Once a forlorn little building—roughly 400-square-feet little—on Valley Street, Scottsville’s switching station recently got a second life thanks to the vision of interior designer Carmel Greer. A D.C. transplant, Greer and her husband took an interest in transforming a few of Scottsville’s abandoned buildings into short-term rentals (they’re renovating another nearby to include three additional units, which they’re crossing their fingers will be open by the end of April). The Switching Station—so named for its history as the town’s telephone exchange office—was a dream come true for Greer, an interior designer by trade.
“I’ve always wanted to do a tiny, tiny, tiny little project,” she says. “When you’re working with a much larger project, there’s a tendency to be safer in terms of your design choices. Because this place is so little, I thought, I might as well just be bold.”
She took inspiration from the property’s 1930 Art Deco vibes, and hung a giant (“The crate for it was the size of a small European car,” she says) Murano glass chandelier as the focal point. A rich terracotta color coats the ceiling (“Again, not something we get to do every day”), while a granite countertop mimics the look of soapstone in the kitchen (but won’t worry guests over proper maintenance).
“It’s a humble building, but I wanted it to feel a little bit glamorous,” Greer says. “There are so many rich details.”
See something you like during your overnight stay? Greer says that’s okay! A lot of the art and furnishings are for sale. It’s a way of satisfying her itch to have a retail store without the pressure of having to stock a high volume of goods, though she admits that, in the event that a guest does want to snatch up her vintage silver tray collection, she has plenty of décor items in storage from past jobs to slot in a replacement.
“[The rentals are] just a cool way of making use of interesting objects that would otherwise not see the light of day,” she says.
