Color and creativity
Family remodels Woodlands home to satisfy craving for form and function
The canary-yellow Bertazzoni range in their kitchen says it all: Sarah Steward and Duane Bever aren’t afraid of color.
After moving to Houston from Dallas for Steward’s job as an attorney at Exxon Mobil, the couple searched for a new home, expecting to remodel extensively or build new. They ended up buying an existing home in The Woodlands’ Panther Creek neighborhood and made it their own, gutting the kitchen and three bathrooms and leaving no room untouched.
Where they bought a home was all about giving Steward a short commute to work, but what they did to the house was all about preparing a home for the two little girls who will grow up in it.
That’s a challenge their interior designer, Karen Davis of Marker Girl, knows all too well, having busy kids who’ve been known to create a mess or two.
“By the time we were moved here, Duane and I had gotten together and combined households and styles. Duane is much more about the function, and I tend to be much more about the form,” Steward said of her husband of five years. “We got to a happy medium that makes me happy about how it looks and makes him happy about how it functions.”
Daughters 2½-year-old Iris and 10-month-old Theia giggled and cooed in one corner of the room, playing with their stay-at-home dad, when the doorbell rang: It was a grocery delivery.
Davis just smiled: “They’re the epitome of a true modern family.”
She works, he stays home. They’d rather have groceries and a meal service delivered than spend lots of time shopping and cooking. And there’s nothing plain about their décor: It’s full of color and bold patterns.
“I didn’t care about whether things were all matchy-matchy, but I love color,” Steward said. The couple bought the home in August 2018 and moved in when the work was done in March
2019.
Their kitchen got the biggest makeover because the original — the 3,390-square-foot house was built in 1991 — had an awkward wall between the kitchen and breakfast nook, with a passthrough and a small doorway between them. The underside of a nearby staircase went from empty and unused to a place for a tall wine fridge. After all, the grownups need some things, too.
They didn’t mind losing the cabinets and counter space because they gained a big island full of drawers in a shade of blue (Sherwin-Williams “Raindrop”) that played well with that brightyellow range. Light, veiny quartzite counters replaced the very dark granite in the kitchen, bathrooms and in the updated laundry room, too.
But it’s color that’s the star of the show — in furniture, paint colors and wallpaper — and Steward isn’t kidding when she says Davis had to reel her in a little.
“We are in the midst of very young children,” said Steward, a native of the small town of Bridgeport. “We wanted things to look nice … but it also needs to be functional because we have a lot of chaos and a lot of mess right now. We can’t be too precious about anything.”
Steward drove the colors, but Bever didn’t mind any of it, and was the primary contact with their builder and interior designer since his schedule was more flexible. (A native of Garland, Bever worked as a quality-control supervisor at International Flavors and Fragrances near Dallas before moving to Houston.)
A den just off of the kitchen repeats the yellow — though in a softer shade — in a sofa and rug, paired with two green swivel chairs and an upholstered ottoman with a vinyl top. The rug is made of polypropylene, so it can stand up to anything the girls can dish out — now or in the future — and the ottoman has a vinyl top that lifts for extra storage.
A structural column here couldn’t be moved, so Davis had a great idea: Turn it into a showcase for their children’s art. So far, it’s just Iris’ work, but each piece is framed and accompanied by a nameplate as if in a fancy gallery.
“This odd thing in the middle of the floor is now something special and meaningful,” Davis said.
The breakfast nook, also off of the kitchen but in another direction, has a white tulip-style table and clear acrylic chairs but a bold pop of color in the yellow/ green-blue window treatment.
Toward the back of the house is a laundry room that went from boring and unremarkable to a jewel box. They added blue and silvery-gray wallpaper with a forest theme and replaced black granite counters with light neutral quartzite. While the room became much prettier, it also gained a lot of function with hooks and cubbies installed where there once was a simple shelf for folding clothes. As the girls get older, it’s sure to be filled with backpacks, shoes and things for school. Right now it’s a catchall for whatever they bring into the house.
Part of the allure of this house was that in addition to having a first-floor master suite, it also had a first-floor guest suite. Steward’s mom lives about a mile away, and it’s there just in case she wants or needs to spend the night.
That guest bathroom, which partly serves as the home’s powder bath, now has pretty Cole & Son wallpaper in a pattern with greens and blues.
The master bathroom is a study in black and white, with a big lesson in what you can do with the extra space you get when you remove the circa 1990 elements such as a built-in garden bathtub, odd angles and a strange faux vaulted ceiling.
Davis’ treatment brought in a patterned tile floor, bright-white cabinets with black trim and gold hardware — something you’ll see throughout the home because Steward loves gold. Before-and-after photos show it barely looks like the same room.
Upstairs are the girls’ rooms and a large bathroom that they share. Since they’re so young, Steward and Bever decided to go totally girly and paint the cabinets a pretty pastel pink. An upstairs media room was transformed into a playroom because for the time being, that’s what preschoolers require.
“We love this house. When we were initially looking, we thought this would be a five- to 10-year home. As we went through the remodel, we realized this is our forever home. We did so much that it really felt like our space,” Steward said. “I don’t think Duane will ever move again unless he’s forced to.”