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You can count on two hands all the pieces of furniture in this Austin, Texas, home…there’s that little of it. Instead, most things—the primary bed, the Yves Klein blue sofa, the entryway credenza—are built-in. Even the tiled planter in the entryway is one with the house. The homeowner, a lawyer who had bought the 1,600 square foot home 10 years ago, wasn’t all that interested in picking out couches or cocktail tables. “As we went along in the project, she’d be like, ‘I have this ’70s table from my parents.’ And then she’d come back, ‘Never mind, I want a built-in table,’” recalls Katharine Bayer, the architect on the project.
The renovation called for a detail-oriented team. After Bayer got to work on the layout (she moved the entertaining areas from the front of the house to the back; carved out a foyer; added a 20-foot sliding glass door to open up the living room to the backyard), she looped in interior designer Sara Oswalt of Purveyor Design. Oswalt had visions of Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul, exciting stones, and floating headboards. “Austin has a lot of homes that have been taken over by builders, and everybody was feeling very anti that,” says the designer.
To bring it all together, Bayer tapped Matriarchy Build, a platform featuring a curated directory of female construction professionals, to hire a general contractor using its “Find a Builder” service. Michelle Flores, cofounder of Remodel Boutique, was game for all the bespoke elements Bayer and Oswalt had in mind. And it’s a good thing she’s the figure-it-out type of pro. While some requests sounded simple, like using reclaimed tiles to create a mosaic on the front porch, they required extra thought (or in this example, shaving-down of tiles) to bring to life. “None of these things were rocket science, but it was construction science,” says Flores.
The ceiling beams in the entry were another feat. The intricate pattern is based on a fence Oswalt had spotted on a trip to Mexico City. After hand-drawing the motif and modeling it in SketchUp, she passed the baton to the construction team. Hiring a woodworker to carve every niche would be too costly, so instead they cleverly assembled pieces of pine wood to make it look like one solid beam. “It’s like a big puzzle,” notes Bayer.
Many things in the house, in fact, are not as they appear. The mesquite wood panels in the living room that look like a fireplace screen? They hide the TV. The equipment for the steam shower in the primary bathroom? It’s tucked inside a window bench in the adjacent bedroom.
But when mess-ups happened during construction, there was no overlooking them. The Yves Klein blue ceiling in the primary bedroom had to be repainted multiple times because the finicky, patented finish easily absorbs dust and fingerprints and shows signs of overlapping brushstrokes. “It was one of those really cool decisions that pushed us,” shares Oswalt. Luckily, everyone was in fix-it-mode. “I loved that Michelle would come and say, ‘How can we do this better?’ We could all give each other constructive criticism as we worked along like a team,” adds the designer.
The designer introduced a similar Perennials shade on the built-in sofa, which is tucked in a corner of the living room where the homeowner loves to curl up and work. The small ledge around the back of the seating is the perfect depth for a glass of water, but for hiding blankets and board games, there’s meaningful storage in the form of drawers underneath. The pros clad the bulkhead in tile to help separate the nook from the rest of the living area.
By leaning into custom millwork and smart layouts, there’s not much the team couldn’t offer their client in the end. Even though the primary bathroom is only 5-and-a-half feet wide, they squeezed in overhead storage, a wall-hung Toto toilet discreetly tucked behind the vanity, a steam shower, a soaking tub, access to an outdoor shower, and a serious amount of natural light. “It feels like a hotel to me, in that way. It’s very luxurious,” says Oswalt.