Spirit of France springs to life in Duluth home

Tom and Martha Wilson possess the kind of gentility that gives Southern hospitality its good name. So perhaps it is no surprise that the couple’s polite offers — to take their guest’s coat or offer up fragrant, flavored coffee — fit the beckoning feel of their house. One actually starts to feel more elegant after just an hour in this Duluth home, furnished with comfy antiques that give the home its French country style.

Perhaps most inviting is the home’s show-stopper — its sunroom. A rustic octagon with granite walls, limestone floors and wooden beams overhead, the room opens to the Chattahoochee River and a path to its banks. Here, seating styled in faux bois — French for “fake wood” and fashioned after the real thing — offers a resting spot in the clearing.

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Sean Drakes/Special

The sunroom, which has granite walls, limestone floors and wooden beams overhead, opens onto the Chattahoochee River and a path to its banks.

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Inspired by the angles in a room featured on the cover of a 2001 issue of Southern Accents, the sunroom was built after the couple moved here a decade ago. To oversee the project, they commissioned Lewis Reeves, who built this 4,000-square-foot home when the couple downsized from the 6,000-square-footer he’d built them in Alpharetta.

That home was furnished with English antiques, and the couple decided to sell those “to fulfill the desire and dream of French antiques. I just liked the feel of the French,” Martha said, “not as plain as the English.”

The effect throughout this home — muted tones and antiques with a flourish, wood and brick, old wrought-iron chandeliers — is luxury, like a mountain retreat for the well-heeled and refined.

But for all of the home’s tradition, there are some unusual twists.

For example, the master bedroom features a table whose pedestal is a birdbath.

Before the glass tabletop arrived, Tom, a partner in two industrial real estate companies, recalls feeling befuddled: “I said, what in the world?” But sure enough, it came together, flowing with the outdoor view and the natural feel of the adjoining sunroom. Also in the bedroom are a pair of lamps made from the claw feet of a 19th-century copper bathtub. And on Tom’s nightstand? A lamp with a French wallpaper roller as its base.

“I say if it isn’t 100 years old, they don’t want it in the house,” says Tom of his wife and their decorator, Cindy Lites, president of Elizabeth Anne Star Interiors.

Of course, he is pleased to join Martha on antiquing trips. In fact, with a bit of self-deprecation and pride, he refers to himself as “the driver.”

Most intriguing antiques: A metal box for collecting bugs and a hiking stick displayed by the sunroom door. The box, made of tole, features a farm scene and captivating and (whodathunk?) beautiful illustrations of bugs. The hiking stick, which features the date “Juillet” (July) of 1898, is carved with the destinations of someone’s summer travels — Florence, Bernard and Chamonix, among them.

Favorite room: Situated directly across from the front door, the sunroom seems to have magnetic properties, almost instantly drawing people here, Tom says. “Everybody just likes looking out,” he says. And from there, “they always end up walking to the river.”

Tips for good living: “Buy what you like, what you enjoy, and use it,” Martha says. “We use everything. Nothing is for looks.” And if your taste is antiques, then a good investment will reap returns, as the Wilsons found when they chose to trade their English antiques for French ones.