Say you’d love to refresh a room with new paint color. It’s tricky in a Capitol Hill row house, where light may come from only one direction at certain times of day. Enter Linda H. Bassert of Masterworks Design, speaker at our January Preservation Café.
Bassert explains how paint color can transform the look, feel and function of a room, including in an older home.
Bassert is the color consultant used by Tech Painting and Image Painting, two companies you find frequently on Capitol Hill. But she is an independent consultant, too, and is an award-winning designer of window treatments.
Six tips from Bassert’s presentation:
Start with inspiration, not paint color. Assess what’s there, such as art, rugs, fabric, tile or stone. Then let paint color tie elements together rather than leading the design.
Choose color based on how you use the room. Stronger colors work for energetic spaces, while bedrooms and restful rooms benefit from softer ones.
Transition colors at corners – light and shadow at corners make changes feel natural. Use color value to shape space. Lighter colors can look closer while deeper ones recede.
Contrast matters for crown molding and trim. The crown and ceiling should differ in value to make the ceiling appear higher. Paint the backs of built-in bookcases to add depth, with deeper colors to add balance and dimension. Paint soffits to match and recede into walls.
To sample paint correctly, use foam core boards and view color away from existing walls. Evaluate throughout the day to see how light affects your choices.
Is exterior color a more pressing concern? Bassert presented on exterior paint color in 2022, and that talk is available as well. Find Preservation Cafés on our website under Events & Tickets.
Follow us on Eventbrite and on our social media channels for notice of our next Preservation Café.
Our November Preservation Cafe provided an up-close — and inside! — look at the newly restored 1891 pipe organ at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church.
Attendees were invited to climb the narrow, twisting staircase to the organ loft to see reinstallation work in progress and examine the beautiful wooden exterior case, inner workings and towering pipes along with the manuals (also known as keyboards) and pedalboard.
Preservation easements were the subject of a free online talk on September 25. Part of our Preservation Cafe series, the talk was led by staff of the L’Enfant Trust, which holds most of Capitol Hill’s easements. The talk was recorded and is available on YouTube.
An easement is a legal agreement that permanently protects a home’s historic character. Easements do not expire and “run with the land,” meaning that future owners are also bound by them.
Lauren McHale, the Trust’s president and CEO, and Katie Williams, its operations and communications manager, answered a variety of questions, including:
How to donate an easement
What makes a property eligible
Responsibilities of easemented property owners
They also shared about the Trust’s Historic Properties Redevelopment Program in Historic Anacostia. Since 2013, the Trust’s HPRP has created affordable homeownership opportunities for the community by rehabilitating deteriorated, vacant historic properties.
You don’t have to own an easemented property to get help from the Trust, McHale said. She said the Trust is happy to offer guidance to anyone about a historic property. It has a full-time professional staff to advise owners on maintenance, preservation and architectural design review for proposed changes to the exterior.
The organization’s website has a toolkit for easemented property owners as well as guides to preserving historic exteriors and researching your historic property. The address is lenfant.org.
L’Enfant Trust easements are marked by round cast bronze plaques featuring a star. The Trust holds conservation easements on more than 1,150 historic DC properties. DC maintains a list of more than 1,700 properties citywide that are protected by conservation easements.
Do you have suggestions for a future Preservation Cafe? Let us know! Email us at caphrs420@gmail.com.
The Capitol Hill Restoration Society (CHRS) will present a free, virtual Preservation Café on the pivotal role streetcars played in the development and growth of Capitol Hill on Thursday, February 6, 2025, at 6:30 p.m.
On May 28, 2024, CHRS members and guests were treated to a terrific presentation by Jen Harris, executive director and founder, and Erin Roth, development director, of the Story of Our Schools. Harris and Roth described a project they recently completed at Eastern High School where students, teachers, alumni, and other community members created a permanent exhibit to celebrate the centennial of Eastern’s building on East Capitol Street. The presentation was recorded.
Kim Prothro Williams presented a free, virtual Preservation Café “Hidden Alleyways of Capitol Hill,” April 23, 2024. She is the author of “Hidden Alleyways of DC: A History,” published by Georgetown University Press and available at East City Bookshop.
The presentation was recorded. Want to learn more about alleys? Sign up for a tour.
