Bellaire couple builds up after Hurricane Harvey
Laura Manchee and Price Magness have two young sons, one of whom was just learning to walk when Hurricane Harvey hit. Like many, they were caught off guard by the storm’s unrelenting rain.
They woke up at 4 the first morning to find water at the steps of their 1,400-square-foot Bellaire bungalow. An hour later it was coming in the back door and up through the floorboards, and within another hour they were wading through waist-high water to the elevated home of a neighbor across the street who took in six families and their pets.
When the water receded, Manchee and Magness returned to a nasty, muddy mess. Except for a few things they put on top of a bed, everything was ruined.
Restoring the home wasn’t worth the cost, they said, and the couple had known for a while their family of four needed more space. They demolished their flooded bungalow a year later and by Thanksgiving 2019 moved into a brand-new home.
Manchee is an interior designer who has had her own firm — Laura Manchee Designs — for nine years after working in Ziegler Cooper Architects’ Workplace Interiors Studio for a decade and operating another design firm with a partner for seven. So while they waited for builders to catch their breath in a flurry of post-flood home repairs and new construction, Manchee and Magness made plans.
A fabrication specialist in the oil and gas industry, Magness knew how to size up the home site. He and a friend surveyed the street down to a railroad line that served as a dam to the rising stormwater. They added a foot to its height and determined that the couple’s new home should be elevated 53 inches.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairiestyle architecture had always intrigued Manchee, so she was inspired by its attention to symmetry, clean lines and references to nature while designing the home’s exterior.
With stained-glass artist Karen Farrell, Manchee designed a handful of windows with Prairiestyle motifs that, strategically placed, allow for privacy, beauty and light. An arched one in the kitchen obscures what would be a view of a neighbor’s roof. In a front, upstairs corner, more panels bring in light but block the view to the nearby West
Loop service road.
Its 3,900-square-foot space feels luxurious to Manchee and Magness even though it’s modest by Bellaire standards, where sprawling McMansions and large stucco boxes are the norm. The home’s surface description is a simple three-bedroom, two-anda-half-bath two-story, but it has some special things that meet the family’s needs: a large main living area, an office for Magness and an upstairs play space for sons Wade, 9, and Cole, 3.
The open-concept living area that includes a comfortable living room, dining area, wide kitchen and a bar uses much of the downstairs square footage.
“I have several clients who used yellows, and I was inspired by them,” Manchee said, referring to colors in the rug in the living room and upholstery on chairs in the nearby dining area. “It is such a happy color. I really wanted this area to be one we’re excited and happy about, so I integrated a lot of the yellows and greens and blues, which I love.”
The dining table brings an organic feel to the space with its polished live edge. A Ochre artglass chandelier with globes of opaque glass dangling from thin rods hangs over it.
Manchee fell in love with the backsplash she used in her kitchen long before the started construction and kept it in storage until it was needed. Pieces of marble and brass inlay combine to form a geometric pattern behind her Jenn-Air range and cabinets.
“I see so many white kitchens that I didn’t want that,” said Manchee of the dramatic marble counters, coordinating backsplash tile and cabinets she painted Benjamin Moore’s Stonington Gray.
The family has been in the house only a few months but already is enjoying its entertaining opportunities.
“We had Christmas here with 14 people, and it was a blessing to open our home to our family. We have been the recipient of that for several years because we couldn’t do anything for anyone,” Manchee said of being back in their own home after two years. “Now we have family over once a month for Sunday dinner.”
Near the front are two rooms that make bold statements in different ways.
Manchee had fun in the powder bathroom, installing Rouse Phillips floral wallpaper with a black background on walls and gold grasscloth on the ceiling. Mimicking the kitchen backsplash, she installed large-format porcelain tile on the floor in odd shapes and with brass inlay instead of grout.
An office that Magness uses is a businesslike man cave, with a desk, credenza and chairs but also art and mementos that show his love of hunting and fishing. A trio of vintage Gulf Fishgide maps is framed and hung, showing popular spots for Gulf Coast fishing.
The foyer has its own drama, with an open-riser staircase and a Prairie-style design worked into the rail. Manchee design her front double doors, inspired by a gate she saw. It’s a series of four rectangles inside one another, constructed in metal by Durango Doors.
Modest bedrooms fill the upstairs, and an extra room serves as an activity room where Wade and Cole can color, do homework or watch TV or movies.
For the past couple of years, the boys have shared a bedroom. Now all they have to share is a bathroom, a lively space with blue-green patterned floor tile and a wide trough-style sink with two faucets and two banks of cabinets.
Wade is well into a big-boy stage, so Manchee designed his bed’s headboard with Robert Allen fabric in lively colors and a hunting motif.
“I didn’t want anything that’s too juvenile, and this was a way to still have some fun and introduce the outdoors, which both of my guys are pretty crazy about,” Manchee said.
In the master suite, the couple opted out of a bathtub in favor of a roomier shower, which is lined with gray ombre mosaic tile. And in a house filled with testosterone, Manchee gets her one girly thing in her bedroom: a curio cabinet filled with the miniature perfume bottles she’s been collecting since high school.
“My husband was like, ‘Really?’ I said, ‘Yes, it’s this one little space.’ There’s no pink in the house beyond this case,” she said.