Kay Genua has been in the business of making homes beautiful for over 34 years. With a business degree from Tulane, she fell into her career when she started working for an antique seller. “I’m self-taught. I’ve learned over the years that you can’t teach someone how to display a bookshelf, you can’t teach fabrics, you can’t teach how to make a room a room. That’s something you have or you don’t.”
Throughout the years, most of her clients have come through referrals or just by chance in life. With one couple in particular, meeting when their daughters attended the same school, the relationship has evolved from picking out an antique table to a 26-year-long relationship that’s seen over nine projects together in three different homes: Fort Worth, Beaver Creek Colorado, and Palm Springs. There have been three remodels in the Fort Worth home alone, including two kitchen remodels, building a casita, designing their daughter’s rooms, and the two most recent projects: a master bath and media room remodel.
Genua reflects on the working relationship she’s enjoyed with the couple, “it goes back to knowing each other so well. I know their taste. And sometimes, when I'm in a fabric viewing, and there's a fabric that comes along that looks like them. I'll get a sample and put it in their bag for the future. Without them telling me what kind of budget to stay on, I just know it.”
Kay’s long-standing relationship with clients is part of the fun, but it’s really all about finding that first fabric when it comes to the job itself. For her, it’s the beginning of her vision of what a room will become. “I start building on it, and then I can see the room coming together. I'll usually come up with at least three different scenarios. I don't want to present something to someone, say, take it or leave it. I want to give them choices. I get so excited when I start pulling fabrics and find the ones that start the direction for the room, then I get excited when I present it, and then when I install, oh my gosh. It makes my day. It just makes my heart sing,” she says.
The daughters’ rooms were the very first projects all those years ago. They had been working with another designer, but after meeting with Kay, they challenged her with the remodels, with a strict request that she stays within budget. She did just that and earned herself the respect, business, and the couple’s friendship. “They give me a project; they give me a little bit of what they want at the start, and let me run with it. That's how I do my best work—when I'm not micromanaged,” she says.
Her most recent projects—the master bath and the media room remodel—were both challenging and rewarding. In the master bath, Kay envisioned using a piece of antique furniture as the sink and vanity area, but she couldn’t find anything that fit her requirements. “Everything was too long, too little, too short to this, to that. My contractor works with an incredibly talented woodworker, so I found two antique pieces I liked, showed him the aspects I wanted, and he custom-made the vanity for me. It has all the features my client wanted and is drop-dead gorgeous,” she says.
The vanity is just one of the reasons Genua is so happy with the turnout. It’s a small space, and it was tricky to get everything the client wanted, but the combination of the vanity, new wallpaper, paint color, cabinets, and carpet was exactly what the client wanted. “When I do something custom and come up with all the details, it's a thrill because it's unique to the job, and my clients are always so happy. The whole bathroom makes my heart just soar. The room is just sumptuous,” she says.
The other project Genua just recently finished was the media room facelift. She did the original remodel in 2015, and this time, it was more about refreshing the fabric on the furniture. According to Genua, they kept the wool fabric on the walls, kept the drapes, kept the artwork, kept the skirted side table, and redid everything else. One thing about Kay is that she keeps all her fabrics from past jobs. So when a client requests a facelift, she can identify which fabric was originally used and use that as a start. “It was fun making it all work,” she says.
Find out more about Genua Designs at kaygenuadesigns.com or instagram.com/kaygenuadesigns