tree house
wonderland Buckhead’s Sue Nardelli creates an imaginative playroom— complete with a faux tree—for her only grandchild.
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ast winter, Buckhead resident Sue Nardelli, wife of former The Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli, decided to transform her French-style guestroom into an outdoor-themed fantasyland for her grandson, Bobby, who is now 2. By no means a standard playspace, the room is anchored by a gargantuan manmade tree trunk that is hollow and split into two levels—a downstairs Winnie the Pooh “clubhouse” and an upstairs pirate-themed hideaway. “Eighteenth-century French just was not where it needed to be with a 1-year-old boy because he was just all over the place,” she says. “I remember my boys always wanted to climb trees … so I said, ‘Why don’t we do that up here?’” Nardelli scoured the Internet for ideas and enlisted the help of decorator Linda Castle of Decorated Designs for interior touches like carpet with kid-friendly cushioning and
a pinecone-accented overhead light fixture. Without a real blueprint—“No one has a pattern for an indoor tree,” she says—Nardelli’s onsite maintenance man built the bones of the tree in about a week. Decorative artist Stewart Huntington of Marietta-based Muralsfauxu2 then stepped in to finish the exterior with chicken wire and a heavy canvaslike material, which he painted to imitate the bark of a trunk. “Stewart was so creative and could take an idea that I would have and turn it into a masterpiece. He was wonderful to collaborate with during the project. It was like two kids in a candy shop,” Nardelli says. Huntington covered the walls in a freehand mural of animal-filled woods and painted the ceiling a sky turning from day to night. A painted castle on the night side of the room even lights up with glow-in-the-dark fireworks (there are also glow-in-the-dark stars in the upstairs pirate cave). From start to finish, the fanciful
playroom took about a month to complete. “The one thing that shocks me with kids is it’s not like they’re shocked seeing a tree in the bedroom. They walk in and it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s a tree,’” Nardelli says. “I know that as they get bigger it isn’t going to be nearly as interesting, but if they like the tree there are all kinds of things you can do.” Already Nardelli is thinking of incorporating a slide or swing into the tree when her grandson gets older. If a granddaughter comes along, she may even add a “cottage in the woods” for her to play in. The playroom isn’t just for the little tykes, however. When the Nardellis’ four grown children (in their 20s and 30s) are home, everyone hangs out in the playroom. “Everyone tends to gather in the playroom and just hang out with Bobby,” Nardelli says. “Even my mom, who is in her 80s, loves sleeping in the room when she comes to visit.” n
The playroom’s two-level tree house fits right in among the murals of animals and the woods.
owner: Sue Nardelli Room completed: 2012 Theme: Children’s tree house. Use: Playroom. Homeowner’s favorite part: Watching her grandson go from place to place and “just enjoy every inch of the room.”
November/December 2012 | Simply Buckhead
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