Houston designer creates her dream home in the country
Farmhouse style mixes rustic details with modern touches
On a two-lane road off Texas 105, Lauren Prestridge has built the house of her dreams.
The charcoal-gray two-story in Cleveland, which Prestridge designed inside and out, is full of contrasts. It’s a modern-day farmhouse that offers a mix of industrial details and charming antiques, cozy corners and wide-open spaces.
“I had been dreaming about this place forever,” says Prestridge, the principal interior designer for Mark W. Todd Architects. She and her husband, Will Prestridge, a Houston firefighter, bought the property five or six years before they started building. While they rented a house with their two daughters, now 9 and 6, Prestridge drew the plans, adding in every detail she’d ever wanted a house to have.
“Because it was the country, I needed it to be a farmhouse,” Prestridge says, but she also wanted modern touches and an “urban vibe” mixed in with the homey details.
That mix of new and old, city and country can be spotted in every room. The kitchen sink is farmhouse style, but it’s made of stainless steel. The kitchen backsplash and shower walls are covered with traditional white glass subway tile — but it’s laid straight, not in brick formation, to look more contemporary. The home has three bedrooms and 2,170 square feet of living space. “We wanted it to be comfortable but still small,” she says. “We didn’t want anything big that we couldn’t take care of once the kids are gone.” She didn’t waste space
on hallways; the only buffer between spaces is a small vestibule that leads to the master bedroom. The kitchen, dining area and living room all flow together as one space, and just off the open kitchen, a glass accordion door can fold back to open up the house to the outside.
Throughout, Prestridge has decorated with a combination of new items and antiques, many of them family heirlooms. There’s a story behind nearly every piece of furniture. The heavy wooden kitchen table is a history-rich hand-medown from Will Prestridge’s family. The freestanding tub in the girls’ bathroom has been refinished to look new, but at one time, Prestridge says, “horses drank out of it.” And the living room’s midcentury credenza is something Prestridge spotted for sale on the side of the road. “I told my husband, ‘Stop the truck!’ ” she says. At $20, the heavy wooden piece was a steal.
In the master bedroom, an old Singer sewing machine serves as a nightstand. The master bath’s lavatory is an antique buffet Prestridge painted white and topped with Calacatta Gold marble. And in the living room, Prestridge has balanced two green glass Hollywood Regency lamps — a find from her great-aunt’s attic — with a contemporary floor lamp from West Elm.
A wooden quarter-turn staircase leads to the second floor and the girls’ two bedrooms. At the base of the stairs is a Victorian newel post, an ornately carved piece that was salvaged from an old house in Houston. Its grandeur is countered by the simple concrete floors, which give the main living spaces an industrial feel.
The home’s walls, ceilings and trim are all painted the same shade of white, but the interior doors are the same charcoal as the exterior. In the living room, a broad charcoal stripe slices across the wall, turning sharply down toward the floor on one end. The edges are imprecise, making the stripe appear a little fuzzy. “I wanted it to look like a pencil edge — like an architectural drawing with a pencil edge,” Prestridge says.
The house has room to breathe on more than 2 acres of land, and a pool sparkles in the backyard. “We absolutely love coming home,” Prestridge says.