There is a beautiful kind of love that lures people back to where they come from, a desire to blend past and present memories. For these particular homeowners, that love took shape on a residential street in St. Louis. A street where they raised their four children, just a few doors down from the wife's parents. When the house was handed down, it remained the family beacon of connection. The couple made the decision to move into her childhood home, to renovate it from the studs out and shape it for the next chapter of their lives together. And just a few doors down, their daughter and son-in-law moved in with their two toddlers, beginning the same beautiful pattern. A tight-knit family residing on the same street, in the same houses, to bring life to generational living.
Local designer Teddy Karl of Great Cover Up Design has worked alongside the homeowners for more than 15 years, collecting an understanding of their taste as well as getting to know them as friends. "You naturally get to know somebody," Teddy reflects on the intricacies of learning someone's preferences over a considerable amount of years. In this case, that knowing ran deep. The family home wasn't just a renovation project; it was a homecoming, a nostalgia that required equal parts respect and reinvention.
The home's original footprint was a traditional colonial, with rooms parceled off from one another, each living its own separate life. Architect Lauren Strutman helped reimagine that structure, opening the floor plan to reflect the way families actually live now: together, loudly, all at once. "The house went through many versions of what the layout was going to look like. What was there was a more traditional colonial floor plan, pretty separated. But we wanted a more open floor plan for family living," Lauren specifies. The wife shares the same enthusiasm for the result: "I love how the architect opened the front of the house to the back of the house, it's fun to have people all in one space." For this purpose, a great room was added to the rear of the house, its vaulted ceiling floating above windows that look out toward the pool and the outdoor living space below. It's the kind of room that pulls people toward it without asking.
What makes this house feel layered, rather than loud, is the deliberate tie between old and new. Persian carpets brought over from the owners' original house have become re-anchored in their familiar rooms and were the launch pad from which Teddy built these rooms' entire color palettes. Blues pulled from those rugs, soft and welcoming, punctuated by warm gold accents that catch the light coming in through the drapes. The great room, however, was given a different treatment intentionally: no Persian carpet to be seen. Instead, the space reads lighter, more transitional, allowing the vaulted architecture and the view of the backyard living space and pool to become a part of the home.
Throughout the rest of the home, pattern and texture are unhurried, leading you to relaxation with soft tones and curves. Bird portraits line walls where floral textures bloom quietly beside them, sharing the same wall as though they've always belonged together. Scalloped pillows echo the luxuriousness of blue-and-white ceramics arranged on shelves and surfaces, each piece a delicate art but familiar enough to feel lived in. The living room deepens into richer, darker tones, a space for stories to be told, for the kind of laughter that comes after dinner when no one is quite ready to leave.
Teddy navigated the emotional weight of the project with the ease that only a long relationship allows. Some of the wife’s mother’s pieces remained, placed intentionally into the new design, honored and holding memories. Drapes from the owners’ previous home were rehung in the upstairs bedrooms, and an upholstered headboard also made the move up the street. "I always joke," Teddy says, "that sometimes I'm a marriage counselor and sometimes I'm a tiebreaker." In this case, "both homeowners showed up to every meeting and made decisions together," which meant the finished home carries the unmistakable feeling of two people who are both fully at home in it.
The kitchen is the engine of it all, enlarged, opened to the great room, built for the scale of gatherings this family requires. When all four children and eight grandchildren come in from out of state or as far as Norway, this kitchen rises to meet the challenge. "When we're all together, we can be all together," the wife says. In this great room, long tables and large couches bring their own spaces into this open concept. The dining room, by contrast, keeps the small gathering intimacy intact: a smaller table for quieter evenings, two couples and a bottle of wine, the distinct pleasure of a room sized for conversation.
Upstairs, the yellow guest bedroom is the kind of room that makes you want to stay. Light pools across the bedding, slow and golden, and the word that comes to mind is rest, full and uncomplicated rest. A finished lower level offers its own kind of welcome, a space for the grandchildren who want to camp out close to one another.
Outside, the pool has been completely reimagined to become a part of the home. An outdoor living area with screens extends the patio season, pulling the inside out in the way that only a well-designed back yard can. In the summer, it becomes the center of every summer gathering for the couple, as well as the family.
Teddy grew up two and a half blocks from his own grandmother's house. He knows, in the only way that proximity teaches, what it means for children to grow up knowing their grandparents the way you know your own reflection. "I think it's really, really cool," he says, "that they get that same relationship with grandma and grandpa that their kids did."
This home holds history within its walls while keeping the doors open for new memories to live along with the past. The same street. The same intentionality to live as a family. Up the street from where they started, these homeowners have found exactly where they belong. And intent to continue to host a space that welcomes their family to come as one, and enjoy life alongside each other.
