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SEPTEMBER | PAGE 103 | 2015 of her favorite areas for good rugs, antique stools, ikat pillows and oversized white ceramic water pitchers with hard-to-find flat tops. "At Warrenton you never know who'll be selling there. I'll often go when I'm working on a French or soft modern house. If I see something fabulous, I'll buy it and hold it until I find a place for it." The crowds of vendors, shoppers and second-home owners have almost squeezed out any available land in Round Top proper, putting tiny communities like Winedale on the map for those hunting land to buy. Cummings fell in love with Winedale, which is located four miles from Round Top, while visiting Houston interior designer Beverly Jacomini, who also has a second home there. "I made up my mind that I was building a house there," says Cummings, who started her search for land in 2006. "It had to be off a dirt road with a huge setback so that you couldn't see the house. I wanted it flat in the middle of a field. It took me a long time to find it." When she found the perfect spot, she enlisted the help of architect Kirby Mears, who had done a French manor-style house for a friend that she admired. "I liked how it was on one great slab and then went up," she says. "I wanted something simple and straightforward with French drains and no gutters. I wasn't looking for typical Round Top country style." Mears' design for Cumming's house includes a classic French mansard roof, but instead of tile, he's used standing-seam metal, in the long tradition of Texas vernacular architecture. "The sun is so brutal out here, the standing-seam roof really holds up," says Cummings. Inside, the materials are just as elegantly practical. In lieu of reclaimed hardwoods — a choice she was seriously considering — she left the concrete subflooring through much of the house and painted it pale gray. It's a decision she doesn't regret. "The maintenance on this house is really easy," she says. "I have four grandchildren, and when they come over, there's always dogs involved, so concrete really works." There are pine floors in the kitchen and upstairs bedrooms, and natural limestone floors in the screened-in porch, Cumming's favorite hangout. "We use it a lot more than we thought we ever would, all year-round. We have fans in there, and it gets a great cross breeze. In the summer, we eat all our meals out there." An exposed support column made of stacked stone in the screened-in porch pays homage to historic Texas Hill Country architecture, and a 19th- century French limestone fireplace sourced from Chateau Domingue stands sentry in the living room. Floor-to-ceiling shutters instead of window coverings keep the look streamlined. "Shutters make it easy to adjust the amount of light coming in the room, because this house gets a lot of intense light," she says. Awash in soothing pale gray, white and linen hues, a simple 115-year-old French orchard table in the dining room, a once- battered chaise longue in the bedroom that Cummings recovered in linen and a 19th- century Swedish cupboard from Found in the living room that houses the TV, impart a sense of place. In the mix are a smattering of newer pieces, such as dining room chairs from Restoration Hardware slipcovered in Schumacher fabric and a mid-century brass- and-leather vanity stool in the bedroom. Many of the accessories are from years of hunting at Round Top. An old French pastry table serves as a center island in the kitchen, which stays drenched in sunlight from a bank of large windows and glass French doors. "We eat in there a lot," says Cummings, who admits she rarely cooks except for the occasional peach cobbler. "But my children cook all the time here, or we go out. Round Top has gotten so fancy, there are four restaurants nearby now." What started out as a solitary retreat from Houston has evolved into a boisterous weekend and holiday house, regularly filled with friends and family, which is how Cummings prefers it. "This weekend, there's a huge festival in Winedale, and I have friends from Houston and Austin coming. Every bed in the house is taken," she says of the four bedrooms that include a bunk room with six twin beds. Does she ever envision herself trading the city for quiet country life? "Lord no, like my son tells me, I have to have my neon lights," she says.