Maine Homes Magazine, Fall 2020
See how Tim and Tyler Karu reimagined the 19th-century space.
"I don’t do typical,” Portland designer Tyler Karu says, sitting near a kitchenette wall in the 1891 Mercury Inn, where she would soon be installing an antique French poster of the hotel’s namesake god above an ash sideboard bearing neon-yellow candles in elegant turned holders and groovy black concentric ovals on its doors. “So much of my client communication is convincing them to get out of their comfort zone.” One client she did not need to sell on the merits of a Victorian/70s/80s–style mash-up, or any of her other schemes, is her brother, Tim, who owns the inn in Portland’s Parkside neighborhood with his husband, Jake Krueger. “I’ve seen enough of her work to know that it always makes sense to let her run,” Tim says.
