For this particular job, the clients’ main goal was to spend as much time in the home with as many people as possible. So Austin architect Clint Garwood, working with Horseshoe Bay–based builder Turrentine Properties, designed multiple sitting areas, a scullery with a pantry and second dishwasher behind the open-layout kitchen, and a queen-over-queen bunk room that sleeps several kids.
Downing’s task? To help the clients work through all the details—and to unify those details from the start. “I had to create the overall picture, all the layers, so they could visualize it as a whole rather than in parts,” she says. “So we did the hard finishes, lighting, paint colors, wallpaper—everything all together.”
Before the house was even demoed, Downing presented a rich, bold wallpaper for the powder room to the clients. They approved it, and Downing designed the entire room around it—only to learn months down the line that the wallpaper was no longer available. “The company told me they weren’t making it anymore, but they could print it for me if I wrote a check that day,” she says. (Downing did, and eight months later, the wallpaper arrived.)