Tour a Colorful Birmingham Cottage by Hundley Hilton 2022 - Veranda

They finish each other's sentences. Borrow each other's clothes. Supplement place settings from the other's dinnerware stash—easy, since they have the same wedding china (an early hint of simpatico tastes). So when Janie Jones decided to start fresh on her prime Mountain Brook, Alabama, lot, replacing the small cottage her family of four had outgrown with a new home with slightly more elbow room, she knew exactly who to turn to for design guidance. In fact, she has turned to her every day since 2016, when Jones and Elizabeth Miles launched Hundley Hilton Interiors, their Birmingham design business.

"Elizabeth is the yin to my yang," says Jones. "She's the wildly creative one, while I've got the organized spreadsheets. My style is more old-fashioned and granny chic, heavy on florals, and she pushes me to be more edgy." Even so, for Miles, it's one thing to strike a balance on client projects and another when the client is also your business partner and dear friend. And it's her home.

Hundley Hilton's Janie Jones (left) and Elizabeth Miles in Jones's newly revamped living room

Laurey Glenn

The process, by all accounts, turned out to be as cohesive and inspiring as Jones's sunlit family room, with its buoyant yellow sectional and mod game table and chairs scooped up from a lounge created for Birmingham Botanical Gardens' annual Antiques at the Gardens show. The rug—"a geometric touch that brought everything together," notes Jones—is also locally born, an introduction by friend and mentor Caroline Gidiere, helping balance the spunk and practicality that mirrors that of the room's creators.

This collaborative spirit extended to architect Anna Evans, who designed the English country–style home in keeping with Mountain Brook's vernacular, and to a close working relationship with contractor Chris Franks ("close," given that he happens to be the Joneses' backdoor neighbor). Today, the four-bedroom home lives much larger than its modest footprint suggests. "We wanted great flow but not an open floor plan," Jones explains, noting the 11-foot ceilings and raised archways that give rooms like the living and dining room individual definition. And where spaces do merge—the dining room with a bluestone front patio—the flow feels entirely organic. "This neighborhood is so friendly; people are always out, passing by, so we like to extend a dinner party outside," she adds (no doubt making that shared china stash come in handy). In the back, similarly arched French doors leading from the family room to a back patio add symmetry and extend the living space.

Inside Janie Jones's Birmingham Cottage

Evans designed a curved banquette off the kitchen island as another space-amplifying solution. Covered in bird's-egg blue performance leather, it's both highly practical and super comfortable. "This is really where we live," says Jones, who added contemporary cane-back chairs and greenish-teal island lights that were a bit of a happy accident—she thought she was ordering the small version, so she got two. "But there is no small version," Miles chimes in, and both agree the large duo gives the sunny kitchen just the right gravitas.

Maybe, just maybe, the home boasts more florals than Miles would typically advocate—the matching chintz chairs and Roman shades in the study, for example, around an heirloom sofa from Jones's parents, all tamed by a leopard-print rug. But for Jones and her young family, the mix of whimsy and restraint, vintage and vogue, feels delightfully balanced. In the primary bedroom vestibule, a feminine Cole & Son botanical wallpaper—signature Jones—gets punctuated with abstract art—a Miles touch—above a pear-wood chest the two designed together. Jones had purchased a large contemporary painting she envisioned in her living room, but Miles steered it into the entryway. "And she was 100 percent right," says Jones.

In the dining room, the tiered brass chandelier crowns a custom fruitwood table by The CEH.

Laurey Glenn

Bedrooms, including Jones's bedroom, are intentionally small. "We'd rather have more space in common areas," she notes. In the backyard, an existing garage was reconfigured to house the Hundley Hilton office. Lou, the "crazy" Irish doodle, keeps them company (when not destroying the potted foxgloves).

Starting fresh with new construction allowed the Joneses to imbue their new home with ample old touches, embracing classic country cottage architecture and a contained-room floor plan, but do so with colorful vitality. "This house was built with love from the ground up," says Jones, who delights in being surrounded by objects and people she loves. Sometimes those are the same—to wit, the children's portraits in the study, "my very favorite thing." The home is a portrait too—of an energetic young family, of two designers whose tastes (and china patterns) complete each other, and of how classic and contemporary, flowery and funky, can circle up around a cozy banquette to create something bold and new.

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Veranda Magazine

Featured in our May/June 2022 issue. Interior Design by Hundley Hilton Interiors; Architecture by Anna Evans; Photography by Laurey W. Glenn; Produced by Rachael Burrow; Written by Stephanie Hunt.