Couple’s Tanglewood home reflects elegant comfort.
Traditional home makes most of spaces for calm, welcoming feel
THE family room in Fowler and Lucy Carter’s Tanglewood home is just about as perfect as a room can be.
Comfortable sofas and chairs sit around leather ottomans used as a coffee table.
On one side, a sizable TV is hidden in a cabinet; with the flip of a switch it lifts up, taking what appeared to be the cabinet’s top up with it. Above the cabinet is beautiful modern art, the result of a three-year search for the perfect piece.
Built-in shelves along another wall display an eye-popping collection of blue-and-white pottery. Platters, pots, bowls and vases all back up to pretty green walls that show off the colors and patterns in a way no other could.
One look and you’ll consider collecting the pottery just so you can display it in the same way.
In each room of this thoughtfully designed home, you could step back and wonder: How could this have been put together in any other way?
Needing more space
When Lucy was pregnant with the couple’s first child, they were living in a 1,400-squarefoot bungalow with just two bedrooms. It was a cozy first home, but they knew they needed more space.
They fell in love with the sprawling canopy of trees and friendly neighbors in Tanglewood and in 2009 bought a 5,000-square-foot 1950s-era ranch-style home.
By the time Lucy was pregnant with their third child, they knew that the home needed more updates, and the configuration of space didn’t quite suit their needs. They wanted to stay in the same place, just not in the same house.
So the Carters demolished their home and built one that would fit into the neighborhood without looming over neighbors. It would provide more square footage on a second floor to keep the scale of home versus green space.
They called on Dillon Kyle Architects — Kyle is a distant relative and has designed homes for several people in Fowler’s family — for help. Soon, Sandy Lucas of Lucas Eilers Design Associates came on board for the interior design work.
As a group, they embarked on a long list of questions about the home, its yard, its garage. How will they live there — and, more important, how can the home accommodate their changing needs?
“(Kyle) does, in a good way, teach you what would be a better version of your idea,” Fowler said of the guidance he and Lucy got from their architect.
Though many families forgo formal spaces such as living rooms and dining rooms in favor of more open and casual floor plans, the Carters wanted a traditional home. They would eat together regularly in a formal dining room and have formal spaces where adults could gather without interference. Likewise, the children would have their space, too, so friends and toys could all have their own place.
At the front of the new, 7,000-square-foot, five-bedroom home are formal living and dining rooms. The living room serves a number of purposes, the most recent of which was to hold a Christmas tree surrounded by hundreds of gifts.
The Carters host their big family holiday event, a Christmas Eve party where 100 people spanning four generations gather for food and fun. Off the dining room is a bar, accessible from two sides. It can be closed off or opened for full use during small gatherings, big family events or even fundraisers they host for River Oaks Baptist School, the Joy School or Houston Methodist Hospital, among others.
Big bold windows are a common thread in homes designed by Kyle.
“Almost every client wants lots and lots and lots of light. They are very driven by the need for their house to be open and bright and fresh,” Kyle said. “I really like lots of glass, especially glass that goes from the floor to the ceiling — and I love the way it ends up turning out.”
It was Kyle’s idea to hide the TV in the adult family room. He said there’s often an issue between where a TV should be and where furniture should be or how to have a large TV without making it the focus of the room.
The solution is to hide it — and that’s what Kyle did. Knowing that when the home is being designed is important because the lift that elevates the TV gets mounted to the slab, which has about an 18-inch drop beneath the foundation to hold the TV.
Defining style
Clean, timeless and classic were how the Carters described their style to Kyle and Lucas. Once the conversation turned to furnishings, though, it was clear that the couple wanted to sit on, walk on and look at things that were fairly traditional. There were family pieces to be factored in: art, antiques a baby grand piano that had belonged to Lucy’s greatgrandmother.
Some existing furniture was reupholstered — one pair of chairs got an elegant monogram treatment — and even artwork was reframed with updated looks.
Decisions about flooring shifted from concrete to a combination of wood and limestone for a warmer look that worked better with skirted chairs and sofas.
New things brought in eclectic touches: a brass demilune console in the foyer and an ironstone end table in the family room.
And though it may be the greenbacked bookcases that made Lucy’s china collection pop, soft blues dominate in this home.
Blue shows up in window treatments — draperies and shades — throughout and takes a playful turn in bold wallpaper in a powder room. Kitchen cabinets were painted blue, and cabinets in the nearby bar were painted a slightly lighter shade, which they nicknamed “Fowler blue.”
Fowler went to culinary school and had dreams of being a chef before he went to work for the family business, Black Stone Minerals, where he’s director of new ventures. So he had a lot to say about the kitchen’s footprint.
The long center island has a marble top, and perimeter counters are topped with black walnut. He insisted on Wolf SubZero appliances and a Scotsman icemaker. They use a dual gas/electric range, have two dishwashers — which Lucy says is “the best thing ever” — and a super-organized pantry.
A screened-in porch allows for outdoor dining when the weather is nice, and there you’ll find the “big daddy of grills,” Fowler’s Kalamazoo Outdoor Gourmet grill.
Though a fair amount of the furniture in the home is new, the pieces they brought with them were looked at with a new view.
“People can have preconceived notions about a console that was in the dining room all their life. It might take on a totally different use when we put it someplace else,” Lucas said. “Being able to look at those things with a fresh eye can have a big impact.”
Coordinated effort
Looking back, the Carters feel they took the right approach, selecting an architect, interior designer and even a landscape architect — Thompson + Hanson — together at the start.
“If you can pick them all before you’re too deep into planning, they can problem-solve together. It’s costly, but it saves heartache and saves money on the back end,” Fowler said.
The Carters, both 37, also love how calm their home can feel, even though they have three children who are 8 and younger.
“It’s a quiet and tranquil place, even with the noise and chaos of the kids. It feels calmer than any place we’ve ever lived,” Lucy said.
In the evening, after they put the kids to bed, they take glasses of wine outside. With fans going, they hear a slight hum of Loop 610 in the background.
They barely can tell they’re in the hustle and bustle of a great big city.