The Dog and Pony Show

Visitors to Stephanie Wallace's Foxhall home are treated to a well-edited display of her life's passion

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The Dog and Pony Show
Visitors to Stephanie Wallace's Foxhall home are treated to a well-edited display of her life's passions: horses, dogs and entertaining.

Competitive amateur rider Stephanie Wallace spends so many weekends at horse shows -- it's her idea of fun -- that when she's home, she likes nothing better than eating in with friends.

For the past seven years, she has been turning her modest brick colonial off MacArthur Boulevard in the District into a stylish sanctuary that pays homage to her passions: horses (she has three, which she boards at friends' stables), dogs (she lives with Mila, a boxer, and Sam, a spaniel of questionable lineage) and entertaining, which she tries to do two or three times a month, from formal sit-downs to casual potlucks.

"My friends think I am crazy, but I really love setting a beautiful table, making things look pretty. I have dishes for every occasion," she says. An ideal gathering occurs when "six or eight friends come over, everyone makes a little something, and we drink some great wine."

The house specialties? "Italian food and shrimp grits."

Because Wallace, 44, and a business partner buy, renovate and sell homes in the area, she can eyeball an interior and quickly decide which walls to remove, which to bump out and which to leave alone. When she bought this $400,000 fixer-upper in one of her favorite parts of Washington in 1999, she knew what she wanted: a kitchen-centric home with an easy flow for large parties and a series of welcoming spaces for intimate events.

For a renovation cost of $275,000, she got her spaces, indoors and out. One is a formal dining area with a U-shaped banquette, decorated with a look that's English pub-meets-gentleman's club. Another gathering place revolves around the table between her white country kitchen and cozy sitting room, where she occasionally polishes silver while watching TV. The last are several flagstone-paved "outdoor rooms"-- including one for dining under a pergola -- in the thoughtfully landscaped back yard, which rises away from the house. A "smoking area" features two chairs by the fishpond, while a pair of comfy, weather-resistant sofas in the "living room" flank a soaring, stone fireplace.

Even in the dead of winter, Wallace uses the outdoors for her annual Christmas party. "It's now for about 50 people," she says. "Last year, I had a tent out back, with sides and a heater so I could leave the French doors open. I have a DJ, and the slate floor is great for dancing."

Wallace has the party catered, "because the years I've cooked I didn't enjoy myself." But she does prepare dinner the night before, for about a dozen out-of-towners. "The menu is always the same -- veal Milanese, baked ziti, a big salad, great Italian wine. It's not fancy, but it's homey."

She put a two-story addition on the back of the house, with the new kitchen and a sitting room on the first floor and a plush master suite above. The old garage at the front of the house became a large foyer that she lined on one side with tall closets faced in weathered barnwood, some fitted with shelves for linens, vases and candlesticks, the better to dress all those tables.

Stand just inside the front door, and it is possible to see straight through to the garden. Turn right, and you enter a small, formal living room with perfectly scaled slipper chairs, a sofa, a chaise and a grand piano. The upholstery is neutral or muted solids and florals, with jolts of color coming from the paintings and prints that Wallace bought, or was given by her father, in decades past, before fine "sporting art" depicting hunting and racing scenes became highly collectible and quite expensive.

The most valuable piece hangs in this living room, a painting of two racers on horseback by famed 18th-century British artist James Seymour. To the untrained eye, it is just one among an eccentric array of 300 years of art and artifacts -- including lamps, plates, statuary and riding ribbons dating to Wallace's own adolescence -- celebrating European and American horses and dogs.

Beyond the living room on the right is the aforementioned clubby three-sided dining alcove, which seats eight. "I love to sit Indian-style, with my feet curled under me, so I had banquettes made. I found a table base and commissioned a walnut top, so eight people can sit around it, and we can pull up two more chairs. The skinniest people sit all the way in." To its left is a bar area, with built-in storage for flutes and goblets, tumblers and pitchers.

But the real heart of the house is the new rear wing. Windows and French doors flood the kitchen and sitting area with light. Glass-fronted cabinets reveal Wallace's many sets of dishes.

Directly overhead is her ultimate sanctuary. Wallace paid as much attention to the master bath as to the kitchen. It features a raised corner-set tub and a pair of sinks surrounded by pale marble. The bedroom, with its pillow-laden bed (a favorite retreat for Sam, the spaniel), has a gas fireplace. Wallace chortles when recalling her madcap acquisition of the painting over its mantle, a Warholesque, three-panel study of a dog she found in a Paris bistro and schlepped back home.

"I spend more money on accessories and knickknacks than I do on furniture," she says gleefully of her deft mix of antiques, fine art and junk-store finds. "You walk into my house and know exactly who I am."

Annie Groer is a staff writer for The Post's Home section, and also spends more money on accessories and knickknacks than furniture.