Home gets grown-up makeover
Garden Oaks couple with twin toddlers turn living room into versatile, family-friendly space
When it was just April and Tom Tekavec living in their 1,400square-foot Garden Oaks home, it didn’t feel small.
Add twin babies, though, and everything changed.
Looking back, the home felt “palatial” before their twins — Joseph and Lulu, now 3 years old — came along, but the home never felt
too small. They always felt they had plenty of room for entertaining and turned their smallish garage into a
mother-in-law room.
At some point, April emerged from the “mom fog” and wondered if their home ought to feel a little more grown-up. The Tekavecs were in their early 30s when they married six years ago, and they each brought furniture to their intermingled home.
“We had furniture that was a little bit past college, the first furniture you buy when you’re an adult and still in that IKEA range,” April said. “His was from a bachelor pad. My bed was from my sister. Everything was parceled together.” Their living room had overstuffed
brown furniture, and the walls were painted a goldish beige, except for one deep-burntorange wall that April painted one day when Tom wasn’t home. A door at the back of the living room opens in and couldn’t even clear the sofa. It was all too much for the smallish rooms in a bungalow built in 1938.
“The orange wall was my inspiration one day when Tom was out of town. He was like, ‘so … you decided to paint it orange.’ I don’t think he loved it,” April said, now able to laugh about it. “He said ‘OK, we’ll go with it.’ I’m so mortified by that picture (of the wall) now.”
April, 38, is a paralegal and contracts analyst, and when the company she works for was bought, she and her co-workers had the option of moving to the new company or leaving with a full-year’s severance pay. She walked out with a check and knew exactly what she’d do with a big chunk of it.
It was time to deal with their home, toddlers or not.
“A while back, I had told Tom that I need to have this house speak to me,” April said of her husband, a 39-year-old Minnesota native who works in the energy industry. “Before we hired Karen, he said, ‘It’s been five years. Has this room spoken to you? It needs to say something or speak to someone else.’ He was done. We’re like city mouse, country mouse. He is very pensive and thoughtful, but when he gets to a point, he’ll say, ‘Listen, we need a plan.’ ”
After a Google search and time spent on Houzz, the Tekavecs hired interior designer Karen Davis of Marker Girl, who specializes in family-friendly design.
In a 1,400-square-foot home with a family of four, every inch needs to work. The previous owner used the front room of their home as the living room, and a room behind it as the dining room, putting a passthrough window from the kitchen to the dining room.
The Tekavecs didn’t like the idea of walking straight into the living room, so they swapped them, putting the dining room at the front and creating the feeling of a foyer just inside the door. But then the new living room had a hole in the wall just above the sofa, an awkward place for anyone to hand anything over.
Davis solved their problem by closing in that pass-through window, painting the walls white and going neutral with a rug and sofa with an extra piece that creates a chaise on one end. A big ottoman covered in commercial vinyl can stand up to anything the toddlers can dish out and serves as a coffee table while adding a dab of yellow to the room. In a corner at the back of the room, a cute cabinet adds a little glamour and does double duty by holding some of the kids’ toys.
For Davis, it was filling a home the way you’d deal with the kind of smaller rooms you have in an apartment, going with a large four-cushion sofa with an additional piece that could be pulled off and used as a side chair if they want.
“Having a chaotic life of both of us working with toddler twins, even with that orange accent wall, I realize now I’m a neutral gal,” April said. “What I love about Karen’s outlook is everything is very family friendly. This sofa is pretty, but the fabric is functional. If there’s an accident, it beads up and you wipe it off.”
The home has some new art, too, a touch that makes April feel like she’s got a real house. Davis sent her to Unique Arts — a shop that caters to interior designers — where she found prints that can be custom sized.
“I told my boss one day that I needed to work from home because the art was being delivered. He said, ‘You’re having art delivered? Are you kidding me? You have an actual grown-up house,’ ” April said with some satisfaction. “It’s been so calming for our family. People come in and say your house is so grown-up, and then we open the entertainment center and it’s all toys. The kids call it their kitchen.”
They tinkered with the entry, too, adding a bench and cabinets — things that might be in a mud room in another house but look welcoming at the front of the Tekavecs’ home. Tall cubbies line the outside wall, where they can hang coats, bags or anything else, drawers at the bottom are a great place for the kids to put their shoes, and upper cabinets are a place to store anything they don’t need often. A yellow cushion and decorative pillows are a cute place to take off or put on your shoes, and large framed family photos capture cute moments in this young family’s life.
“When we told our friends we were redecorating, they said it didn’t sound smart to do it when you have kids,” April said. “But our house feels full of love. It’s not just a pretty space, it’s where we live and it’s cozy.”
Note: This is part of an occasional series of stories that looks at how a homeowner or family transforms a single room in their home. To be considered for this “One Room” feature, write to diane.cowen@chron.com.