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When Taylor Clouse set out to reimagine this 1940s house as a relaxing reprieve for her clients, an artistic duo, her inspiration was an Austin version of a surf shack. Think: Clean lines and natural materials paired with historic architectural details. “Our goal was to go beyond bringing the home back to its roots,” she notes.
The three-bedroom home stands in at under 1,300 square feet, so every inch mattered. While Clouse made a handful of not-so-sexy functional changes—stripping the original flooring and trim, knocking out a wall to give the kitchen more space—roughly 90 percent of the home’s original features remain intact.
The unique location of the dining room provided Clouse with the prime opportunity for taking a creative risk: splashing the adjacent entryway in coral paint, “a nice, bright pop to see from the front door,” says Clouse. In this project, color was meant to be timeless—there, but not in your face.
To offset the dining room’s neutral backdrop, Clouse filled the space with dynamic shapes and volume in the form of a cheetah statue and art placed on the easel in lieu of the wall.
Keeping with the nontraditional, the kitchen’s red oak floors are paired with modern, maple-veneered plywood cabinets. A vintage desk takes the place of a traditional kitchen island—the piece was left behind in the garage by the previous owners of the home. “We immediately fell in love with it,” recalls Clouse. “Since it’s open on both sides, it provided easy access to stools for a quick rest. The kitchen has the most newness in all the house and it was important for us to break that up with something that had some age to it.”
Technically, the space is also the laundry room—a washer/dryer is hidden behind one of the cupboard doors, although the appliances are ventless to avoid more plumbing work. “As a bonus, it keeps you from having to walk out to the garage to do laundry, which is almost worse than doing the laundry itself,” says Clouse.
She went into the design of the living room with the intention of “creating a story of experiences.” She explains, “the design serves a dual purpose: creating a welcoming space while providing topics of conversation.”
In the bedroom, Clouse doubled up on the wall art above the bed—a framed photograph hangs directly over a timeworn map—to establish an eye-catching focal point. Most of the textiles were sourced from the clients’ travels and live alongside various family heirlooms. “You want to create a balance between old and new, textured and smooth, and so on,” says Clouse.
It’s these subtle, storied details that uphold the home’s innate charm—something that simply can’t be bought.