Designer’s editing and accessories transform a house into a home
Dr. Lauren LeavittGriffin didn’t think much of the Tanglewood house when she first saw it.
From the street it looked like a wall of brick under a low-slung roof. Its big, wooden front doors were anything but welcoming.
But her mother, Valerie Leavitt, urged her to look inside. She remembered it as a cool house where her sons played with friends years ago.
Inside, the home needed work, too. The mustard-colored paint and black marble would have to go. Hardwood floors would have to be refinished and kelly green carpet needed to be ripped out. It was the spaciousness of the living area in the 6,000-square-foot home that hooked her.
“I fell in love with the openness of it,” said Leavitt-Griffin, an emergency medicine physician at Memorial Hermann Katy Hospital. “I could see myself having Christmas here, and my family growing up here.”
She and husband Dallas Griffin, an investment banker, bought the home for what they knew it could be.
Its sweeping formal living room flows into the spacious kitchen and cozy family room, perfect for the holiday parties the couple hosts. Ceiling-tofloor windows and doors lining the back of the house look out onto the patio, pool and lush landscaping.
The first wave of work made it livable for the couple and their son, Grant, now 15 months old: new flooring, covering over the dated paint colors, and moving in their furniture.
But it still didn’t feel pretty — and that was something Leavitt-Griffin really wanted.
“I’m good at medicine, and I’m not good at decorating. I would try and I was overbuying. It was mismatched and didn’t look right,” she said. “I walked into a house Marie (Flanigan) had done, and I just fell in love with it.”
The couple hired Flanigan and talked about what they hoped to do, swapping pictures and floor plans.
Leavitt-Griffin initially thought she just needed help getting things in the right place. Quickly, though, she discovered that would not be enough.
“I finally said, ‘Do what you need to do to make it pretty,’ ” Leavitt-Griffin said. “We started small and finished big.”
Flanigan began the project knowing she’d stick to a light, neutral color palette, evaluating each space — sometimes adding more in, sometimes taking things out.
“We touched almost every room, it was coming up with what made sense, editing and getting rid of stuff that didn’t work and pulling it together in a cohesive scheme,” Flanigan said.
That’s one bit of advice she’d give to any homeowner.
“Editing is such a practical tip,” she said. “We live in our homes and get used to the way things are and never step back with a fresh eye. Everything collects dust, so to speak. You can create a whole new fresh room with the stuff you have.”
Behind those foreboding front doors, Flanigan envisioned a sanctuary. The living room, the first room you see, didn’t have much in it and needed to be defined. She began by adding paneling and sconces around the fireplace.
Because of its size, it needed more than one seating area, so she brought in one, long natural fiber rug to cover most of the space, then added two smaller rugs. Around those she placed sofas, chairs, a bench and small tables. Each area has a glamorous chandelier of antiqued metal and wooden beads.
From the curtain rod that runs, uninterrupted, the length of the main living area, Flanigan added custom-made draperies in ivory and shades of gray.
In the dining room, a built-in china cabinet was filled with dishes, and its counter held a line of crystal decanters.
Flanigan added grasscloth wallpaper for texture, plus big vertical mirrors on each side of a console to keep the room from feeling too feminine.
She added a rug, lamps and two gray chairs. That’s what she added to the room; the rest of the work was in taking things away. She let beautiful serving pieces represent the china in the glass doors and stacked the rest of the dishes inside the cabinet. The collection of decanters was reduced to three.
“I thought it looked great before,” LeavittGriffin said with selfdeprecating humor. “She came in and took most of it away, and it looks better. Of course, less is more.”
The lesson here, Flanigan said, is that people shouldn’t be afraid of a blank space. “Sometimes negative space is just as beautiful as having an object. My background is architecture, and I like letting the architecture come through.”
Another major transformation was the master bedroom, for which Flanigan recently received the 2016 HGTV Faces of Design “People’s Pick Award” in the bedroom and bath category.
This room already had a bed and nightstands, plus a small sofa in front of its fireplace. Flanigan brought in a huge tufted ottoman, side tables, rugs, large lamps and a chandelier, drapes, bedding and artwork.
There were built-in bookshelves in the master suite, too, so Flanigan rearranged them as well. She added small art objects, stylish coffee-table books and flowers.
Another room that got a makeover is Griffin’s study, a masculine room in an otherwise fairly feminine home.
A large rug with a geometric design was topped with a zebra skin. And a new leather executive chair and reupholstered guest chairs add a rugged touch to both sides of a bespoke Lucite desk made by Fabriplast.
Flanigan edited Griffin’s sports memorabilia, earned during his years on the University of Texas football team. Not only did he play on the 2005 national championship team, by his senior year, 2007, he’d been named team captain and received the Draddy Trophy — the so-called academic Heisman — given by the National Football Foundation to the top scholar athlete in college football.
Although Griffin initially wanted a zinctopped table for his study, Flanigan convinced him to try the Lucite. Now, he’s showing it off.
“We wanted the space to be a reflection of him,” Flanigan said. “That meant including the stuff that was most meaningful to him and displaying it in a clean and thoughtful way.”
In many cases, designers work with their clients and new furniture and accessories trickle in slowly. For this couple, Flanigan ordered the decor items. When the big day came, she asked Leavitt-Griffin to leave her home at 8 a.m. and come back at 5 p.m. for the big reveal.
“I just kept saying, ‘I can’t believe this is my house.’ The entire ambience changed,” LeavittGriffin said. “It went from the house that we live in, to my home. It’s perfect, down to the napkins in the bathroom. Who thinks of those? She had done everything. Everything.”
“Editing is such a practical tip. We live in our homes and get used to the way things are and never step back with a fresh eye. You can create a whole new fresh room with the stuff you have. ” Designer Marie Flanigan