How Wallpaper And A Local Restaurant Inspired This Austin Remodel

When designer Parrish Chilcoat received a call from her former clients—an Austin couple for whom she’d designed a California beach house—the duo initially only requested a makeover of their main bedroom. “They had a huge room but were sleeping in the same wing as their four children,” recalls Chilcoat, noting that decision was as much about being closer to their offspring as it was about avoiding their own suite, which was desperately in need of an update. As the designer would soon discover, “the kids’ wing was also a warren of a hallway,” she says. Its lack of cohesion hinted at other changes the owners desired throughout their home. While the original goal was to get the couple back into their main bedroom, their wish list grew to the point that “they began to wonder, ‘Should we just move?’” recalls Chilcoat. “They ultimately decided to stay put because this home is where they’ve raised their kids. So we thought, ‘Okay, let’s keep the sentimental footprint’—and I knew architect Tim Barber could help us do that.”

At Chilcoat’s recommendation, the couple reached out to Barber, who started by replacing the exterior gold stone veneer with white brick, before trading in the faux Shaker-style roof for a standing seam metal version more in keeping with the local vernacular. “From the outset, the wife wanted white brick and the result really set their house apart,” he explains, continuing, “the gigantic roof was relentless so the addition of a front-facing dormer reduced the scale.”

After determining the house was structurally sound, the architect then rearranged it to delineate the functions of the various spaces, before taking on the task of reimagining a rear porch for a better outdoor living experience. Inspiration for the redesign came from Eberly, a favorite local eatery. “The restaurant’s steel structure with its horse barn shape and tall Texas top proved the right idea to create an expanded, covered area for outdoor living without darkening the rest of the house,” Barber explains. “We created a simpler version that works well here.” The family now puts the loggia to daily use for morning coffee, workouts or gatherings—“and once we cleared it out and made it a dance floor,” the wife adds.

Meanwhile, Chilcoat—working with project manager Devin Henderson—drew inspiration for the interiors from a swatch of Idarica Gazzoni wallpaper, which hadn’t made the cut at the couple’s beach house but topped the wife’s list of must-have items for this project. Featuring a repeat floral pattern, the paper now lines the vestibule leading to the main bedroom suite. It also served as a palette inspiration for Chilcoat to weave a cohesive tapestry of lavenders, dusty mauves, pale blues and creams throughout the remainder of the residence. The muted hues complement a smattering of bolder accents. For example, a quartet of gray chenille covered chairs and lavender gray wool draperies appear at the project’s core in the living room. “You can see everything from there and we didn’t want anything to fight with the new loggia,” says the designer, who introduced hot pink pillows as ties to a tufted pink velvet sofa in the library, and citrus ones to connect with kitchen pendants painted a saffron yellow.

Just as linking the spaces was important, so too was differentiation. Shimmering Clé tiles on the kitchen walls accomplished the latter. “This kitchen is located just off the living room and my solution for treating the two differently was to use tile—which has all the colors of the Gazzoni paper—on the walls instead of paint or wallpaper,” Chilcoat notes. In the nearby dining room, a Phillip Jeffries horizon motif grass-cloth wallcovering provides the distinction. “It has a pattern but doesn’t compete with the kitchen tiles—everything just flows,” she adds.

The genesis of the project, the main bedroom suite, now has all the trappings of a high-end boutique hotel, with the swooping shape of the bed contributing to what Chilcoat calls a “super luxurious cocoon.” And in the main bathroom, where the wife envisioned having mirrors in front of the windows, the designer introduced custom his-and-her vanities, punctuating the sumptuous space with richly patterned marble slabs for the tub and shower walls. “I spent months checking marble stock until I found the right one,” she says. “Everything for this house was selected very deliberately, but it feels like a curated collection that came together over time.”