When you step inside Frank and Laura Martinez’s family home on Melvin Arnolds Street in Raleigh, you’ll notice a few eye-catching features.
Lauren Burns of Lauren Burns Interiors worked with the couple to design their dream home after relocating to Raleigh from Boston with their two young children. Lauren says the house they purchased was already renovated, but it didn’t fit their needs completely.
“They wanted it a little bit more open,” she says. “They wanted more light to come in.”
The Martinez family worked with a contractor to blow out the back of the house off the family room, install 16-foot sliding doors and create a second-floor balcony as a part of the additional renovation.
One notable feature is the free-standing, reclaimed wood-wrapped fireplace. According to Lauren, Frank had a lot of creative ideas and was a major part of the process involving the fireplace. They refaced the whole fireplace with reclaimed wood, which they ran vertically around it, and added metal edging and a metal mantle. Additionally, there’s a piece of art that serves to disguise the television above the mantle. Overall, the home has a mid-century-modern-meets-industrial look.
Lauren enjoys figuring out how to maximize a space based on how her clients want it to function, but her favorite part is when it all comes together and she can see her clients’ reactions.
“It’s such a relationship that you develop with these people because you’re in their homes and you get to know their lives—them personally, their struggles, the things they get excited about,” she says. “I’ve had clients who have cried when I’ve left because they are just so happy that the space is everything they had hoped for. That’s a really good feeling to know you’ve made such an impact on a family and to know they are going to be able to enjoy it for years to come. It makes me feel good about what I do every day.”
