Built to taste and scale
The Broad Oaks home of Cathy and Steve Green hints at the other places the couple has called home.
There’s a wine room filled with bottles from California vintners and paintings of California scenery, such as the hills of the Diablo Range that were the Greens’ backyard view during the eight years they lived there before returning to Houston last fall.
Steve’s job as an executive in the energy industry also took them and their two sons to Thailand and then Indonesia for eight years, where they dove into new cultures while finding community among other oil and gas workers.
Framed swords, knives and decorative antique hair pins from their time overseas line a secondfloor-landing wall, and an ornate Burmese bell sits in a corner as if it’s waiting to summon someone home.
“Our first four years were in Bangkok, and I loved that,” Cathy said. “(The company Steve works for) helps you find a house; they help you with everything.”
Still, when Steve’s employer wanted him back in the U.S., the family was glad to head home.
The Greens were ready to return to Houston for Steve’s work when they found their current house, still under construction by Abercrombie Custom Homes and architect Rudy Colby of Colby Design.
“When we were overseas, they build very big houses for corporate executives, so … ours was a gathering place for the kids and their friends, which was great with us,” said Steve, a native of Jasper. “In California, we had a lot of visitors because we were one hour from Napa, two hours from Pebble Beach and an hour from San Francisco, and we had nice weather all the time.
“Here, we use the house differently. We have invited friends to come over for dinner parties or backyard barbecues,” he continued. “The boys come by once a week to catch up. It’s the first time we’ve all four been in the same city since 2006.”
The couple’s sons — 32-year-old Jeff and 30year-old Tyler — both live in Houston now. Though they grew up here, they graduated from high school in Thailand when the family lived there.
Andy Abercrombie was working with Ginger Barber of Ginger Barber Design on finishes in the home, and the Greens liked her aesthetic so much that they hired her to help them choose lighting and fill the roughly 6,000square-foot house with mostly new things.
Barber’s impeccable taste in antiques is evident just inside the front door, where you can peer into the dining room or peek into the powder bathroom. There an antique French farmhouse sink is placed on a limestone counter with an iron base with a gunmetal-black finish and paired with an ornate vintage mirror and slender sconces.
The heavy door looks like it could be an antique, too, but it’s actually a replica created from a photograph of doors at a Spanish villa.
The home already was going to have a wine room at the back of the dining room, but the Greens bought early enough that Steve could finish it out the way he wanted.
Cathy, a native of Lamesa, describes them more as “wine likers” than “wine collectors,” but the couple does have favorite brands from the years they lived so close to California’s wine country.
The rock wall behind the bottles is an added feature, and cubbies to hold the-mare situated so that the background isn’t completely covered with bottles from Shafer Vineyards, Joseph Phelps Vineyards, Hall Wines, Red Stitch or even the Revana Family Vineyard, founded by Houston cardiologist Dr. Madaiah Revana.
The Greens brought the round table and chairs with them from California but refinished the table’s top and reupholstered the chairs so they look and feel new. Over them hangs a tiered Italian antique chandelier.
An antique French sideboard with a pale-blue-gray Swedish finish holds a pair of lamps made from architectural fabrics. This room is the first glimpse of the neutral linen draperies that Barber had made for many of the windows in the home.
The main hall holds more new-to-them antiques: a 19th-century French commode and a circa 1900 French library table.
A back-to-back butler’s pantry and bar provide ample storage, and Barber found floor tile in an Arabesque shape and mixed four shades of gray.
Painted and glazed terracotta Moroccan tile impresses in the kitchen, behind the range running all the way up to a reclaimed ceiling beam, one of many in the home.
The living room has two seating areas, one with a pair of couches and chairs, all covered with crisp linen slipcovers, and the other a cozier spot at the back with a velvet sofa and a trio of slipcovered chairs. The ceiling is covered with a grid of huge reclaimed beams that, combined with the creamy plaster covering most of the walls on the first floor, add instant warmth.
Filling the room was an issue of scale: Because it is so large, everything needed to be bigger, Barber said.
“The sofas are 90 inches long, and the coffee table is 4½ feet square,” she said. “People don’t realize all the materials that go into a room — metal and wood and faux bois and a bamboo table. You put a Rose Tarlow pillow on a chair, and you have a beautiful corner.”
Cathy said her first priority was to have a home that was beautiful but also usable and comfortable.
“The main thing I like is that the rooms are calm,” Cathy said. “Everything is basically neutral with green undertones, and it feels serene and calm.”