Beauty and function
Interior designer helps growing family make most of West U bungalow space
Whether you call your home large or small is a matter of perspective.
In Manhattan, where space may as well be measured by the square inch instead of square foot, you’ll likely live in a tiny apartment — and you’ll like it, no matter how many times you trip over your dog.
That’s how Mike and Toni Van Meter felt when they lived there, crammed into a small space they knew was temporary.
After moving to Houston seven years ago, the couple bought a 1,710-square-foot West University Place bungalow and thought they were in heaven.
“It felt huge,” Toni said. “We lived in Manhattan. When we got here, we had empty rooms; we didn’t know what to do with all of the space. I thought, ‘I’m going to have to buy furniture.’ ”
Both busy doctors — she’s an anesthesiologist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and he’s in emergency medicine at UTHealth — the Van Meters didn’t have time or energy for shopping.
“One day, I said to my mom, ‘I don’t even know how to arrange my furniture,’ ” said Toni Van Meter, whose parents live in Houston. Her mother knew interior designer Janus Lazaris of Janus Design Group and suggested she give her a call. “She’ll come to your house for two hours and help you place what you have and give suggestions for what you should by, paint colors and such,” her mom said.
When the couple met Lazaris, they first asked about colors to paint their red-brick home. “That was the beginning of the end. That was it,” Van Meter said.
Lazaris told the couple not to paint the brick but offered ideas for paint colors for the shutters and eaves. With plenty of time still left on the clock, she told them to move the piano and buy a couple of pieces, including a buffet.
“We said, ‘Thank you very much’ and let her go,” Toni said, now able to laugh about that awkward first meeting.
“But then we moved the piano where she said, and that room looked 10,000 times better.”
They invited her back, and over time, Lazaris reinvented every room in the house.
For her part, Lazaris’ goal was to make their home feel and function as if it’s much larger.
Their mix of post-college furniture would be replaced by custom pieces mixed with vintage items restored or reupholstered in a way that reflects their personalities.
While the home didn’t have a formal foyer, Lazaris created the feel of an entrance by adding a demilune table with a mirror and placing two low benches in front of the window.
That baby grand piano shares space with an old Henredon sofa and two chairs, all reupholstered in Kravet and Robert Allen high-tech fabrics that would hold up to the tests of a young family. When the project began, Van Meter was pregnant with their first child, a daughter who’s now 2½ years old. Their son is now nearly a year old.
Toni was skeptical but went with Lazaris’ vision. “I wouldn’t have picked out those (vintage) things because the cushions were deflated and worn. I thought, ‘Really? You can make those into something?’ ” she said.
As it turns out, the vintage furniture was sized for smaller spaces — not the vast rooms we create today — so they were size-appropriate for the Van Meters’ bungalow.
Their clutter-free dining room has a new table and chairs, long billowy draperies and an Asian silkscreen.
“She picked up the folding screen at a vintage store,” Van Meter said. “I’m half Chinese, so when I saw it, I really, really liked that. That sort of piece feels familiar to me growing up.”
Van Meter’s family emigrated to the U.S. from England during her senior year in high school. Her father is Chinese and earlier had come to Houston for a sabbatical; he vowed that someday he’d return. Toni Van Meter went on to earn a bachelor’s degree at Texas A&M University, where she met her husband.
In the breakfast area, a sparkly chandelier dictated the rest of the décor, made sophisticated by a zinc-topped table and tufted ecru banquette.
“That banquette gets the most use. My daughter has breakfast on it; I nurse my baby there. When we’re in the kitchen, it always ends up being my seat on the banquette,” Van Meter said.
Along the way, she learned to trust Lazaris’ judgment, approving furniture via text message and even going with paint colors she thought were too dark.
In the master bedroom, Lazaris offered two shades of gray, favoring the darker one (Sherwin-Williams’ Sensuous Gray).
“We finally said, ‘She’s the designer; we’ll trust her.’ Oh, my god, it was so dark,” Van Meter said. “We had a little bit of a freak-out session where we considered repainting it the lighter color.”
The bedroom is very small, and furniture had to be considered carefully, getting a bed and two nightstands so precisely sized that they fit together with not an inch to spare.
Getting it just right was important to Lazaris. “The master bedroom is one of the most important rooms in the house,” the designer said. “If you’re married, it’s the place where you come together and recharge your soul. It feeds the relationship.”
The kids’ rooms called for a smaller budget and genderneutral décor so they wouldn’t have to keep changing it. Lazaris transformed a kelly-green desk into a changing table and turned storage space into a comfortable bench.
“I had some hairbrained ideas that she actually worked with,” Van Meter said of wanting to keep that green desk. “She can find the fabric for anything, for sure.”
Soft linen curtains from another room were cut down to fit the shorter windows in the kids’ rooms, and leftover wallpaper was framed to become cute slices of art, just placeholders until baby pictures come along.
“I’m big on using what you have. Recycling and repurposing is a valid way to go, especially when you have a budget,” Lazaris said.
Ultimately, the Van Meters appreciated that Lazaris could do what they could not: She made their home functional and beautiful, right down to the details.
“I think that one of Janus’ real strengths is finishing a room,” Toni Van Meter said. “Even when the big pieces are in, you think it looks great. When she put in the pictures, the accessories and our own things, she ended up displaying everything beautifully. She tied the room together with finishing touches,” Now a family of four, the Van Meters’ perspective on space changed again.
“We use every space more fully, compared to when there were two of us,” Toni Van Meter said. “It’s a good thing we filled everything out and made it more functional. When there are four of you, just to get some breathing room you’ve got to cover the whole house.”
And they’re contemplating what comes next: maybe a bigger house ?