Kayla & Amir's Mid-Century-Meets-Marfa Home in Austin

Kayla & Amir's Mid-Century-Meets-Marfa Home in Austin

Apartment Therapy Survey:

Our Style: Mid-Century Modern meets Marfa meets Ironic Art

Inspiration: Ah, inspiration. It can hit you at any moment, but I [Kayla] most often find myself reaching for my camera at boutique hotels and restaurants. I’ve called so many restaurants and hotels to ask where they sourced a chair or a vase or a rug. Rarely is it something I can still find, but I try.

Then, of course, there is plenty of inspiration to be found on the internet. I love the blog A House in the Hills and share a very similar aesthetic to Sarah Mora. However, I spend very little time looking for inspiration on the internet because I often end up feeling anxious and like I have to have this picture-perfect house. It’s overwhelming!

Oh wait, I just realized you probably meant the inspiration for our house. So let’s start this again:

I want more than anything for our house to feel like a home. We bought a Mid-century modern house in Texas so I was perfectly happy to let those two things be the main inspiration: Mid-century meets Marfa. And our art and furniture already reflected this, which is why I think we were so drawn to the house.

Favorite Element: My husband loves to buy “funny” art or objects, for example, Wu-Tang’s RZA Crossing the Delaware painting. We also have small little objects like a break-dancing man, a meerkat, small vintage guns, a boombox, remixed tapes from the '80s and '90s, eight vintage tennis rackets, an emergency clown nose, a “presidential” photo of our dog, etc., scattered throughout the house. We also have some great things from his dad’s country-western bar that he ran for 40+ years.

It should also be mentioned that while I have lovingly incorporated all of these things into our house, when I hung the Nannie Inez “wall art,” he said, “Why do we have yarn hanging from our walls?” He still insists it should be moved. I say it stays!

I think all of these things help to make our house feel like a home because they are so personal to us.

Biggest Challenge: Without a doubt, the concrete walls!! If there’s a tornado, we’re good. If I’m trying to hang a shelf, well, that required three trips to the Home Depot to find the right drill bit and then nails. And then I still ended up calling someone to do it because I hit cinder block or a rock, I think, I still really don’t know what impenetrable item exists behind my walls. I love hanging things and moving them and once I realized the concrete situation I really had to commit to where things were going.

What Friends Say: Well, we moved to Austin in August, so all of our friends were loving the pool and big shaded yard. We have a great house for entertaining and that’s exactly what we want, people over as much as possible.

Biggest Embarrassment: I really wish I took a photo to share with you, but this goes back to the concrete walls. I was having a girls' night at my house which always inspires me to tackle a project. This one was to hang shelves in the living room. I hung one bracket of a shelf with no problem at all. Then I go to hang the other one and can’t get through the wall/concrete. Since I can’t use a stud finder, I just keep going along the length of where the shelf will be drilling holes. I figure, no one will see them once the shelf is hung. Eight holes later, I ended up putting a plant on the random bracket in the wall and hung a photo over the 8 holes. And then I called my handyman the next day.

Proudest DIY: Hanging a 7’ vintage Persian rug/tapestry that was a gift from my mother-in-law. She gave it to me a couple of years ago. It’s this gorgeous butterfly tapestry. But it’s 7’ long and at the time I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with it. When we moved here I wanted to hang it in the stairway on a large (surprise, surprise) concrete wall, but was stumped how to do it. After calls to rug stores, seamstresses, handyman, I finally came up with the solution that would work. I bought a long wooden curtain pole from Bed Bath & Beyond. Cut it down to the right size. Drilled holes in the end of it and tied it to the wall using some rope I found at Target. (Again, not totally DIY because my superhero handyman had to help with the drilling!).

Biggest Indulgence: Chairs!!! If I look around our house, the most expensive items are our chairs. My husband bought an Eames before I met him which was his biggest indulgence. And then we both fell in love with Garza Marfa chairs and he went out and surprised me and bought one! Meanwhile, I had fallen in love with the Copper Lucy chair from Bend that was back-ordered for four months, but well worth the wait!

Best Advice: Decorating your house is a marathon, not a race! My neighbor told me this when moving in and I couldn’t agree more. When you first move in, you want everything to be perfect right away but if you did that you’d make rush decisions just to fill a space as opposed to finding those special pieces on your travels, in vintage stores, etc. that really speak to you.

Dream Sources: I love buying from local artists or stores as much as possible, so here are my favorites: JM Dry Goods, Mockingbird Domestics, Hacienda Austin, Nannie Inez, and Uptown Modern Austin.

Send us your own:

→ Share your home with Apartment Therapy: House Tour Submission Form

→ Are you a designer/architect/decorator? Share your residential project: Professional Submission Form.

Original article and pictures take www.apartmenttherapy.com site