Bunker Hill ranch gets makeover with an Asian flair
Beauty and functionality meet in space reworked to facilitate cooking, entertaining and casual living
Adecade working as an event planner and a lifetime of appreciating good design taught Cynthia Lane one thing: When she finally got her dream kitchen, it was going to be both beautiful and functional.
Cynthia and her husband, Harlan, shifted from another home farther west in Bunker Hill Village to the one they moved into in July so their daughters — Lydia, 10, and Anna, 7 — could grow up across the street from their cousins, the children of Harlan’s sister.
But they also knew that they’d turn this family home — they’re the third generation of Harlan’s family to live in it — into one that worked better for all of them.
Harlan’s late stepfather used part of the home for gun safes, one at the back of the house, where they now have a TV room, and another in hidden closet space in the master suite, a tidy room that was redirected to young Anna’s bedroom so she can use it as a secret playroom.
The biggest part of the house, public spaces from the front entry all the way back to a powder bathroom, were reworked so that they could use it the way they want, entertaining for small and large groups. Cynthia loves to cook, so her now roomy kitchen has enough space for her to make chili for 50 people for a Halloween party and accommodate the more than 20 coming for Christmas Day dinner.
When the home shifted into their hands, its floor plan had a formal living room at the front, with a small dining room off of a small kitchen followed by a pantry and laundry room that had the powder bathroom. Parallel to that were a plain foyer, a TV room and the huge gun safe all the way in the back.
The Lanes, native Houstonians who’ve been married nearly 17 years, didn’t need a formal living room, and they didn’t need either of the home’s gun safes. What they wanted was a remodel that would give them plenty of room for cooking and entertaining and more casual living.
What drove the décor of the new floor plan was a thick binder with photos of rooms and home décor that Cynthia loved, representing several design styles and a warm fall palette.
“When we first met, I handed over a binder of hundreds of very random clippings. I said, ‘This is my taste, my style.’ It’s all over the board, very eclectic,” Cynthia said of the day she met her interior designers, Jana Erwin and Audrey Tehauno of Nest Design Group. “I have a lot of very random collections. I knew immediately when I met them that they could put it together in a way that made sense.”
Cynthia described their previous home — another Bunker Hill ranch that was slightly smaller — as having a hodgepodge of furnishings collected over time. Each was purchased with care but no longer worked together or represented who they are today.
“One of the most complicated styles is one that is so eclectic. If you don’t get it just right, it will look like a hodge-podge,” Erwin said. “If you have a style — like ‘all traditional,’ one where you know to stay in your lane, so to speak — you know to stay in certain parameters and it will turn out OK.
“She had a complex color palette and a very eclectic style. It takes the right piece in each place, and it looks effortless. That’s the hardest look to make happen,” she continued.
Key in Cynthia’s binder of things she loves was anything with an Asian flair. So you’ll see a touch of it just inside the front door in unusual vinyl-on-grasscloth wallpaper that forms a blue-on-blue Greek key design. A glass hall table is topped with a large, gold-framed mirror, and a Persian rug covers much of the hardwood flooring.
The new dining room is filled with Asian influence and vintage finds. A large brass table base got a new, tempered-glass top, and a half dozen chairs around it are vintage, too. A pair of vintage china cabinets, trimmed in faux bamboo, sit side by side at the back of the room. Along another wall, an ornately carved buffet sits under a four-panel Asian screen with images of lily pads, bamboo and koi.
Because the room was transformed from a formal living room to a dining room, the Lanes added a doorway so traffic can flow from the new dining room into the kitchen.
What was the old dining room — just beyond the new doorway — is now a breakfast room with a rustic round table and four metal chairs. That room has a wall of built-in bookshelves, some of which are dedicated to a charming bar that shows off a little of Cynthia’s copper-pot collection, and more copper pieces are found on an open shelf in the nearby kitchen.
Cynthia’s new kitchen features a combination of creamy leathered quartzite and more dramatic soapstone, which had a few orange streaks that inspired the terracotta tile floor.
“I’ve always wanted to build my dream kitchen, and this is it. Having a functional kitchen was important to me. I love people coming over and hanging out in the kitchen; it’s a holdover from being in the catering business,” Cynthia said of the years she worked at The Stone Kitchen (now Silverstone Events). (Harlan Lane is director of technical services at the Memorial Hermann Health System.)
In addition to making more room for the kitchen, they reconfigured the laundry room/ powder bathroom so they’re both stand-alone rooms. The powder room got an upgrade with a wall-mount soapstone counter and grasscloth wallpaper.
The new living area in the middle of the house is a long skinny room that starts with a casual table and chairs, where the family is just as likely to sit and talk as they are to share a meal. Two-thirds of the way back there’s a fireplace open on each side; it got a stucco treatment, and more soapstone covers its new hearth. In front of it are four comfortable leather chairs nestled on an animal hide.
On the other side of the fireplace — where there used be a big gun safe — is their TV “room,” with a sectional that seats 10 and stretches the width of the room. They covered the vaulted ceiling with reclaimed wood that warm up the space considerably.
To make the space more functional, they removed doors that led to the backyard and added windows for natural light. Art niches on each side of the sofa provide bits of visual interest, and shelving high on the wall provides more perches for art and objets d’art.
The exterior of the home got some attention, too, with the trim painted very dark gray, new pavers installed and the old skimpy porch roof replaced with one that’s taller and feels updated for 2019.