David Heitor’s photo
After a house flapper expert filled her Rehoboth Beach home with coordinating, eye-catching pieces, she decided to move in and stay.
At first glance, the Rehoboth Beach Beth Hughes home looks mid-century, but look closely to find a more eclectic mix: “It has an organized style,” she says. “I have a bit of a boho beach house, a bit mid-century. I have things that have been in my family, I have pieces I’ve had for years and just love house to house, and I have industrial pieces.” The wood for the compact stools came from her family’s farm. The experienced home flapper added a woven seagrass rug, round mid-century tulip tables, and a soft sofa by Blu Dot. / Photo by David Heitor
When you work in real estate and become as adept at flipping houses as Beth Hughes, there’s always a chance that you’ll become attached. And when that happens, that’s when you know you’re really good at what you do.
Hughes, a Compass real estate agent licensed in Washington, D.C. and Maryland, had every intention of flipping the 3,000-square-foot home she converted on Coventry Road in Rehoboth Beach, but due to the pandemic, she ended up living in the five-bedroom home and 3 1/2 bathrooms by herself – and she’s been staying at more than a few parties.
“I love taking the house apart and putting it back together again,” she says. “I love walking into a house and seeing the potential. Every time I flip a house, I’ve been designing it, and for all my developers, I’ve been designing their kitchens.” This is a room of particular interest to Hughes, who was a chef and owned her catering business for 25 years before turning to real estate. She says the biggest mistake people make with kitchens is miscalculating how a room fits into the flow of their home, which is detrimental to their ability to entertain.
For the dining room, Hughes searched high and low for three Drabert Swing chairs to match the three she already owned. The metal behind the dining set is a vintage doctor’s desk cabinet. “Over the past 15 years, it’s entered every home I’ve owned,” says Hughes. The fireplace has been repainted in an iron ore gradient to match the house’s chimney. / Photo by David Heitor
“I’ll see islands running through the middle of the kitchen, and the entryway at one end,” she says. “When you are having fun or you have friends, they are basically sitting in the middle of your work space. When I design a kitchen, I design it for entertaining as well as for cooking.”
For this particular kitchen, she built a massive peninsula with a wine fridge at the end of it, “so my friends wouldn’t come into my space to take something out of the fridge,” she explains. Hughes also takes care to provide a focal point in the kitchen—in this case, the back wall is covered in blue riad tiles.
Hughes, who formerly owned a catering company, knew how the kitchen could function as a cooking space as well as an entertaining space—and was sure to keep the flow of traffic away from appliances. The island and its wine fridge direct guests away from the food prep space. As a focal point, she chose a cabinet-free back wall and covered it with riad tiles. / Photo by David Heitor
The home that Hughes created resists labels: “It has an organized style,” she says. “I have a bit of a boho beach house, a bit mid-century. I have things that have been in my family, I have pieces I’ve had for years and just love house to house, and I have industrial pieces.”
And she didn’t hesitate to reimagine the interior architecture to fit these beloved pieces. In the living room, I switched the gas stove to electric and painted it a shade of iron ore to match the chimney. The wood for the compact stools came from her family’s farm. Add a woven seagrass rug, round mid-century tulip tables, a soft Blu Dot sofa, and an oversized ottoman, and the effect is an inviting blend of industrial and modern, organic and rustic. The floors are entirely from Stuga.
The master bedroom has a beachy feel, with a simple woven bed frame and seagrass rug. Because Hughes entertains so much, the sunroom features plenty of seating—and a casual coastal feel with a nautical color scheme made up of woven wicker pieces and blue and white. / Photo by David Heitor
“I wanted a lot of seating, but I didn’t want a lot of furniture,” she explains. “I had a party that was supposed to consist of 10 people who turned 25, and everyone was able to sit down and eat. It worked really well, and I think this is my background in catering and event planning, which plays a part in how I design.”
The dining room immediately records mid-century. I found orange rocking chairs (designed by Gerd Lange for Drabert in Germany, in the 1960s) in a D.C. department store, “and then I searched forever until I found another set—the white chairs.” True to the curated form, the eye-catching piece behind the dining group is a vintage doctor’s desk cabinet. “Over the past fifteen years, I’ve entered every home I own.”
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