Finding Home
“We have always wanted something small, a tiny place that doesn’t feel like it’s in the city, but that feels a part of something else.” -Joy R.
Imagine, for a moment, what it might smell like to work on a ranch. Clean air, but also dust, the pollen from the groves of cedars and scrub oaks smells green, but makes your eyes water and you sneeze. At the end of the day, you’re tired. You do this every day, work, breath, lift, walk, look, wonder; and eventually, you realize your heart and your soul are somewhere out there, in the land. It’s so special, but also so exhausting, after a time, so what does rest look like? You don’t have energy for the new and exciting all the time, you want something familiar, like the ranch, but a little less cumbersome. A place that requires less of you, but still restores you.
“I want to enjoy it, not own it!” -Milton
Our clients, Joy and her fiance Milton, are moving to Fredericksburg, they both have large ranching operations, but their extended family is here, and so is a lot of their own personal history. “I grew up on a ranch, nature was my inspiration from a young age,” said Joy, “My favorite color has always been green, like leaves on a tree and like fresh spring grass.”
We’re taking time to know Joy and Milton. Not just the surface stuff, like how they spell their names and their “tastes”; but rather, their story and context. We want to know them genuinely, beyond a list of facts about themselves, we want to know them at the levels of motivation and purpose. Why move to Fredericksburg? To have a quaint house in a small town? Maybe. But for them, as we’ve found, it’s so much more.
Joy loves green because she’s always been close to the natural world. She’s in contact with trees, grass, animals, and unfiltered air constantly. She has a history with the Texas Hill Country, so she appreciates the aesthetic that’s already been established, and wants to blend in with the best of what’s here. She said, “From the exterior, our home will look like a Hill Country, pioneer, Sunday house. But, once you go through the doors, we’ll have our own flair.”
The lot is small, with purpose. Like the original settlers, Joy is looking for a place to rest, not something else big to take care of. From a week of soul-inspiring but body-draining work on the ranch, the Sunday house was the heritage solution for recharging and engaging people, socializing, stimulating the intellect. And that’s what Fredericksburg is all about, people from all over the state have migrated here to enjoy each other in a setting that’s not all about speed. Wide streets, slow walks, easy conversation. Thousands of small towns may share the same basic traits, but here, there’s an atmosphere of welcome, a zeitgeist for bringing fine people together and slowing them down. Joy and Milton love the conversations they have here with progressive, successful people. They love them so much that their Sunday house will be open, designed for hospitality, long dinners, late nights, and conversation. They both have family here, and they’ll host. They will clean up at night, sleep in, and awake to more rest, maybe they’ll take a walk, wave at neighbors, and pioneer their own ideas as they pass block after block of historical homes.
The design needs to reflect their way of life. It needs to capture the essential purpose for moving here in the first place. Their home can’t take anything from them, it can’t be a complex space that drains their energy. Rather it needs to reflect them by being natural, accepting of others, easy on their time and calm. Above all, it must live and age outside the normal cadence of “time”. It must feel timeless.
“I want somebody to walk into my home in twenty years and ask us if we just built it.”
Well, Joy, this is something we value so much. When you stay close to the most universally beautiful materials and proportions, this becomes possible. Trends are designed to fade, they are meant to pass, but when we create space that holds many natural and essentially beautiful things, we begin to jump outside of time. And isn’t’ that itself important? Shouldn’t a place of rest and restoration be like an old, best friend? You should know what you’re getting every time you open the door, you should be glad to see it again, your shoulders should relax. Keeping up with a trend takes a lot of work and reinvention, and that’s not what this home is about.
So let’s find home together. Let’s discover how nature and history and size and proportion and color can come together to create an experience that welcomes you (and anyone you invite) with open and familiar arms for the next decade or two.
Let’s design a space that truly reflects who you are.