Megan Daughtry, founder of Proud House Studio & Co., thoroughly enjoys the puzzle that comes along with interior design. In fact, Proud House is known for it. So when design challenges presented themselves in a Dakota Ridge home remodel—like moving a doorway six feet in the kitchen to double its size—the design team leaned in to out-of-the-box thinking to create something beautiful.
Their clients were Amy, Greg and their four-year-old daughter, Alma, who had recently moved to Boulder from New York and had been living in their new home for about three months before starting the remodel. Amy is a textile designer, which Daughtry said made for a fun collaboration since she loved color and pattern.
“We took advantage of her enjoyment of whimsical florals and different color plays and brought that into a lot of her design elements,” Daughtry says. “Not every client is like that. Some people just want a white and gray house. We always feel really inspired when we have a client who is also a designer in her own industry, but it's sort of the same language. They're speaking about how color plays on each other, and when you're doing a whole house like we did for them, it's so much about that story that you're telling as you're moving through the spaces. How from the entrance back to the kitchen—that every design decision is building on each other and yet it's cohesive.”
While Amy and Greg were house hunting, they wanted to find a fixer-upper, and many homes in the Dakota Ridge neighborhood are about 20-30 years old. The couple loves mid-century style, which Daughtry could see in their West Elm walnut, oval dining room table paired with lime green Eames chairs and their collection of artwork and rugs. Daughtry said that when working with a client who has just moved into a space, since it isn’t completely furnished, it can be hard to tell what their tastes and style are.
“I mean, [you see their style] here and there, but also, they haven't lived in the house long enough to know what really the problems are that are needing attention or what are the areas to invest [in],” she says. “So they really relied on our expertise to guide those investments.”
For instance: the staircase. It was carpeted with an oak railing and dated wood tones. At first, they weren’t going to touch it, but Daughtry and her team were able to change their minds.
“They were just going to paint the railing, but we talked them into actually chopping off the curved part of the stairs and increasing the width and the landing to just be a little more inviting,” Daughtry says. “Then we replaced all the balusters with metal balusters, and it just was a huge transformation.”
Proud House’s main focus in the remodel was the kitchen and bathroom spaces. They also helped with furnishings, since the family was transitioning from a 1,000-square-foot home to an almost 4,000-square-foot, three-story home. A couple elements of the remodel that Daughtry especially loved were the powder bathroom, which incorporated fun wallpaper behind the vanity, as well as the kid’s bathroom.
“We did a really graphic tile floor, in this half-moon shape, that's green and white that's really pretty,” she says. “It's a concrete tile, and then matching green stacked subway tile in her shower and white cabinetry and these beautiful green—they were almost like melamine—material molded, plastic pendants. It's just very sweet. It's gender neutral, but also just fun for a kid's bath, and easy to switch things out with different elements of color or design with towels and decor or whatever.”
Daughtry finds fulfillment in interior design because their work improves not only homes, but also improves that space for the families that live there.
“There are so many creative ways to accomplish the different functions that a home needs to do that aren't necessarily expected,” she says. “So when you can find opportunities to listen to the architecture of the house, to make sure that it flows and makes sense, and you're using your principles of design, that are really important, but also pushing the concepts as far as possible towards really highlighting some key features of the home…we don't go crazy everywhere. We usually pick in every room… a focal point or showstopper. Then everything else is like the supporting actors and actresses in the room.”
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