TTRACI ZELLER HAD JUST STARTED REDESIGNING HER CLIENT’S BONUS ROOM when she got the call. “My client said, ‘Surprise! We bought a new home and we want you to help design it for us!’” laughs the designer. “Of course, I was on board.”
The homeowners wanted to build a custom home and had been looking for lots for quite some time. “We were looking at teardown lots that were $1 million plus, which seemed like a ridiculous amount to spend before even commencing construction, so we decided to switch gears,” says the homeowner. The couple landed on a spec home under construction in Myers Park. It was on nearly half an acre of land, which afforded the family the privacy they desired.
The new home, which was designed by architectural designer Frank Smith, was a departure from the client’s previous residence, which was built by Simonini nearly two decades ago and featured more of an arts-and-crafts style of architecture and interior design. With this new home, the couple wanted to skew a touch more modern and timeless. “Our new home is much different. That’s the whole point in starting over, right?” she says. “We like to try new things.”
“We engaged Traci immediately,” she adds. “I knew this would be our forever home and wanted everything to be just right, from the plumbing to the window treatments.
And with Traci’s guidance, we made some significant changes. While I may confidently know what I want in a floor plan or architectural details, I am lost when it comes to color and pattern coordinating.” The couple also enlisted Simonini to complete the build of the home, which included a variety of changes, most notably converting a small wet bar and unnecessary elevator shaft into a scullery. A laundry room that was initially at the front of the house became the wife’s office. And a drop zone was moved closer to the garage to accommodate the couple’s two teens who are in and out of the house often. “The fundamentals of the floor plan were there,” Zeller explains. “It just needed some tweaking.”
For Zeller, the interior design was a bit of a balancing act. “They definitely wanted this house to feel cleaner, fresher, brighter, and airier,” she says. “The husband definitely leans more modern, but the wife is very much about the color, pattern, and maybe even a little bit boho in all the best ways. It was a real dance between honoring this house’s architecture and design as well as marrying the couple’s differing styles so there was no disconnect.”
Small but impactful tweaks to the interior architectural details allowed Zeller to seamlessly blend the husband and wife’s individual styles. “Maybe the moldings aren’t as stark as a purely modern house, but they’re not fussy, which is what we did here,” she says. “It’s about making it feel clean and relaxed; that’s where those styles can meet. Boho is relaxed, but modern is clean and not fussy. If you can meet in the middle, you can end up in a happy place. I really wanted it to be authentic to who they are as a couple. It’s not always easy and it requires both people being open to meeting in the middle, but I believe you can get somewhere where everyone is happy.”
That balance of aesthetics is most apparent in the kitchen. “This kitchen feels both organic and sophisticated. It’s really clean and modern but it has this soft, modern uniform,” she explains. “The plaster hood by Mudwerk is soft and blends right into the backsplash and into the wood paneling above. By eliminating upper cabinets in favor of two tall cabinets, the kitchen still feels light and bright and not heavy, despite what people usually think of wood.” The upholstered fronts of the built-in cupboard/china cabinet are swathed in a vegan leather—“the pony texture is divine,” Zeller says—resulting in an elevated but soft look. The addition of the string pendants gives the room that organic but not overly fussy touch, while the color in the counter stools by Vanguard is just enough to make the pattern-loving wife happy.
The foyer is yet another space where Zeller perfected the coupling of two varying aesthetics, resulting in a clean, soft, modern look that both husband and wife love. The simple but organic modern architectural details like the tongue-and-groove ceiling and wooden beam accents pair beautifully with the sisal rug by Fibreworks and the Visual Comfort lighting. The addition of the Oushak rug from the homeowners’ previous residence provides just the right amount of color and pattern to soften the entire aesthetic.
Though the home was a “pandemic project,” laughs Zeller, having been built throughout all of 2020 with all of its construction delays and setbacks, the result is a house that both husband and wife love inside and out. “Traci made everything easy and seamless,” says the homeowner. “She and I absolutely have different design aesthetic preferences, but she confidently embraced my vision yet pushed me out of my comfort zone to try something I might not have initially gravitated toward or considered.”