marea-com

Found and Finished

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 03:38:53 GMT

PROJECT 001

FOUND AND FINISHED

T his house didn’t need to be gutted. It needed better ideas.

The budget was tight, the clients cared about sustainability, and there was already plenty in the house worth working with. So instead of starting over, the project became an exercise in looking harder: at what could stay, what could move, what could be found secondhand, and what could become something better with a little work.

Some pieces were thrifted. Some were antique. Some were DIY. Some already belonged to the clients and just needed better company.

Very little came from the same place.

That was kind of the point.

THE SITTING ROOM

C alling the original room a dining room would have been generous.

There was a tiny table in the middle surrounded by four completely unrelated chairs: a ripped Y2K brown leather tub chair, a dining chair, something vaguely mid-century, and a square black leather chair.

Technically, people could sit there.

Inviting them to stay was another story.

The clients weren’t interested in turning it back into a formal dining room.

They wanted a sitting room — something closer to a traditional living room, but looser. No television. No agenda. Just a place to sit down with friends and actually talk.

So the room was given a new job.

A large thrifted sofa became the anchor — still one of those finds that makes us want to bring up thrifting at completely unrelated dinner parties. A secondhand coffee table, antique mirror, DIY floating shelf and collected pieces filled in around it.

The result feels relaxed, a little old, a little new, and comfortable enough that it eventually became headquarters for the neighborhood book club.

Which feels like a pretty solid review.

THE SHOE

The purple pillow.

The room is otherwise soft, neutral and collected. Then there’s one hit of purple that probably shouldn’t be necessary.

It absolutely is.

THE POWDER ROOM

T he rest of the house began life as a very white, very builder-grade blank slate.

The powder room was not interested in staying that way.

The client wanted one room guests wouldn’t expect — something vintage, a little moody and slightly speakeasy-ish hiding behind an otherwise ordinary door.

So this tiny room got permission to be a lot.

Dark beadboard, floral wallpaper, warm metal, vintage-inspired fixtures and thrifted details turned the smallest room in the house into one of the most memorable.

Many of the finishing pieces were secondhand, including the faucet and fixtures, little frames and even the wastebasket. The doorknob was changed at the last minute because once a room commits this hard to a personality, the wrong doorknob becomes impossible to ignore.

The wallpaper was installed by hand.

We learned things.

Mostly that wallpaper installers deserve whatever they charge.

THE SHOE

The entire room.

Sometimes the interruption isn’t an object.

Sometimes it’s opening a door and finding a tiny floral speakeasy where absolutely no one expected one.

THE LIVING ROOM

T his room had a different assignment.

The sofas and chair were staying.

Rather than replacing perfectly usable furniture just to make the project easier, the room was redesigned around it.

The first change was simply orientation. Repositioning the existing seating created a much more natural conversation area and gave the room a better sense of arrival.

From there, the new pieces were layered in: a rug, television console, sofa table, side tables, lamps, plants, books, candles, curtains and a coffee table that got a DIY faux-wood finish rather than being replaced.

Nothing here needed to shout.

It just needed to finally feel like everything belonged in the same room.

THE SHOE STAYED HOME

Not every room needs an interruption.

This one was about restraint — working with what was already there and making it feel intentional without inventing a big moment just because we could.

Sometimes good design knows when to leave well enough alone.

THE FRONT HALL

T his little stretch between the kitchen, living area and mudroom could have stayed a pass-through.

Instead, it became one of those small moments that earns its square footage.

The dresser was found secondhand — a Canadian-made piece that had seen better days and, judging by the smell, quite a few cigarettes.

It was completely sanded down, refinished in black, and the original drawer pulls were revived with Rub ’n Buff.

Now it gives the hallway a little weight and a lot more usefulness.

Keys land on top. Baseball uniforms disappear into the drawers. Art, lighting and a few collected objects make it feel like part of the house rather than the space between two more important rooms.

Pretty is useful.

Useful can also be pretty.

We’re greedy. We like both.

THE SHOE

The black dresser.

A discarded piece with a second life — and enough presence to turn a hallway into a destination.

WHAT MADE IT MāREA

There’s a temptation in design to assume transformation means replacement.

New sofa. New table. New fixtures. New everything.

This project went the other way.

The budget gave every purchase a job. Sustainability made secondhand the first place to look, not the fallback. Existing furniture stayed when it made sense. Old pieces were repaired instead of discarded. DIY filled the gaps where buying something new wasn’t necessary.

A forgotten dining room became the neighborhood book-club headquarters. A builder-grade powder room became the surprise nobody saw coming. A smoke-stained dresser got another life. Existing furniture stopped looking like something to work around and started looking like part of the plan.

And somehow, the limitations made the house more interesting.

The house feels collected because it actually was.

A little new. A lot found. Nothing wasted just for the sake of starting over.

That’s MāREA.

The Long Evening

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 03:38:50 GMT

PROJECT 002

The Long Evening

There was no ballroom. No terrace. Not even a patio.

Just a patch of grass beneath a canopy of mature live oaks in Dripping Springs, Texas.

Perfect.

The idea was to build a formal garden dinner almost entirely from scratch — one that felt special enough to dress up for, but relaxed enough that nobody needed a tie.

Everything had to be brought in. Tables, chairs, lighting, place settings, candles, flowers, signage. By the time guests arrived, the goal was for none of that effort to be particularly obvious.

It should just feel like dinner had somehow always belonged under those tr ees.

SETTING THE TABLE

T he evening was built around eight-person round tables rather than long banquet tables.

It kept the gathering intimate. Everyone could actually talk to everyone else at their table, while the layout left plenty of room to wander with a cocktail, visit friends across the lawn, and move through the property as the evening unfolded.

The tables were deliberately dressed without being over-dressed.

Antique and thrifted pieces did most of the work. Warm brass, old glass, dusty rose paper, candlelight and collected details gave everything a little history without turning the setting into a theme.

Nothing needed to match perfectly.

In fact, better if it didn’t.

THE FLOWERS

T he flowers were never supposed to look arranged.

The direction was closer to: somebody disappeared into a field, came back with an armful of whatever was growing, and put it on the table.

Loose stems, small vessels and wildflower-like arrangements kept the centerpieces low and informal. No enormous floral structures separating people across the table. No centerpiece someone had to lean around to ask for the salt.

Pretty, but still a dinner.

AFTER THE SUN WENT DOWN

L ighting did a lot of the heavy lifting.

And there was a lot of it.

String lights were layered through the trees and over the dining area, candles were added almost

everywhere they reasonably could be, and a chandelier hung from the small open-air gazebo that became the spot for speeches and thank-yous.

During the day, the live oaks were the architecture.

At sunset, the whole place changed.

The trees disappeared into the background, the tables started glowing, the brass caught the candlelight, and what had been a patch of Texas grass a few hours earlier suddenly felt like its own little world.

That was the moment the design really arrived.

DINNER WAS THE EVENT

This wasn’t built around a packed itinerary.

The dinner was the evening.

A long, European-style plated meal gave everyone permission to stay seated for a while. There were speeches and thank-yous beneath the chandelier in the gazebo, but just as much of the night was spent moving from table to table, catching up, walking the property with drinks in hand and eventually finding your way back to your seat.

Formal enough to feel like an occasion.

Relaxed enough to actually enjoy it.

Exactly the balance we wanted.

THE SHOE

The antique mirror seating chart.

The client came in with the idea of using a mirror for seating, and we took it from there — finding the right ornate mirror and turning something purely functional into one of the first design moments guests encountered.

A little grand for a seating chart?

Probably. Which is exactly why it worked.

WHAT MADE IT MāREA

Most of this event was DIY, thrifted, antique or pieced together rather than ordered as a matching collection.

Nothing felt pulled from an event catalogue. Nothing was trying too hard to announce that it was an event. It felt collected, romantic and just imperfect enough to belong beneath a group of old oak trees.

By the end of the night, the candles were shorter, the tables were messier, people had migrated everywhere, and nobody was particularly interested in leaving.

Which is about the nicest thing a space designed for gathering can do.

That’s MāREA.

Old Soul, New Lines

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 03:38:45 GMT

PROJECT 003

FOUND AND FINISHED

T his renovation was supposed to be easy.

A kitchen update. Some paint. Maybe a few finishes.

Then the clients tried to fit a queen bed and a dresser into one of the bedrooms and discovered the house had other plans.

It was bed OR dresser. Not both. And nightstands were out of the question.

So the “small update” became a full gut renovation.

The kitchen moved into what had been a bedroom. The old kitchen became the primary bedroom. The sunroom became the primary bathroom. The attic disappeared, and seven-foot ceilings became vaulted ceilings reaching roughly fourteen feet at the peak.

At that point, there was no going back.

The design challenge was almost as dramatic as the floor plan.

One client wanted mood, warmth, vintage references and things that felt collected. The other leaned much more modern — cleaner shapes, sharper lines, less ornament.

The goal was never to make one style win. It was to make both feel like they belonged in the same house.

LIVING ROOM

T he original brick fireplace stayed … sort of.

The sides were trimmed back, the form was carried all the way to the vaulted ceiling, everything was skim-coated in black Venetian plaster, and a custom marble hearth was added underneath.

The bay window stayed too and became the official dog lounge.

It’s where the dogs watch boats go by on the lake, sunbathe, nap, chew toys, bark at squirrels, bark at birds, and conduct very serious yard surveillance.

The rest of the room was designed around Saturdays with friends, games and red wine — and snuggly Sundays when nobody intends to move very far from the sectional.

THE SHOE

The checkerboard rug.

The room is warm, moody and cozy. The rug keeps it from getting too serious.

KITCHEN

T he kitchen had a tiny footprint and a very ambitious job description.

The client cooks. A lot.

So although the room needed to look good, it had to actually function like somewhere food gets made — not somewhere a cutting board gets staged for a photo.

An island was drawn. Redrawn. Moved. Shrunk. Moved again.

It was never going to work.

So, the peninsula won.

It gave the room prep space, seating and circulation without forcing an island into a kitchen that clearly did not want one.

Then came the Black Taurus granite.

Dark, dramatic, heavily veined, and originally considered perhaps a little too much.

Naturally, it became one of the most bragged-about things in the house.

THE SHOE

The pendant light.

The counters already had plenty to say. The pendant just needed to interrupt them.

BEDROOM

T he brief for the bedroom was very sophisticated:

Make it feel like a cave.

A dark, warm, snuggly cave.

Chocolate walls, cream upholstery, warm wood and black accents keep the room cocooned without turning it into a dungeon. Even the ceiling is cream because bright white would have ruined the whole thing.

The bedding stayed deliberately simple.

No decorative pillow avalanche. No nightly ritual of throwing fourteen cushions onto the floor just to go to sleep.

The room is soft, quiet and genuinely easy to live in. Black beams give all that softness a little structure overhead.

THE SHOE

The black beams.

Soft room. Sharp line. Done.

OFFICE

T he office was designed to be the calm one.

A quiet place for focused work, ideas and productivity without a lot of visual noise demanding attention.

Black built-ins give it structure. Warm wood and cream upholstery keep it from feeling severe.

But the built-ins have a secret.

The two center bookcases slide open to reveal a double Murphy bed, and the large desk rolls out of the way when guests stay over.

Office by day. Guest room when required.

In a few minutes, the office becomes a cozy guest room without ever looking like one the rest of the time.

THE SHOE

The hidden Murphy bed.

Because apparently two bookcases pretending to be normal was the answer.

WHAT MADE IT MāREA

T his house began with a floor plan that didn’t work, two very different design instincts and a renovation that escalated almost immediately.

What came out of it wasn’t one style winning over another.

It was darker color with cleaner shapes. Warmth with structure. Modern pieces next to things that feel a little older, stranger or more collected.

The rooms don’t match because they’re supposed to. They belong together because the same point of view runs through all of them. That’s MāREA.

Built to Sell

Sun, 01 Apr 2001 03:38:34 GMT

PROJECT 004

Built to Sell

T his The brief was simple on paper: create a contractor-focused retail space that could handle a serious amount of product without feeling like a warehouse with a cash register.

It needed to work for two very different audiences at once — professionals who knew exactly what they came in for, and their clients, who often needed help visualizing what those products could become.

So the design had to do more than look good.

It had to organize, guide, inspire and sell.

From there, every decision came back to the same question: what would make this business easier to shop, easier to understand and harder to walk out of empty-handed?

THE SHOWROOM

T he front of the store was designed around what actually needs to be seen.

Anything heavy, liquid, or requiring a forklift stays in the warehouse. Anything hand-carry, visually important, or useful for comparing products lives up front.

The challenge was making a product-heavy space feel abundant without tipping into visual chaos. Black fixtures gave everything structure, warm wood softened the harder industrial elements, and the displays were organized to make browsing feel easy rather than overwhelming.

The goal wasn’t speed.

It was to make people want to look around.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

T he desk sits directly in front of the entrance for a reason.

The first thing a customer should experience is being greeted, not wondering where to go.

The custom desk and decorative wall behind it were built specifically for the space. The wall became the branding moment — complete with a full-color 3D logo — while also quietly hiding the bathroom behind it.

Pretty from the front. Practical from every other angle.

Exactly how commercial design should work.

THE SAMPLE WALL

T he sample wall came from learning how this business actually sells.

Contractors bring their clients into the showroom to choose finishes, which means eventually someone is standing there trying to imagine what a little pile of pigment or a tiny color chart is going to look like across an entire floor.

That is a lot to ask of a little chart.

So we gave them 72 real samples to look at instead — solids, metallics, glitters and flakes — all in one place, all big enough to actually compare.

The point wasn’t for us to become epoxy experts.

The point was to understand where the customer experience got awkward and design that problem out of the room.

THE SHOE

The sample wall.

Part merchandising, part inspiration, and a much better answer than “just picture it.”

THE FLOOR IS SELLING TOO

T he showroom floor was intentionally finished in decorative metallic epoxy.

Partly because it looks good.

Mostly because customers should be able to see what the product can actually do.

Instead of pointing to a sample and saying, “Imagine this across a whole floor,” the answer is already beneath them.

That is a very large sample.

THE WAREHOUSE

T he warehouse needed a completely different kind of thought.

No decorative metallic floor back here.

Just polished concrete — durable, easy to clean, and ready for forklifts, pallets, liquids and everything else the front of the store politely avoids.

Heavy product stays where heavy product belongs.

The showroom gets to inspire.

The warehouse gets to work.

They do not need the same personality to belong to the same business.

BUILT TO KEEP YOU LOOKING

T his store was never designed for people to rush in, grab one thing and leave.

Quite the opposite.

The layout encourages contractors to look around, discover products they didn’t necessarily come in for, compare options and spend a little more time in the space.

Retail design gets talked about like it’s all mood and merchandising.

Sometimes it’s also very literally:

How do we help people find more things they want to buy?

A beautiful question, really.

EVEN THE BATHROOM HAD A JOB

T he bathroom went completely black.

Walls. Floor. Vanity.

Partly because it looked good.

Partly because this is a contractor showroom, and white surfaces were never going to be anyone’s friend.

We can leave the rest to your imagination.

WHAT MADE IT MāREA

T houghtful design belongs everywhere.

Not just in homes. Not just in beautiful restaurants, hotels or events. A contractor supply store deserves the same level of intention — it just needs that intention applied differently.

Here, beauty was never the only job. The space had to sell, organize, inspire, survive heavy use and make sense to the people working in it every day.

That’s what made this project interesting.

The point wasn’t to make an industrial business look residential or overly polished. It was to understand what the space needed to do, then design every part of it around that.

Because good design isn’t a look.

It’s paying attention.

That’s MāREA.

marea-com

Found and Finished

PROJECT 001 ﻿

FOUND AND FINISHED

THE SITTING ROOM

THE POWDER ROOM

THE LIVING ROOM

THE FRONT HALL

WHAT MADE IT MāREA

The Long Evening

PROJECT 002 ﻿

The Long Evening

SETTING THE TABLE

THE FLOWERS

AFTER THE SUN WENT DOWN

DINNER WAS THE EVENT

THE SHOE

WHAT MADE IT MāREA

Old Soul, New Lines

PROJECT 003 ﻿

FOUND AND FINISHED

Built to Sell

PROJECT 004 ﻿

Built to Sell

PROJECT 001

PROJECT 002

PROJECT 003

PROJECT 004