An update for a weekend home on Lake Livingston
Remodel takes house from traditional to modern refuge filled with art and comfort
For more than a decade, Gary Pittman, his friends and extended family have used his weekend home on Lake Livingston for warm-weather fun: waterskiing, zipping around on Sea-Doos, fishing. They amp it up on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, too, when 20 to 50 people might gather at once.
The 2,500-square-foot home, built in 1970, had been remodeled by a previous owner preparing for retirement — a couple with very different taste. Pittman loved the lake, the big lot and its grand view, and figured he’d someday make it his own.
“I always thought I would tear it down,” said Pittman, an Oklahoma native who has lived in Houston since 2002. “I had a lot of younger nephews and nieces that were going to be coming here, and I wanted everybody to come in and enjoy. You’d walk in with wet bathing suits and life jackets, and it didn’t matter. It’s how everybody lived here.”
For Pittman, it was a slightly longer drive home from work on Friday nights and a place to recharge from his job as a consultant who helps businesses through bankruptcy and corporate restructuring. Much of his work has been in either Houston or Dallas, but he lived in the Carolinas for a while, too.
“My job is stressful, and this is where I come to relax. Naturally, I’m an introvert, so I have to recharge my battery because the job requires me to be an extrovert,” said Pittman, who considered vacation homes in Galveston and the Hill Country before settling on Lake Livingston. In Houston, he lives at The Warwick in a condo filled with contemporary Donghia furniture.
Pittman may work with numbers, but he’s drawn to interesting art, and when he saw blackand-white photography by Corrie McGovern and James McGavick of MCG Photography in Charleston, S.C., he knew he wanted some of his own to hang at the lake house. He hired the photographers to take pictures of beautiful old trees around the lake, and when the men produced photos of trees, buildings and other sites with a special infrared treatment that gives each a surreal quality, his gallery grew.
You’ll find those photos around the house, including 15 hung in a striking grid by the dining table.
Pittman loved them, and so did his interior designer, David L. Merryman of David L. Merryman
Interior Design. The contemporary style of these natural scenes set the tone for a fully remodeled home bathed in sophisticated neutral tones.
“Everybody loves it. They just can’t believe (the change),” Pittman said. “My mother laughs and says I definitely didn’t get my taste from the farm in Carnegie, Okla. That’s probably true, but I don’t know where it came from.”
No room was left untouched, from a kitchen that got a major makeover to a step-down living room that finally got the view it always needed. Bedrooms got major upgrades, and bathrooms were gutted and transformed. One large guest bedroom even got its own bathroom so that Pittman’s Austin-based brother and sister-in-law will be more comfortable and have more privacy when they visit with their kids.
Before the renovation, you entered at the back of the home through a laundry room — so the first thing you saw were a washer and dryer and, quite possibly, dirty clothes. Merryman turned this space into a stylish entry, with the appliances hidden behind cabinet doors and on-trend quartzite counters with a honed, leathered finish.
When Pittman visited Merryman’s office, he admired paintings of crows in an adjoining office. Merryman had artist Mel DeWees create another; it hangs in Pittman’s new foyer on walls covered with Phillip Jeffries horsehair wallpaper and paired with Aerin lamps from Circa Lighting. When you step inside this stylish entry, you would never think that you’re standing in the laundry room.
Before, the kitchen had a large fur down that blocked the view to the outdoors. That came down, and the same quartzite was added to a long bar counter and perimeter workspace. Glossy gray subway tile on the backsplash pops against the white cabinets.
The back-of-the-house family room had standard built-in bookshelves and a brick fireplace. All of that came out, and now roughhewn stacked slate covers the wall that still includes a sleek fireplace. A large sectional sofa made of butter-soft leather fills the space — a piece that Pittman fell in love with the moment he sat down on it at Restoration
Hardware.
Merryman and Pittman added a painting to this assembly, a piece by Texas artist C.J. Davis that’s dark and moody and has the name “Annie” inscribed in the middle of it. Though Pittman owned the piece before he got his puppy, a goldendoodle named Annie, he’s claiming that it’s for her.
A traditional table and chairs were replaced with updated versions, a custom table with a metal base and a top made of slices of rich walnut with live edges. RH chairs covered in mohair — unexpected at a lake house
— are grouped around it.
What was once a breakfast nook near the dining area and just off of the kitchen has become a cozy nook with a small sofa and a sleek midcentury-modern chair. Bedrooms are straight out of a boutique hotel: luxe wallpaper, furnishings, bedding and velvet pillows from Houston designer Rusty Arena’s Oushak collection for RH.
Art was sprinkled in, showing Pittman’s affection for farm life from his childhood in paintings of barns, including one Pittman commissioned from John Axton, asking him to create a painting from an old black-and-white photo. He has other barn art by Toby Penney, including a large piece that incorporated pieces of her grandfather’s coveralls.
“I grew up on farms and visiting my grandparents’ farm. I always had fun playing in barns,” Pittman said. “I started collecting art with the John Axton piece. It reminded me of my grandparents’ barn.”
The home’s exterior got an update, too, with a layer or two of gray paint on the naturally yellow-orange brick and a new deck made of ipe, a Brazilian wood that’s resistant to weather and insects.