Shiny and new
Bright, bold colors and dazzling lighting make a new kind of statement in family’s Bunker Hill home
The bold blue walls, brilliant chandeliers and plush custom dining chairs make a big statement about what’s to come in Brandi and Odeh Khoury’s Bunker Hill Village home.
The couple, who have lived most of their 17-year marriage in Houston and Louisiana, returned here in 2017, just before Hurricane Harvey.
Finding a home closer to Second Baptist School and in a neighborhood where their son Jirius, now 11, would have friends was a priority. After that came more personal things such as a nice pool in the backyard, a wine room for Odeh and a nice office for Brandi.
They hoped for a grand entry with an impressive staircase, which they’ve had in other homes, but that wasn’t the case here. Instead, they made this 7,600-squarefoot home their own with an injection of color, especially in the dining room.
“When I met Brandi, she had a chunk of cobalt-blue hair — that might have been my first clue that she likes color,” quipped the Khourys’ interior designer, Missy Stewart of Missy Stewart Designs.
Stewart brought in Decorative & Faux Finishes of Stafford for the dining-room wall treatment that has plenty of texture and gold foil peeking through.
The grand gesture doesn’t end with the walls. Large crystal chandeliers dangle over a table with a brass base and glass top, with eight chairs in matching cobaltblue velvet, designed by Stewart.
In addition to impressing guests, the dining room furniture speaks to a new chapter for the Khourys.
As they planned their move to Houston, they asked Stewart to fly to their home in Baton Rouge, La., to assess the furniture and help make decisions about what would move with them and what would not.
Brandi and Stewart stood in front of the very traditional dining set the Khourys bought early in their marriage, and Stewart was honest: The table and chairs should not come.
“My husband and I grew up in very humble circumstances. When we first got married, we bought a dining-room set and thought we had made it,” Brandi said. “We had nice furniture, a dining-room set, and we hung onto it move after move after move.”
Naturally, she was nervous about the suggestion they get rid of something that had meant so much to them. It wasn’t ugly, it just didn’t fit with the updated contemporary décor they were now aiming for.
Odeh, who grew up with five older sisters, is used to taking suggestions in stride, and he already knew that getting this house ready to move into would be about letting his wife make it her own.
“Brandi is obviously the more creative of the two of us,” Odeh said. “It’s a challenge for me to go with things outside my comfort zone. I’ve learned to let her take me along for the ride.”
Priorities
Brandi is a native of Wyoming, and Odeh is from East Jerusalem — he moved to the U.S. with his family after high school and is now a U.S. citizen — and they met while working at Shell. Brandi has worked there 23 years and is now a vice president in human resources. Odeh began his 28year career with the company in Los Angeles, moving to Houston within a couple of years and is now vice president of training and supply.
Odeh’s daughter from a previous marriage, Natalie, 21 and a senior at Louisiana State University, lives with them when she’s not in college; their son together, Jirius, is a fifth grader at Second Baptist School.
The family had lived in Houston, then shifted to Louisiana, where they lived in New Orleans and then Baton Rouge before returning to Texas. Already familiar with Houston, its neighborhoods and schools, they knew exactly where they wanted to live — Memorial, where their son could thrive in school and sports and where they wouldn’t have a terrible commute to work.
They knew the home’s interior would be a challenge: It was dark, with drab green walls and black granite counters.
“For a house built in 2011, you would have thought it was more of a 1990s house. I said, ‘Let me take a shot at making changes,’” Brandi said. “You start with one thing, and it grows.”
After evaluating interior designers online, she interviewed five, met with two and picked Stewart, who created a number of custom pieces throughout the home, sometimes encouraging the couple to be more daring and sometimes reigning them in.
Brandi perused Houzz and Pinterest for ideas, and Stewart brought them to life.
“It was Missy’s job to help in selections and design, and to challenge us in a way that was helpful. The way she listened to what we wanted and still offered new ideas was key to the success,” Odeh said. “And she has a classy taste, which aligns well with what I like — somewhat bold and making a statement without being in your face.”
Brandi worked with Stewart on most of the house, but Odeh’s babies were the wine room and the master shower — a high-tech wonder he can turn on from his phone.
“The master shower was my vision and probably my only key contribution to the whole renovation,” Odeh said. “My major down time is when I step in the shower and let go. It has multiple jets and electronic functions and is spacious enough to not feel confined. When all is said and done, it exceeded my expectations.”
Odeh drinks and collects good wine, so a showstopper wine room was important to him. Stewart brought in the same faux finisher, who applied a metallic silver treatment to what were cherry-wood-grain cabinets.
‘Chandelier addict’
Stewart and the Khourys accomplished a lot in a short time. The couple bought the home in May 2017 and moved in mid-August, after painting everything, adding a new fireplace treatment, nearly all new lighting, altering every bathroom and buying nearly all new furniture — some of it custom made.
The home got a huge infusion of new lighting, leaving Brandi to joke that she’s a “chandelier addict.”
A long chandelier with cascading crystals that originally hung in the dining room was moved to the living room. The rest of the chandeliers are new, including a pair of starburst light fixtures over the kitchen island, a fixture with overlapping rings in Brandi’s office and dazzling pieces in the breakfast room and the keeping room (a version of a family room).
Stewart jokes that Brandi’s favorite color is “shiny,” and she delivered in the master bedroom with a 7½-foot-tall headboard covered in metallic vinyl, darkblue high-back chairs with Swarovski crystal buttons and a magnificent chandelier ring, 5 feet in diameter.
Fun times
Crowds gather here often, especially during Jirius’ sports seasons, when the teams come over for pool parties. For sleepovers, he and his friends crash in the upstairs media room.
“This is where the boys like to come,” Brandi said while standing in the media room. “My pantry is constantly stocked with boy junk food. He plays baseball and football, so we throw swim parties, ice cream parties, trampoline parties, parties with a big game truck out front. It’s a constant stream of boys in my house. The doorbell rings, and then they’re all over the house.”
At other times, both Brandi and Odeh host their own parties, often with co-workers.
Sometimes, though, it’s quiet, and Brandi can pour a glass of wine and find a comfortable spot in the living room to admire their new artwork. It hangs in art niches on each side of a fireplace covered in three-dimensional slabs that look like porcelain tile but are really modularArts InterlockingRock, architectural features made of natural gypsum and fortified filler.
There’s more drama in the house in flaming-orange draperies in Brandi’s office, a red geometric paint pattern in the laundry room, turquoise chairs in the breakfast room and more blue in the keeping room.
“I’ve always been drawn to dark colors … but never really the ‘shiny.’ I honestly think that has to do with my comfort in me as I have matured and aged,” Brandi said. “I’m comfortable in my own shoes now, where maybe it wasn’t that way when I was younger. It took me a long time to get there, but I am there now.”