Believe it or not, but the '60s can look quite modern.
With artful coaxing, Elizabeth Kennedy and McAlpine's Ray Booth reveal the sleek soul of a 1960s home in Houston.
To "update and clarify" a 1961 house in Houston, architect Ray Booth of McAlpine and Elizabeth Kennedy balanced the original aesthetic with a contemporary point of view. Booth tweaked the '60s white-brick facade with new vertical shutters and added a steel-gated front door and custom lantern.
In the foyer, an antique bench sits against a custom screen painted in Benjamin Moore's Briarwood.
Booth established the new openness of the house in the foyer, where he updated the original window and removed carpeted treads and risers from the steel staircase, replacing them with stone "floaters." The bench and Chippendale-style chair came from the client's previous home.
In the serenely neutral living room, a custom McAlpine cocktail table joins a sofa and club chairs by Joseph Company and a tall armchair from Lee Industries. The curtains are in a Rogers & Goffigon fabric, and the cowhide rug is by Edelman Leather.
The dining room table is by Bradley, and the McAlpine for Lee Industries chairs are covered in a Rogers & Goffigon linen blend. The curtains are in a Holly Hunt fabric.
"We added about 50 square feet to the kitchen to accommodate everything we needed," Booth says. The new Eagle windows look like steel but are actually aluminum. Booth chose honed Carrara marble for the counters as a perfect fit for the beige-and-gray palette. A Lindsey Adelman fixture hangs from a new skylight over a prep island clad in brushed-and-bleached oak. The wall cabinets are oak with Whitechapel hardware.
Room-height paneled doors slide open to reveal the espresso station and china cabinets.
The master bedroom celebrates softness, with an upholstered headboard from Joseph Company and bedding made from Rogers & Goffigon fabrics. Two skirted chairs by McAlpine for Lee Industries sit beside a custom steel-frame mirror, hand-silvered by R Squared. The ceiling fixture from Remains Lighting is one of several lanterns in the house.
"The challenge in the master bathroom was using every available inch of space," says Booth, who under-mounted twin Kathryn sinks from Kohler. The faucets are from Kallista and the custom mirrors are by McAlpine.
The master bedroom and adjacent family room open onto an outdoor seating area with all-weather wicker chairs from Crate & Barrel. Read more about the inspiration for this home here.
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This story originally appeared in the October 2016 issue of House Beautiful.
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