Columnist Molly Kimball’s home has timeless Southern style | Entertainment/Life
When Molly Kimball and Brad Schlotterer were designing their Old Metairie home with architect Michael Bell in 2006, they were inspired by the timeless architecture of the late A. Hays Town.
The enduring body of work by Town, one of the South’s most respected and prolific masters of his profession, is characterized by features of the historic Acadian and Creole homes throughout the architect’s native Louisiana. They include deep gallery porches with overhangs to shield the sun as well as full-length shutters, high ceilings, the use of brick for both interior and exterior features, wide plank wood floors, natural cypress used for exposed beams and to frame casement openings and brick courtyards with lush landscaping.
Molly Kimball and Brad Schlotterer in the doorway of their Old Metairie home.
Kimball and Schlotterer’s home has all these features. They worked with Bell and interior designer Curtis Herring to create a home that would age well, a goal they met in spades.
A bit shy of two decades later, Kimball and Schlotterer invited Herring over and asked what he thought they should do to keep their home looking au courant. As it turned out, not much.
“He said we should frame the (local artist David) Harouni painting in the dining room and redo our (primary) bathroom upstairs,” Kimball said. “That’s it.”
Mission accomplished. The house is timeless. Situated on a broad corner lot, the gallery porch wraps gracefully around one side. Like Town, the couple favors the reuse of old building materials blended with new materials to make a home look as though it has been around for generations.
The Kimball and Schlotterer home was built almost two decades ago, yet it remains fresh due to careful design choices and timeless finishes.
This is evident throughout the house, beginning with the weathered, centrally located cypress entry door set with panels of both clear and colored glue chip glass. Like all the doors in the house, it was acquired from the local architectural salvage resource The Bank. Opposite the door and porch, the front wall of the house is finished with four sets of full-length shutters, another Town hallmark.
Kimball, a registered dietitian and nutrition journalist, is known for her weekly column in The Times-Picayune, her monthly article in Avenue Magazine, as the host of WGNO’s weekly “Fueled Wellness + Nutrition with Molly” and a podcast of the same name. She is the force behind Ochsner’s Eat Fit and Alcohol Free for 40 programs.
Schlotterer, a native New Orleanian, is a corporate attorney specializing in maritime affairs and a partner with Kean Miller. The two met in 1997 when Kimball was a student at LSU. They were married in 2006 in Healdsburg, California, a favorite destination.
The home’s kitchen is timeless. The concrete island and counters were fashioned by Gary Timphony.
A Katrina story
The couple bought the first house on their property in 1999. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina uprooted a pine tree and tossed it squarely through the middle of the house, reducing it to sticks. The tree’s downward projection was halted by their bed’s headboard, which they kept for posterity’s sake.
“Had we been home sleeping, it would have been a disaster,” Schlotterer said.
After the house was torn down, they looked for the perfect home before deciding to rebuild on the lot in the neighborhood they had come to love.
This generous porch is located off the home’s living area. Kimball has had the outdoor cushions recovered a couple of times. The top of the table was recently covered in copper sheeting for a timeless look.
“We love the neighborhood for its mixture of people,” Kimball said. “We love our neighbors.”
Stephen Fleischmann, of Titan Construction, led the team that built the 2,500-square-foot house with an eye toward efficient use of space, inspired by the book “Creating the Not So Big House” by Sarah Susanka. “The Louisiana Houses of A. Hays Town” by Cyril E. Vetter was also used as a guide.
Situated on a broad corner lot, the home’s gallery porch wraps gracefully around one side. The couple favors reusing old building materials, blended with new ones, to make a home look as though it has been around for generations.
Bricks were salvaged from a house being demolished in the Lower Garden District and used for the Metairie home’s outdoor walkway, the broad, shallow steps leading to the front porch, a wall in the dining room and another in the living room that includes a generous fireplace and hearth, and an outdoor fireplace.
Reclaimed cypress beams were used to make the fireplace mantel, the floating staircase leading to the second floor, some ceiling beams and to frame the broad casement openings in the downstairs living areas.
Town would be quite proud.
One wall in the dining room was built of old brick from a home being demolished in the Lower Garden District. The painting there is ‘Poseidon’s Flowers’ by Marc Harris. The painting on the rear wall is by local artist David Harouni. The chandelier is by local designer Julie Neill. The dining chairs are from Restoration Hardware. The totem-like sculpture on the left is by Atilla Tivadar.
In 2014, the couple transformed the grassy side yard off their side porch into a lushly landscaped courtyard, another Town move.
Works by a host of local artists and treasures collected on world travels are also abundant in the Kimball-Schlotterer home.
“Traveling is our thing to share,” Kimball said. “We don’t give one another gifts.”
Some of the art is extremely close to home. A ceramicist of many years, Kimball’s fine, ever-evolving sculptural and practical works are found throughout the home. Her work is sold locally at Home Malone and Bottom of the Cup, but she mainly gifts her work to loved ones.
A feather family member
Molly Kimball hand-feeds worms to Lucky, a mother duck, and her brood in her garden. Lucky and the ducklings come and go as they please around the neighborhood. Lucky joined the family in 2023 as a duckling that followed Kimball home.
Lucky, the luckiest of ducks, joined the family in 2023. The homeless baby duckling, the runt of her brood with an imperfect beak, had been abandoned by her mother. She followed Kimball home from a walk in the neighborhood.
“Our neighbor raises chickens and has a coop, so we co-parent Lucky,” Kimball said. “She slept in the coop as a chick at night and now lays her eggs there. She hangs out here during the day when she is not hanging out at the canal around the corner.”
“She moves her ducklings around the neighborhood whenever she has a new brood,” Schlotterer said. “She also brings her boyfriends here. We call all of them ‘Rocky.’ We can’t keep up. There have been a series of relationships. She’s popular.”
As if on cue, Lucky toddled into the courtyard with a stream of ducklings in tow to feast on the dried mealworms and live fat juicy red worms Kimball is obliged to hand-feed her. Once satiated, Lucky flew away, leaving Kimball and Schlotterer to babysit while she went to the canal alone.
The waterfowl’s influence carries through to the inside of the family home. On occasion, Kimball encourages Lucky to walk through nontoxic children’s finger paints before taking a stroll across a stretched canvas to create surprisingly precise abstract designs. The proceeds from Lucky’s paintings are donated to Clearwater Sanctuary, a nonprofit in Covington that rehabilitates injured and orphaned wildlife and returns them to nature. Thus far, Lucky’s work has raised over $1,000 to help other wildlife.
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