Devastated by Harvey, Memorial Glen family goes ‘bold, fresh and new’
As Andy and Elizabeth Cloud saw drywall removed in what had been a bedroom closet in their Memorial Glen home, pain from the trauma of Hurricane Harvey damage started to peel away.
The couple have lived in their 1960s-era home in Memorial
Glen for 15 years and in the fall of 2017 thought they might have actually been one of a few homes in their neighborhood that didn’t flood.
Rain had been coming down for days, and floodwaters rose, inch by inch, into their yard. They’d evacuated to a neighbor’s house in a higher area and visited their own home several times a day by boat.
It remained dry until the Addicks and Barker reservoirs were released; 18 inches of water flooded inside the back, a foot in the front. Their hardwood floors popped up 3 feet high, tossing furniture all around.
They’d done renovations in stages. An addition that included a new primary bedroom suite and revamped laundry room finished less than two years before the hurricane. The work added about 1,000 square feet to their 2,600-square-foot home.
The Clouds, who recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, spent weeks mucking and cleaning up their home before Andy, now 57, returned to work at his job as an investment banker. Elizabeth, 49, took an extended time away from her job at a major insurance company.
She sprayed her home daily with Concrobium Mold Control spray and met with Cade Wiley of Wiley Homes, the contractor who’d worked on their previous projects, and interior designer Joani Scaff of Paisley House, who has helped the family for many years.
“I looked back at old pictures and where we’d been (with the house) and said, ‘Let’s let go of what’s expected and do what feels good for this family, at this moment in time,’ ” Scaff said.
Their goal was a house that felt bold, fresh and new.
After an extended cleanup and seven months of construction, the family moved back in, living upstairs only. Four months after that, they were able to move back into the primary bedroom suite and use their new kitchen. The dining room finished last.
In addition to vast damage to a house they’d invested a lot in, the floodwaters damaged furniture made by Elizabeth’s grandfather, a beautiful sleigh bed, armoire, bench and other wood pieces that were a hobby for him but looked like they were made by skilled artisans.
The cost of refinishing all of it was prohibitive, so they chose a handful of things to restore and had to let go of other things. The loss contributed to Elizabeth’s anxiety, but now she looks through her finished house and knows she has moved forward.
“My grandfather had two daughters and three granddaughters, and he made everything for us. The sleigh bed was a wedding gift,” Elizabeth said, standing in a guest bedroom that originally was the home’s primary bedroom. That room holds most of what’s left of her grandfather’s carpentry, a place where she can see it all together.
“The construction process isn’t fun for a lot of people, but the day we made the entry bigger was a fun day,” Scaff said. It was a pivotal moment early on, when the Clouds could see a single positive change.
The Clouds now have a full foyer with a hall table that Elizabeth’s grandfather made and an ornate, gilt-framed mirror. Teal wallpaper with a wavy pattern covers the walls. Because the home has lower ceiling heights favored back in the ’60s, they were limited to a flush-mount light fixture, but it still brings a little glamour into the space.
The main living area saw another dramatic change, with Wade and Scaff creating a new footprint with fewer walls.
Scaff found an Oushak rug with an orange background and detailed pattern with a variety of colors. It’s the showstopper in the room, so the furniture remained neutral in a gray velvet sofa with blue and green pillows and a pair of sleek, darker gray leather recliners.
The Clouds found the sofa and chairs — as well as some new art — in Scaff ’s Paisley House home goods shop, which moved to a Heights-area location on Washington Avenue early in the pandemic.
“Andy sat in the recliner and said, ‘I want two of these, because Thomas and I want to sit in them and watch TV,” Scaff said.
Elizabeth previously prepared meals in the kitchen and her husband and two children — Guinndalyn, now a sophomore at Texas Christian University, and Thomas, a sophomore at Stratford High School — would gather at the breakfast table.
There’s no longer a breakfast table — just a cozy spot to sit with a cup of coffee. That space and room on the other side were absorbed into a bigger kitchen. Now they can have an extra-wide refrigerator-freezer, a bigger range and a wine fridge, too.
“We eat at the island and gather at the island, and we didn’t do that before,” Elizabeth said. “During COVID, when all four of us were at home — not at school and not at work — it was definitely the center of our home. When we have people over, it is where people stand.”
Kitchen cabinets around the perimeter are painted SherwinWilliams “Aesthetic White,” a popular white with greige undertones, but the island is covered in the paint brand’s “Moody Blue,” a pretty bluegray with green undertones. (Most of the walls are SherwinWilliams “Gossamer Veil,” another white leaning toward greige.)
Quartzite counters with warm veining add to the richness of the room, and a pair of pendants over the island, with blue-green glass shades and gold trim, add just enough color.
A small powder bathroom off of the kitchen has a white porcelain sink decorated with tulips, Elizabeth’s favorite flower. They managed to save it from the previous bathroom, adding a bright red framed mirror to complement the sink.
Since they’d just added the primary bedroom suite a couple of years prior, they mostly bought new versions of their ruined furniture and added three-drawer chests as nightstands.
Scaff recalls visiting the home not long after they moved in and commented that Andy’s closet had very little in it. He’d lost all of his clothes to the flood and became a minimalist. His closet is still on the lean side. The Clouds are minimalists in other ways, too, forgoing window treatments in favor of draperies, for example.
In a small room off of the dining room, they keep a rolltop desk made by Elizabeth’s grandfather and an antique sofa that was her grandmother’s. The sofa was damaged, so they recovered it in purple velvet.
The dining room is visible from the front entry, so the teal in the wallpaper is repeated in the upholstery of the chairs, solid color fabric for the side chairs and a teal-tan animal print for the end chairs, all with a custom made table — in wood that passes Elizabeth’s high expectations.
“Our home makes us smile,” Elizabeth said. “It’s great to come home to. The kids make comments like that, when they come home from camp or college they like coming home to this.”