware’s eastern shore. The artist says that she had no formal art schooling. “My training is being outside every day, in the elements.”
The room is painted in a cheery yellow from Pratt & Lambert. She recalls that originally, “the whole house was sand-colored,” but that’s not her aesthetic. Now it boasts historic colors. “Every color was handpicked by me and is a historic color that is represented somewhere in historic homes across our country—and that has been documented,” she says.
“Everything in the house has a particular memory from times when Steve and I traveled or things we’ve bought together.”
The sun-splashed conservatory, with its blue slate floors and washed in a slightly different shade of yellow from the living room, is “one of our favorite places to watch birds, and my husband keeps his plants in here all winter, so it’s really like a little greenhouse,” Beam says. Once again, both family heirlooms and the homeowner’s art deliver the spirit of the room, with a rocking chair from Jacalyn’s great aunt occupying pride of place, and her paintings of Longwood Gardens decorating the walls.
Just under the center window is a sand-cast aluminum table with a pair of chairs (all from Hanamint). “It’s diminutive, so the two of us can sit and talk and have coffee,” she says. “Little yellow birds come right to the window.”
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