Bigger is better for Hovas family
Christie and Greg Hovas were living in a large home in Katy that they had just finished building, but Christie was on the hunt again. She wanted a place with more land.
She’s a horsewoman and needs plenty of room for her menagerie of animals, so their home is as much about the location and land as it is about the dwelling that sits on it.
“Our house was 6,000 square feet, and it was the biggest house I ever wanted to live in,” she said. “I felt like there were rooms we never went into.”
On her hunt, they drove past a sprawling Mediterranean-style home with a terracotta roof in an equestrian neighborhood in Hockley. She said out loud that she would never buy a house that big. She was wrong.
When it went on the market, they bought that very house, all 10,000 square feet.
Christie loves light colors and casual French country décor, so the home’s dark colors weren’t going to work. She did some decorating on her own, tweaking the kitchen and master bathroom and buying some furniture, but there came a point when she really couldn’t handle what it took to fill a home that size on her own.
After moving in two years ago, she hired Rainey Richardson, principal at Rainey Richardson Interiors and co-owner of RR Home, a furniture showroom at the Houston Design Center.
Their designer/client relationship wasn’t just about balancing the Hovases’ wants and needs — it was about figuring out what was more versus less important, when they needed to save versus splurge and finding ways to get what they wanted with less construction upheaval.
Richardson started work on a master plan that detailed furnishings, fabric choices, lighting, flooring and window treatments for every room in the home, and then they started work in phases.
“When Greg and I got married (19 years ago), everything was darker and heavier,” she said. “That used to be my decorating style, but now I like it airy and light. I want it to be sophisticated, but I told Rainey that I have to live in this house. We have two kids, and they have friends over, and we have millions of animals.”
Their children, 13-yearold Cameron and 12-yearold Madison, often have friends over, so it’s not uncommon for there to be six kids in the home. Then there are their animals, from their cats Peanut and Chloe to dogs Mac, a Royal Frenchill (combination of French bulldog and Cavalier King Charles), and labradoodles Shadow and Piper. Their son has a bird and at one time had a pet crawfish he found in a nearby pond. Their chickens cluck at will and roam the land, wearing cute leg bands that bear their names — Foxy, Wonder Woman, Batman, Betsy and Flower, to name a few.
A pair of goats — Dilly and Dilly — had an unfortunate run-in with a bobcat, so they’re down to
a single Dilly for now. Then there’s the buzzard, a big creepy creature with a broken wing that hangs out on the drive and waits for Christie to feed it. (She’d like to take it to wildlife rehab, but the prospect of catching it seems daunting.)
But having the land and a barn is really about horses since Christie competes in eventing horse trials.
She has qualified for national
competitions the past few years, but the event coincides with her kids’ start at school.
Indoors, Christie’s sweet spot is with antiques, so plenty of shopping at MAI and Joyce Horn Antiques helped fill and accessorize the home.
She loves nice tile, too, so the kitchen, bathrooms and fireplaces got new treatments. Some of the biggest changes came from