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A blog by Krysta MacGray

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Design

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Designing a house from scratch can be daunting. When you can pick anything—literally anything within budget—it can be overwhelming. With limitless possibilities, how does one even start?

There’s really only one way. 

First, you look at anything and everything and drive yourself crazy with options. You look for shower tile and fireplace designs. You consider shiplap and hardwood floors. Dark or light? Grey hews or brown? Gold? No, not gold. Then there are the paint colors. The color palette. Of course the countertops must be considered. If you go with something busy, the cabinets and floors better be chill, you know? 

PS. Don’t go with something busy. It’s 2020 after all. 

Besides the look, you need to choose material. Are we going granite or cement? No wait, quartz! But hold on, because if I do cream quarts countertops with a lovely little grey vein in the kitchen, and then also pick white cabinets and a white/cream backsplash will everything look too white? Where do we add color exactly?

PSS. No. It won’t look too white once you put all your stuff in there. 

Then there is the cabinet hardware. If you go all white with everything else, should you go black or gold on the hardware so it pops? Yes, unless of course you like silver best, in which case always choose what you like best. 

But look at me, spending all this time on cabinet hardware when there are obviously much more interesting things to consider anyway, like light fixtures and sinks. 

Oh, the sinks. 

Do you want a bowl sink? Don’t do it in your master. For the master, only inset sinks will do. Don’t pick one that mounts over the countertop. You know, the sinks that sit on top of the countertop and have ornate edges? So messy. No, you want under mount so you can just wipe whatever is on the counter quickly and cleanly back into the sink. But then again, that’s just me. 

Then comes the worry. You have to worry whether it’s okay that you put silver faucets on your bathroom sinks but brass for you shower head (the answer is yes, it’s fine). And then you will worry about your doors. How will the doors open—in or out? Does my pantry need a door? Will it be a standard door or a barn door or a pocket door, or a dutch door or a paneled door or a white door or chalkboard door? A wood door? But wait—you have the wooden hutch that is going to go right by it and you are worried it will be too wood matchy. WILL IT BE TOO WOOD MATCHY? 

So you’ll look at everything a drive yourself crazy with worry and options. And then you’ll feel shame for being so worried about something like house design when people in the world are suffering. You’ll vow to be better the next day. You’ll fail. Repeat cycle.

Okay, so that happens first. Best to be prepared for it. 

If you do that long enough, here is what happens next: A path appears. 

In order for a path to appear you have to find one thing—a tile pattern, a rug, a landscape design for your outdoor entertaining space—I don’t care what it is—but whatever it is, it will be one thing you are absolutely sold on. Something that looks so much like you and your specific taste that when you look at it your insides jump. This is actually what all the searching and pinning and scrolling through Luxe magazine’s instagram feed is for. You are not actually looking for “ideas.” You are looking for one thing to fall completely, madly, 100% in love with. Because when you do, a path appears. 

Suddenly, you can sense what everything else in the room will feel like once this one thing is there. You instinctively know the color and tone. You can suddenly see it. You can pick a floor that will compliment without fuss.

That is the process. You look and look until you find one thing that you are absolutely sure about and smitten with, because when you do, it will inform the rest of the design and make it easier to pick everything else. And you won’t have to second guess yourself because all the decisions are being made around the thing you are certain about. So wait for the one thing you’re sure of.

This is how you start. 

And this, my friends, is where design becomes a metaphor for life. 

My one thing for my Park Place house was this gorgeous hand painted Tabarka Studio shower tile. It had me at “hello.”

Writing on Wood

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The other day we pulled up to the front of the house we’re building to walk around the framed walls, and live in the spaces before we move in.

We do this a lot. Most every weekend, Jeremy and I unload the two littlest and wander around like we haven’t done it thirty times before.

This day, I happened to find a good pencil in my car as I stepped out the door, so I took it with me into the house and decided to wing the thoughts I’d write on the lumber that will become the bones of our house.

Normally this process is more planned out. I do this with every house we build. I sit down before I write anything and search for Bible verses or quotes for each room and write them down into categories (kids room, dining room, etc) to write again on the wood later.

But this day I wondered what would happen if, instead of just using someone else’s words, I stepped into each room and and asked myself “what are my hopes and prayers for this space?” and then wrote that down instead—mini prayers, my prayers,  etched in the walls. So that’s what I did. I also googled Bible verses that correspond to my prayers and wrote those in as well.

This process is sort of like setting an intention I guess, so even if you didn’t want to use scripture, you could still write your hopes, along with a few quotes through history of people you admire. This is the very first step I take in making my house a home.

In Ellie Hope’s room, amid the prayers and verses, I plan to add Emily Dickinson’s words:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune 
Without the words
And never stops—
At all

 

In our master bedroom, I will add lyrics from some of our songs:

Wise men say, only fools rush in
But I can’t help falling in love with you

Someday, when I’m awfully low
And the world is cold
I will feel a glow
Just thinking of you
And the way you look tonight

It’s delightful, It’s delicious, it’s de-lovely

I feel like if I infuse thoughtful, meaningful words into the very foundation of where my family eats, sleeps and lives, that somehow, it matters. It makes a difference.

In the kitchen, my hopes were to entertain, and nourish people. I hoped it would be a gathering place. So that is the sort of thing I wrote.

In Isabella’s bedroom I wrote hopes, reminders,  and thoughts specific to her. I did the same in Jeremiah and Ellie’s room.

Things like:

Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway
—Eleanor Rosevelt

and

A wise man changes his mind. A fool, never
—Spanish proverb

In Olivia’s room I specifically asked for deep sleep  in that space, since she has sleeping issues.

In the room that is our guest cottage but doubles as my writing room, I hoped it would a space where deep joy and rejuvenation would occur, and creativity would flow freely. I asked for the gift of words to be plenty.

The thing about this beautiful practice is, I never actually want to do it. In theory I very much do, but in actuality, it takes a lot of concentration and consideration, and it’s hard to pause long enough to form thoughts on something that is not reality yet. It’s a discipline for me to follow through with.

Farm House

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In late 2014 we bought a farm house on ten acres. It was known as “The Bartholomew Ranch” around town, named after the original owners, but an old newspaper article referenced the property as “Cloverdale.” It wasn’t clear why until the family discovered their grandfather was born in Cloverdale, Kansas. We love history.

The house was 1300 sq ft and built in 1902. There were two bedrooms upstairs and one bathroom downstairs which couldn’t have made an easy job of getting to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The stairs were were narrow, steep, and definitely not to code, so you risked injury should you fall, a definite negative. The property itself was idyllic though. Only five miles outside of town with a pond, a historic white barn and the most beautiful old cottonwood tree you ever did see. It was clear to us that if our family of six wanted to live here, we’d need to add on. We would buy it, gut it, and expand the house to 2000 sq ft with two extra bedrooms…and live in it forever.

Ha. Ha. Haaaaaaaa.

I’ve moved 12 times in 12 years of marriage and should have known better. What actually happened was we lived it in for one year, absolutely loved it, then sold it to awesome people, and moved onto the next thing.

Before

 

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