HOUSE TOUR | Political Power Couple Opens Up Amazing DC Home

this table was my grandparents so many many many luminaries dined at this table including four presidents my grandparents were very close to lady bird and lyndon johnson so they had dinner here at this table many times as did president truman president roosevelt my parents were very close to eleanor and franklin roosevelt and eisenhower a republican which might surprise you but my grandmother believed in bipartisan entertaining she told me when i was in college that if i had a dinner party i should always have a democratic senator a republican congressman a journalist and a supreme court justice at my dinner parties and i took note have you had one of those parties most of my dinner parties are for women but as most of the great people in politics media and even the supreme court are women i would say yes you're watching homeworthy where we believe every home has a story like and subscribe for more hi i'm susannah quinn welcome to my washington home i'm an entrepreneur a fifth generation washingtonian also known as a cave dweller and some people like myself also consider me to be an interior designer a chef and a flower designer what's the term cave dweller for oh you know i don't know where it originates but i think what it means is that i'm dwelling in the caves of my ancestors i haven't left washington this is a photo of my mother in her modeling days and me on my 45th birthday there used to be pictures of some of the kids and some of the grandchildren but my husband said to me oh we don't have pictures of all of the kids and all of the grandchildren and i said well then i need a bigger house and a bigger table so we ended up with just my mother and me this is a rigo candle the cypress candle which i absolutely love jackie kennedy used to burn them in the white house and they smell amazing i like to get up really early on monday mornings and go out to the wholesale florist in silver spring and just buy a ton of flowers and do arrangements throughout the house because i could do about 10 arrangements for the cost of one arrangement ordered online my interior design style my design ethos if you will is somewhat captive by history because i have so many family pieces that i tend to design around i wanted my living room to be decorated in neutral colors because i wanted my art and my books and my photos to really pop and be the star of the show this photo from franklin roosevelt was to my grandfather who was in the house in the senate from 1938 to 1968 he was a very very powerful politician during that era in every room of my house there are framed photos that's a really important part of the interior design in my home is just having reflections of the memories of the experiences and the trips and and pictures of my family everywhere because when i walk through my house i really feel like i'm surrounded by my loved ones and happy memories of things that we've done together you do have a few star photos in here show me some of them oh gosh um i love this one this is my husband jack quinn who was white house counsel in the clinton administration with president clinton in the clinton's home about a month after our son storm was born and i love this because president clinton is holding a photo of storm which he inscribed with a really cute inscription storm you look good and calm congratulations bill clinton this is a photo from president kennedy to my father my father was chief of staff to a cabinet member in the kennedy administration democratic blood flowing through my body this coffee table uh my grandmother had designed for her house and it must have been i mean i don't know what like 1945 she had a two-story enormous addition edward durrell stone who designed the kennedy center did the initial drawings for it and so she had this table designed it weighs about 100 tons and i i just love it in fact my grandmother used to have cushions not coffee table books cushions around the edges so people could sit it added additional seating and have a drink and just talk to people on the sofa and i sit on the coffee table all the time when people are over i love it i love this photo you can see that president clinton is whispering something to my husband and gore is trying to listen and i actually got from the white house photographer the series of photographs so you can see the events the sequence of events that lead to this photograph so you know what he's whispering about but i can't tell you sorry my favorite thing about this room is the painting over the mantel i always thought that art was like this painting over here of venice you know i thought it was i think of like the little girl with the watering can renoir i don't think of very abstract art and now abstract art is my passion i love it so i love that painting and i really think the colors are amazing that's the most important thing to me juxtaposing old with new and high with low i don't see anything low in here we'll go up to the uh young adult family room and i'll show you some low what's this table here this has a lot of memorabilia um well this is an antique table and an antique mirror and what i love about this table is very important friends and family members have their pictures on this table and whenever those people come over they always move the photos and they place their photo in the front and so every time we have a family member or a guest the pictures get switched around so i'm learning when i know a certain friend or family member is coming over to put their photo in the front i love this shelf this is the ancestral shelf and i popped my son's little dinosaur up there so that he could be up there with his grandparents who are no longer with us this is my parents and my husband's parents and my grandparents and all of their baby cups and my baby cup this is the day that i was christened at christ church in georgetown my mother was married three times i was from the third marriage this was her first husband's baby cup i don't know how i ended up with that but i thought i would put it up there on the ancestral shelf and this is my husband with the pope pope john paul and we have a little piece of storm's artwork in front of it because we mix everything up here we are leaving the living room we're coming into the dining room and we're passing my favorite piece of art in the house by gian garofalo my husband and i saw it at an art gallery at a cnn brunch and we fell in love with it and we left and we thought about it we talked about it for like six months and finally i called and it was still at the gallery so we bought it and i really think it it just makes the house it makes the entrance foyer if you turn around in my dining room um probably the oldest painting in this house is i call them my three angels but it's actually three hawaiian girls it's a painting by john young a very famous hawaiian painter that my grandmother bought on the way to travels in china and i think my grandfather um snuck at home in a diplomatic pouch oh no wait it's from hawaii so we didn't need a diplomatic pouch she snuck home a lot of things in diplomatic pouches um but anyway i love that painting and that's that's impressionist but it's very um it's very traditional we are gonna go to the bathroom so when guests excuse themselves to go to the powder room they're often gone for like 30 minutes because there are so many fun photos to see in here and then they come out and they want all the stories that is a magazine cover i did when i chaired the national portrait gallery there's a lot of family photos my husband on air force one a letter that i treasure from secretary mattis oh well of course we have a monogram tea towel because my mother told me if it's not moving monogram it we have a painting from ted kennedy given to my husband and me when we got married which i love because it's of daffodils and he says may you always dance with the daffodils i was 16 years old and i met president reagan for the first time and i said to him listen i happen to think that you're a great president your policies are doing wonders for the country but honestly i really think you're the cutest president we've ever had and there's another photo of him after this picture was taken and he's just like you know laughing that famous reagan laugh i loved him did he say anything to you after you said that oh my gosh he just burst into hysterics and then i saw him the next night and he came over and gave me a hug it was a little bit more casual in those days we are going into the kitchen and i also put a bottle of champagne out just in case and i made a charcuterie board so that we could have a little snack after we're done we are going from the kitchen into the family room which is another one of my absolute favorite rooms in this house i see we have a nerf gun bullet which tells you everything you need to know the only rule in this house is no body shots you'll notice again that this room is decorated with very neutral colors because i just love it when the books and the art and the flowers tell the story this is my son's playroom his name is storm and he's 10 years old and he loves animals so i decorated it in a safari theme but it's a timeless it's a timeless room it's gonna he can you know hang out here and drink beers behind my back when he's 18 and he's not going to feel like he's in a kitty playroom so um i do mix the highs and the lows i have the schumacher wallpaper but i also have pillows that i had made from a fabric store out by delos airport where i do a lot of fabrication a lot of draperies a lot of pillows throughout the house because it's wholesale and it's fabulous next i'm going to take you to the gym and if i say any room in the house is my favorite room and i'm not talking about the gym i'm lying and here's why two and a half years ago i was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer later downgraded to stage three but it doesn't really matter i had seven surgeries and six rounds of chemo and you know feel like i was really on the brink of death multiple times i lost 30 pounds twice and i built my strength back up and am now talking to you as a cancer free and healthy person because of the love of my family and friends and my peloton you will notice that we have two pelotons and not just one which is not as extravagant as it seems during covid the gyms were closed and so it was really helpful to me to have my friends come over and do peloton rides with me to help me stay motivated to get my strength back this is the logia which is an outdoor but covered porch which we redesigned during covet so that we could have friends over and be socially distant safe outside six feet apart and john and kristen checky designed this for me to look like the back of a yacht which i love i remember the first summer that we bought this house i said to my husband we don't need to vacation anywhere look at this this is a vacation and i just love it here there's very few properties in washington that are just surrounded by woods which is nice i've been buying a lot of clothes lately and the reason why i love my closet is because it's l shaped so when i buy packages i can bring them around the corner and open them up and nobody can see me i love my closet who doesn't love a good closet but honestly i love my dressing table i see my family every day but i miss my parents so i like getting up in the morning and coming in here and seeing my dad and my mom and my mom laughing i think we have the same laugh and then i alternate notes that i really love that have inspired me so that i can look at them in the morning this is a great one from my daughter from some friends from my doctor so um i love my dressing table do you have a favorite piece in your closet i do it is this gown which my mother designed the tone on tone so beautiful she was a very very eensy teensy fashion model so it doesn't fit me but i've kept it she asked me to bury her in it she loved it so much it had a white fur stole but it was just too pretty to bury sorry mom is there anything else you want to mention about the closet it's too small i need a bigger closet thanks for watching for more homeworthy content be sure to like and subscribe what do you think of your mom's interior design style i don't like it when you decorate your house what are you gonna put in it how are you gonna decorate pokemon cards movie theater xboxes popcorn machines bubblegum machines arcades video games

Channel: Homeworthy

Views: 315,761

Keywords: real estate, historic home, DIY, antique, french furniture, south of france, interior design, interior designer, home decor, farmhouse, old home, upstate new york, twins, antiques, Washington DC, Politics, new construction

Id: Zpu0k39EzmA

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 05 2021