Kara Childress<\/a> likes to talk about a house having a soul. When the Houston interior designer works with a client, she says, \u201cI want it to reflect the owner\u2019s story, not the person who did the interiors.\u201d But thirty years ago, when she and her husband, former NFL great Ray Childress, built the home in which they would raise their four children, they didn\u2019t yet know where their own story would go.<\/p>\nIt started as a classic Texas fairy tale: Kara and Ray met as teenagers in Dallas\u2014she was the head cheerleader, he was the captain of the football team\u2014and married young. Ray, who transitioned into real estate development after a twelve-year NFL career with the Houston Oilers and Dallas Cowboys, oversaw construction of their house in 1996 while he was still playing; he\u2019d grown up around building sites, thanks to his father\u2019s work in the custom-home business. Kara, then a young mother, filled the house with the kind of enduring details that have since become her signature: old stone sinks, reclaimed French oak floors, and antiques unearthed at flea markets in the English countryside.<\/p>\n
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Photo: JULIE SOEFER<\/p>\n
Ray and Kara with their British yellow Labs, Neve, Nala, and Poppy; an upholstered armchair sits by the antique limestone fireplace in the living room.<\/p>\n
Their Mediterranean-style villa, with a terra-cotta roof and stucco walls, sits on a circular drive in the Tanglewood neighborhood, one of Houston\u2019s quieter pockets of prestige and the longtime home of President George H. W. Bush. Inside, it\u2019s more idiosyncratic, with French, Italian, and Spanish influences layered atop modern comforts and personal touches\u2014a home that mixes and matches traditions freely, with a certain Texan sense of inevitability.<\/p>\n
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Photo: JULIE SOEFER<\/p>\n
The Kara Childress Interior Atelier studio, tucked away in the Childresses\u2019 home.<\/p>\n
An eighteenth-century limestone fireplace anchors the living room, while a pair of upholstered walnut armchairs and a French buffet deux corps Kara bought in the Cotswolds soften the look with a kind of timeworn elegance. An Italian giltwood chandelier at once lowers the fourteen-foot ceiling and allows it to soar. But despite all the antiques, nothing in the home feels precious. \u201cThere are no \u2018do not touch\u2019 rooms,\u201d Kara says. \u201cI love old, patinaed items because the more love you give them, the better they wear.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Photo: JULIE SOEFER<\/p>\n
Neve in the home\u2019s entryway; a painting by Utah artist Richard Murray in a powder room.<\/p>\n
Kara is now a sought-after name in the design world. Her firm, Kara Childress Interior Atelier, runs out of a hidden studio in their home that used to be a garage bay, accessible through a hallway tucked behind a former closet. Her projects include ski homes in Aspen, sprawling Hill Country ranches, boutique hotels such as the nearby Granduca, and more than a few stately city mansions. But this house, one of her first, might be her most lasting achievement. \u201cVery little has changed,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
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Photo: JULIE SOEFER<\/p>\n
Kara arranging English lavender on the covered patio; the primary bedroom features a vintage Louis Vuitton trunk and French-inspired linens.<\/p>\n
The mood shifts in the spaces that flank the kitchen. In the cozy media room, a dramatic David Yarrow photograph of a woman and a wolf hangs above a sprawling sectional, and an old Louis Vuitton trunk acts as the indestructible coffee table. \u201cPut your feet up,\u201d Kara insists. The walls here are finished in matte Belgian plaster, giving the room a hushed, cocoon-like feel.<\/p>\n
Off in another direction, a family room with a pool table and a pair of big elk antler chandeliers evokes a rugged Western lodge. Overhead, exposed beams that Ray had distressed with chain saws and torches\u2014\u201cwe lit them on fire,\u201d he says proudly\u2014add drama, while a large-scale painting of a bear with a prominent backside by Utah artist Richard Murray provides a touch of whimsy. \u201cIt brings me so much joy,\u201d Kara says. \u201cI have this client who\u2019s on the board of regents of Baylor University, and he was like, \u2018You have to sell it to us,\u2019 but I didn\u2019t. I found them a different version.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Photo: JULIE SOEFER<\/p>\n
A pair of elk antler chandeliers crown the family room.<\/p>\n
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Photo: Julie Soefer<\/p>\n
A seventeenth-century Dalle de Bourgogne stone island anchors the kitchen.<\/p>\n
The bear is part of this home\u2019s soul. So is the bookcase of Ray\u2019s football memorabilia, tucked tastefully away in a study. So is the \u201cWall of Fame,\u201d a salon-style gallery of family photos that fills a long hallway near the kitchen. They\u2019ll need more space for it eventually, with the tally of grandchildren mounting.<\/p>\n
Kara and Ray have thought about downsizing a few times over the years since the kids moved out, but it\u2019s never quite made sense. Because maybe the soul of a home isn\u2019t just about the physical objects that fill it, but even more so the memories. And this home is fuller than ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: JULIE SOEFER Kara and Ray Childress\u2019s home in Houston\u2019s Tanglewood neighborhood. Kara Childress likes to talk about…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":310217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[7296,7297,4345,358,3187,7298],"class_list":{"0":"post-310216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-home-garden","9":"tag-homeplace","10":"tag-houston","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-whats-new"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115388465331294514","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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