Couple starts new chapter in The Woodlands
Deciding where to retire was a fairly easy decision for Kay and Tor Matthews: Houston is where their daughter lives, and it’s centrally located to the extended family. It’s also a city where the couple has a strong base of friends, having lived here more than a decade ago.
So when Kay was contemplating the end of her 37-year career at Ernst & Young, where she was a vice chair and managing partner in Los Gatos, Calif., they thought about family, health and proximity to an airport.
They found what they were looking for in The Woodlands, settling on a 6,200-square-foot home in Lake Woodlands’ East Shore with the right floor plan that would need only minimal remodeling.
Years earlier they found interior designer Marcus Mohon when they needed someone to help with renovations on a vacation home they bought on Lake LBJ in the Texas Hill Country. Mohon — whose Marcus Mohon Interiors is based in Austin but also has offices in Houston — had designed a home that was featured in Southern Living, and when Kay Matthews saw the photos, she knew he could help her, too.
To make their new home in The Woodlands their own, they called Mohon again, asking for a new palette, furnishings and a plan for incorporating the couple’s growing collection of contemporary art.
Room for casual gatherings of family and friends was necessary since the couple entertains a lot. Their daughter, Katherine, lives in the Heights but visits often — frequently bringing friends along for overnight stays when they attend concerts at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion.
Nothing in the footprint of the home changed, but they did some remodeling in the primary bath’s shower, added a bar in the center of the home and tweaked an oversized island in the kitchen.
“Before” photos show a traditional home with faux painting on walls and cabinets, dark wood and patterned mosaic tile. Overall, beige dominated nearly every room.
Mohon worked magic with paint, lightening everything up for a crisp, clean foundation for the furnishings — some old, some new — and art, a mix of antiques, traditional and contemporary.
The Matthewses have gone through different style phases, settling on casual, livable luxury for life now.
“We’re not contemporary, but we’re not traditional — we’re somewhere in the middle, and that has evolved over time,” Kay Matthews said. “We like the unexpected. As you walk through the house, you’ll see a piece we bought from a furniture store next to an antique. Marcus has helped us with that — how you mix the old and the new.”
She points to the artwork as an example.
“I’ve been through the landscape period, the bluebonnet period … and with the move to California, I started getting into more contemporary art,” Matthews said.
The art in their home ranges from a painting of Steve McQueen and Yul Brenner, as they were in “The Magnificent Seven,” to a John Gonnella pop-art series that Kay refers to as her “Ladies.” In her bedroom, she has silhouette
paintings, and in her bar, artwork they purchased from a street artist in South Africa.
One room defines the way the couple lives and entertains: The dining room is casual but elegant. It is in the center of the home, allowing one end to open to the main hall. Though the room has just one window, Mohon hung draperies around all of the walls, then hung artwork from the ceiling in front of the drapes to create an intimate atmosphere.
The large dining table has hosted dinners for years; it’s a table the couple owned when they lived in the Memorial area before they left for Kay’s 11-year California assignment. It’s still with them and gets plenty of use when they have friends over.
“Everyone who comes over has a favorite room, and this one is the favorite for a lot of people,” Kay said. Dinners turn into hourslong conversations here. “All he did was hang curtains, and it changed the room completely.”
Mohon added more contemporary-style dining chairs at the ends of the oval table and a pair of settees to seat those along the sides.
“Every house we’ve ever had, we’ve had a dining table that would accommodate eight to 10 people,” Kay said. “We don’t live a formal lifestyle, but we have a lot of people. When we have dinners, we tend to sit around the table after dinner and just have conversation.”
When they finished decorating this home, their first gathering was a party to meet their new neighbors.
“They use the dining room almost every night, and in the evening it glows. I wanted them to feel like they never want to leave,” Mohon said. “There are only a few people who would go for an idea like this one. That’s one thing about Kay, she’s not scared of new ideas.”
‘Art stands on its own’
Kay and Tor attended the same high school in Austin, but it was a mutual friend who formally introduced them when they were students at Texas Tech University. Their first three moves were for Tor’s jobs in the oil industry, and the second three were for Kay’s jobs with Ernst & Young.
Tor suffers from ataxia, a neuromuscular disease that first affected him in his 20s; with each new decade, it has manifested itself a little differently. He retired when daughter Katherine —
“Kat,” now 24 and a news producer at KHOU-TV (Channel 11) — was still in school and he became the sports dad, taking her to practices and games for her travel softball league.
Both Tor and Kay are retired now, but each has an office in their new home. Though most of their living is on the main floor, an elevator is there to help Tor get to his upstairs office. Exercise is important for his mobility, so he tries to use the stairs as often as possible as physical therapy.
Kay’s office is inside the home’s front door, and it’s a beautiful room with a desk, comfortable chairs and a large player piano. Her office gets nearly full-time use since she’s an independent director on three corporate boards: Main Street Capital, Silicon Valley Bank and Coherent Inc.
Across the foyer is a small sitting room that technically is part of the primary bedroom. Though its location is odd — just inside the front door — big pocket doors can close it off if needed.
“It’s unique to have a master bedroom at the front of the home, but it’s a terrific room,” Kay said of the sitting room. “If you’re going to have a bedroom at the front, you need something as a buffer.”
One of Mohon’s tasks was to place art in each room, and for the sitting room he chose one of
Gonnell’s bright “Ladies” pieces, juxtaposed with an antique secretary and accent tables, traditional highback armchairs and a small sofa. Another painting — by California artist Gordon Smedt — depicts a pair of Converse high tops positioned as if they’re ballet pointe shoes.
“You don’t have to have art match the room — art stands on its own,” Mohon said. “I like it to be unexpected, a surprise. If we had put a painting of a French impressionist over the secretary, it would blend in, and it would not be interesting.”
The roomy bedroom follows, along with a spacious primary bathroom that got minor remodeling. Part of the bathroom was tiled with gray-white Cararra marble, but the shower had beige tile-that blended with the home’s original, more ornate décor.
That beige has been replaced by more Cararra marble for a continuous look, and Mohon added draperies in the center of the room, to give the bathtub a sense of privacy.
Solving problems
Where to put the TV is a dilemma in many family rooms: Are outlets in the right places? Do we hide it or leave it in the open?
For the Matthews family, the huge open space in the center of the home serves as breakfast area, kitchen, bar and living room. But nowhere could they find a natural spot for a TV. This room was a concern to Kay even before they bought it.
“I sent Marcus a picture and a link to the home’s listing on Zillow. ‘There’s no place for a TV, what can we do?’ ” Kay said. “He was in Japan and he texted back, ‘I can do this,’ so I bought the house.”
Mohon created a unique breakfast area with a small banquette and a marble-topped bistro table. Then he reinvented a wall lined with three French doors. He placed a long table across and designed a box with hydraulics to hold a TV that can rise with a remote control when in use or be hidden.
Tor’s favorite room is the upstairs media room, a sprawling space set up to be used many ways. There’s a nearly wall-sized Scrabble board Kay found at Restoration Hardware, and a table and chairs for playing cards or board games. A collection of chairs is a place to sit and talk, or people can climb onto the large sectional sofa to watch TV on a large screen. Small stools tuck under the coffee table for extra seating, and Mohon applied his wall-of-draperies treatment here, too, to help with acoustics in the room.
“It’s comfortable and relaxing. I like to sit on the couch and and look at that picture on the wall,” he said of a Smedt painting titled “Jailbreak.” “Everything you need is right there. It’s perfect.”