Look inside a Houston couple’s new River Oaks area penthouse.
Kathy Frazar was happy in her West University home when her husband, Tom Hedge, convinced her to look at a nearby high-rise penthouse that was on the market.
They weren’t ready to buy, but were more than just “lookers,” when a realtor friend took them to see the 17th-floor unit in Highland Tower.
Hedge said he walked in, saw the spectacular view of River Oaks, with downtown and Reliant Stadium in the distance, and declared, “We’re buying this.” The next morning they did. However, it took the couple two and a half years to make the transition to where they are today.
Frazar and Hedge married nine years ago and have been merging their lives — both personal and professional — since.
With the help of their friend and interior designer Cheryl Baker of CDB Interiors, they eventually pruned down what they would take to their new home: two beds, a chandelier, a ceiling fan and a very fancy toilet.
The beds were practical choices. The chandelier of dangling glass rings simply was lovely. The fan’s blades traveled different directions, which Hedge thought was “cool.”
But the couple gets more laughs talking about that toilet — a Kohler Numi with an MSRP of around $7,000, though they got it for less than $5,000 on Amazon. It has a motion sensor so the lid lifts when you approach and bluetooth wireless to sync up your playlist in case you can’t live a minute or two without music. Blended lives
Both dentists, Frazar met Hedge at a conference at which he was lecturing. Frazar smiles and almost blushes when Hedge says it was love at first sight.
A native Texan, she had a busy practice in Bellaire — The Houston Dentists. He was a Midwesterner with his own thriving practice in Cincinnati.
They were both divorced and each had a daughter. Frazar had a 4,000-square-foot home in West U decorated in Hollywood Regency style; Hedge’s Ohio home was built in 1874 and was filled with antiques.
Monthly visits to each other’s city turned to weekly visits. After they married, Hedge closed his practice and joined Frazar in hers.
He adapted to Houston’s urban pace. Her patients and friends became his, and together they’ve made new ones, too.
They bought a condo in a Galveston mid-rise together, but that was just a weekend getaway.
Hedge was itching for a home that felt more like “theirs” when they saw the condo in Highland Tower, tucked into a residential area with new-ish townhomes and other mid- and high-rises going up all around. Its streets are lined with lush live oaks and crape myrtles and star jasmine, heavy with blooms, drapes over wrought-iron fences.
The West U home sold in one day, and an estate sale paved the way for a fresh start in their sleek, modern condo. An interior transition Baker, who already had decorated the West U home and their Galveston condo, guided them through the arduous process of emptying a 4,000-square-foot two-story and filling a 1,900-square-foot space lined with floor-to-ceiling windows.
She counseled them on what to keep and what to sell and assured them that their two spaniels would adapt to elevators and their college-age daughters would get a kick out of having the valet park their cars and deliver their suitcases when they visited.
“Kathy and Tom have great taste. They really just wanted help putting it together,” Baker said.
First came the estate sale, which involved selling everything from mops to a baby grand piano. Initially, the couple wanted to take their sofa and some barstools, but Baker knew that those pieces would overpower the smaller space.
Instead, she brought in furniture with cleaner lines: an L-shaped leather sofa and satiny metal barstools. The dining area has a glass-topped table and chairs upholstered in amethyst-colored cloth. In the kitchen, ball-shaped light fixtures hang over an island topped with honed Cararra marble. Remodeling-wise, white tile replaced dark hardwood floors and high-gloss black cabinets became matte.
Baker’s finishing touches included new chandeliers and light fixtures in nearly every room — including one that matched the fixture they brought from the West U home. The windows were tinted to help control the temperature and remote-controlled Roman shades were added throughout to keep privacy at their fingertips.
These days, instead of spending their free time with a list of household chores, they hit the gym, meet friends for drinks on the building’s fifth-floor pool level or walk to their favorite restaurants for dinner.
“It seemed like we were always working in the yard or cleaning the pool,” Frazar said. “Now we have fun instead of spending all of our time fixing things.” diane.cowen@chron.com twitter.com/dianecowen