Papercity

People love their houses for all kinds of reasons. For interior designer Hilary Crady, it all began with sentimentality. The original owner, an architect at the Houston firm Northrop and Northrop, built this 1,600-square-foot mid-century modern house in the 1950s for his own family, but when he and his wife divorced a year later, Crady’s grandparents bought it and lived there happily throughout their golden years. The Memorial Drive property then passed down to her mother and uncle. Just before the birth of their first child, Crady and her husband, Ned, decided this little one-story, one-bathroom, two-bedroom house had to be theirs.

The house is obscured from the busy road by a hedgerow of untamed greenery and a charming winding gravel drive. Seclusion extends to the surrounding land, much of which is deemed unsuitable for building because of a flood-control drainage corridor feeding into a neighboring bayou, so privacy has never been an issue. After their second son was born,  the Cradys realized they needed more room for their growing family. They modestly added 450 square feet to create a new bedroom and bath. A few years later, with baby girl Rimmele on the way,  Crady rang up an old friend, architect Gary Garcia of Garcia Design Associates, to add, she thought, one additional bedroom. “I sketched up a little something … and knowing Gary was on his own and we worked well together — and hoping and praying he wouldn’t charge me too much because we were friends — I said, ‘Take a look at this and tell me what you think,’” Crady says. “Plus, he liked the architecture of the house. Not everybody gets it.”   
He didn’t like her drawing, Crady recalls, because she’d left the kitchen exactly where it was. “I’m frugal,” she says. “I hate to spend money. And he said, ‘If you’re going to be here forever’ — which we intended to be because we liked the location and we liked that the house is small — ‘move the kitchen,’”
Garcia also cordoned off a wing for the children. “When the kids grow up and become teenagers,” he says, “they’ll have their space on the opposite side of the house, separate from the grownups.” He then cleverly expanded the width of the hallway, added pocket doors, removed rows of closet doors and created a long expanse bordered on one side by concealed floor-to-ceiling storage — a catch-all space for the children’s backpacks, shoes and sporting equipment.
Underfoot, the duo forged a cohesive environment linked by two flooring surfaces: stained concrete and brown brick that matches the house’s original brick installation. With the footprint expanded to 4,800 square feet, Crady’s husband finally got the cozy study he desired, while the entry was relocated to the side of the house, making way for a graceful foyer. From that vantage, one can peer down another hall toward the pool, just outside a set of sliding glass doors. Beyond the threshold to the left stands a small sitting area. Its shallow, eight-foot ceilings soaring to 12 1/2 feet as you step into the vaulted dining room.
And what did they do with that controversial kitchen? “Once we relocated it, it completely changed the scheme of things,” Crady says. “It’s now four times the size of the former,” Garcia adds. Crady counters that the relocated space is actually not much bigger than the original, but it’s more open. Contrary to what you might find back in the day it was built, the expansive kitchen now opens onto a large family-room area overlooking the pool — ideal for entertaining.
“We entertain a lot,” says Crady. “And the kids love the house. I want them to be proud of where they live and be able to have friends over.” The Cradys’ house is not in a traditional neighborhood where kids can wander from house to house. “When you’re here, you have to stay here,” says the designer, “so the pool is a great draw. The stereo system, the trampoline in the back … There’s enough to occupy them — for now.”
Garcia has nothing but praise for Crady’s input. “The thing about Hilary,” he says, “is that she can design like she’s on a ship: Every inch is important to her.” Crady got her start in interior design at John Saladino’s famed studio in New York. Straight out of college, she was a design assistant in charge of keeping the sample room tidy, as well as a gopher. She worked diligently for Saladino for five years until she moved back to Houston, her hometown, and married. “I learned everything from him,” she says. “I think his color sense is incredible; I love how eclectic he is. His work [looks] contemporary, but it’s not. It never feels dated. He mixes the old with the new, and it always feels good.” His masterful, unpredictable play of proportions is evident in his former assistant’s home today, where Hilary flanks a tall, worn leather screen with a smaller one behind her prized gunmetal-gray velvet-upholstered Saladino Shelter sofa.
Saladino’s influence, however, is just a jumping-off point for this design pro, who’s carved her own niche while working alongside her mother, Gloria Frame, who is also a designer. And while the budgets of her clients may be smaller than the ones Saladino worked with in New York, she still insists on authenticity at every turn. “I don’t like doing reproduction furniture,” she says. “If it’s going to look old, I want it to be old. It has to be authentic Americana or Mexican or something that doesn’t cost a lot of money, but it needs to have a nice hand to it, texture and honesty, as opposed to a traditional piece that’s new and has no patina.”