PaperCity Magazine

PaperCity Houston March 2025

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Clockwise: Original beadboard was salvaged and repainted in Farrow & Ball Joa's White. Vintage kitchen sink and plumbing from LooLoo Design, Round Top. Grace Mitchell, Leanne Ford. A Storied Style, garnered writing gigs for Domino and Better Homes & Gardens and a turn writing for Home Made Simple on the OWN channel. The founder of Storied Style Interiors, Mitchell's work was chronicled in the HGTV series One of a Kind. The show followed her over two seasons as she helped clients create their own design stories with collectibles and personal treasures. The two connected years ago when their mutual production company suggested they might hit it off. "My producer's exact words were: 'Well, you're a little weird and Leanne's kind of weird too, so we think you'd like each other,'" Mitchell says. Their design styles may be completely opposite — Mitchell loves pattern and color and Ford uses none of that — but they have fun together. After buying the farmhouse in Round Top Ford recalls they thought, "'Oh my gosh, this is such a cute house. We don't have to do a ton to make this special' — so, of course, we gutted it." Rooms were reconfigured, but most of what gives the farmhouse soul was retained, including the old beadboard walls and ceilings. "This is really a small house, about 1,800 square feet, but we created a big kitchen and a big family room just by playing with the layout," Ford says. They got rid of the kitchen island and upper cabinets and kept everything low, except for an antique glass cabinet that displays charming dishes. Even the refrigerator and freezer are tucked behind drawers. The original stained- glass window was moved to anchor an extravagant new Aga stove, which Mitchell had always wanted but could never afford. They combined resources and split the cost, along with an antique marble tub that Ford coveted. A little creative thinking was in order: "Everything is 50 percent off when you're splitting it with a friend," Ford says. The extraordinary weight of the Aga and the marble tub required an entirely new foundation for t h e h o u s e — a n expensive fix they deemed worth it. The kitchen counters also needed to be retrofitted t o a c c o m m o d a t e the antique glass cabinet Mitchell fell in love with, and that massive round dining table, which gives the farmhouse its name,

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