Seabrook home transforms from dark and dated to contemporary ‘wow’

For months, the master bedroom suite at Brett and Jessica Callier’s house in Seabrook may also be Grand Central Station.

The kitchen, living room, dining room, laundry room, powder bath and office have been extensively renovated and removed down to the tunnels.

“We had the refrigerator and microwave in the bedroom and it was super tight,” said Jessica, a native of Pearland. “I would get up in the morning to make my daughter’s lunch for school and my husband would still sleep nearby. On Christmas morning the girls came in to open their presents. We lived in the master bedroom. “

The Calliers don’t mind being stuck at home since the project ended in March, just as the coronavirus pandemic brought much of the country to a standstill. Once dark and full of obstacles – pillars, arched doors, a bulky fireplace, and a passage wall – their home is now a model of sparkling contemporary design.

The floor plan, built in 2005, had deteriorated according to today’s standard and now includes main living areas with an open concept. Dark interior paneling, stained wood cabinets, and plantation-style shutters all added to the cavernous feel of the original interior.

The Calliers, who bought the 3,335-square-foot house nine years ago when they married, waited a year for their contractor to take them on. As Jessica waded through the process of choosing the finishes, she bumped into a wall.

“I was very overwhelmed when it came to choosing lights,” said Jessica, who worked in accounting at Houston Pilots before staying home with her daughters. “I ordered and returned things because they didn’t look right. I just didn’t feel qualified to pick everything out.

Brett Callier, a native of LaMarque, is the ship’s captain with Houston Pilots. They are a mixed family with daughter Tori, 14, Quinn, 20, a student at SMU, and Kiley, 27, a doctor in her Chicago medical residence.

Jessica found interior designer Missy Stewart of Missy Stewart Designs online and hooked up with photos of work she did for others.

“People get tired of making decisions when they build or remodel. It’s a lot of choices, and it’s a costly decision or mistake, ”said Stewart.

Stewart blessed the flooring (porcelain tile that looked like wood), paint (light gray), and Cambria quartz counters that Jessica had already selected and was busy finding the right lighting and furniture.

There is now a bar in her front door that used to be the dining room. A wide, double-sided fireplace separated the dining room from the kitchen and living room, and a raised fireplace made the room feel even narrower. With the fireplace and chimney gone, they were now comfortably seated in four black leather armchairs under a modern chandelier that looks like a fancy mess of poles and lightbulbs.

“You want comfortable chairs that you don’t rush from, but sit back and enjoy,” said Stewart. “Brett was all about it – hang out and not be in a rush to leave.”

Behind the back wall of the bar is the laundry room, now larger and more functional, with a long row of mesh-door cabinets that serve as kennels for their three dogs. The white cabinets with gold hardware, the glassy backsplash of the subway tiles, and the white quartz counters ensure that everything feels fresh.

The living area is anchored by an Instagram-worthy statement wall with a black background and gold abstract stripes painted by the artists of Decorative and Faux Finishes.

“If you have a house that’s so white, white, white, and then you hang that black TV on a wall, you’ve ruined the room with that dark TV,” Stewart said of her abstract wall idea. “If you make it part of the design, the TV goes away. But when we want to do it, we make it look very deliberate. “

Jessica recalls when she and her family were on a ski trip in Colorado and their contractor saw the statement wall and wrote her a picture before it was done.

“He said:” Is it supposed to look like this? “Said Jessica, now laughing at her initial shock at the project when painter’s tape was still running in all directions.” I like bold statements and things that other people don’t do. We had a graduation ceremony here and it looks really good in pictures . “

There are two gold-colored tables in front of the wall. The rest of the space is filled with white sofas, a curvy faux marble coffee table, and two trendy swivel chairs with a blue Dokin pattern.

Above everything hangs an oversized crystal chandelier ring, a lamp that sets the tone for the glamorous lighting in the Calliers’ house.

Originally the kitchen had a slim island and then another counter with a partial wall – what designers call a “passageway” – and bar stool seats that extended into part of the living room. There weren’t any full walls separating the two rooms, but there were enough columns, doors, and partitions to make it feel like two separate rooms.

Cabinets painted white that stretched to the ceiling replaced wood-stained cabinets, quartz counters – white with light gray veins – replaced reddish granite and gold fittings, and fixtures replaced brushed nickel.

Instead of a room lit only by canned ceiling lights, Stewart found a pair of crystal and brass chandeliers. The new oversized island has an overhang where it can put four bar stools, making it the main place where the calliers sit to eat.

Stewart noted that many customers think twice about lighting size – it can be difficult to find the right scale. Many designers opt for larger chandeliers and pendants because ceiling heights generally get higher and the right lights can look huge if they come straight out of a box before hanging in a room.

“Sometimes I find it difficult to convince people that something can be done. It’s so fun to show before and after photos like this because people see a house like that and think it could never be their house, ”said Stewart. “It’s fun when you can totally transform a room.”

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