The first time Brooke Fish walked through her 1950s ranch home in Lake Highlands, she fell in love. During her second visit – after she and her husband Adam had struck a deal to buy the place – the mother of two “bawled my eyes out. I kept thinking, what have we done? The house had a lot of character but needed a huge amount of work.”
Fortunately, Brooke and Adam had the vision, skills and artistry to tackle many of the improvements themselves. As the talented seamstress who designs pillows, tote bags and other upcycled home goods for the Etsy shop Pure and Noble, Southlake-raised Brooke has an unerring eye matched only by the cleverness of her fingers. She met her commercial photographer husband as an undergrad at the University of North Texas, where she studied fashion design.
“I sew every day,” she says. “I’d rather pour myself into new patterns and designs than go shopping every day.”
Brooke took a break from e-tailing after the birth of her second son, Liam, now 5 years old. Their older boy, Jude, is 8. Having enough space for them helped motivate the move to bigger digs more than a year ago.
“Instead of a formal living room, we made that space into a playroom,” says Brooke, who decorated the white walls with vintage board games along with a lighted sign for chicken feed that her mother-in-law discovered in Nebraska. “I love to craft with my boys, and I want our home to be the one where our boys’ friends want to come.”
But before any young visitors were invited for play dates, some major construction had to take place. Though the family had hoped to live in their new home during the renovations, they quickly realized the extent of the redo would make that impossible. So for three months the family lived in eight different places while they expanded the home from 1,900 square feet to 2,700 square feet by adding a master bedroom, bath and photo studio upstairs.
“On our 9th wedding anniversary, Adam went in and demolished the kitchen,” Brooke says. His contractor father came down from Des Moines, Iowa, to help install shiny white cabinetry, a luminous foil to the new grey quartz countertops. Open, natural wood shelving complements the butcher-block island, which does double duty as Brooke’s cutting table when she sews.
Adjacent to the kitchen is Brooke’s favorite place in the home: a tiny half-bath, which she painted black. “We made a gallery wall with different artwork, including stuff my kiddos have done and family portraits,” Brooke says. “You wouldn’t think something so silly would make you so happy, but it does.”
Like the rest of the first floor, the powder room boasts sealed concrete floors. “It’s the color of a beach when the sand is wet,” Brooke says. “I’d never lived with concrete; we had hardwood our last home. But this is indestructible. We let the boys ride scooters and roller skate through the house.”
The boys share a bedroom outfitted with bunk beds, which Brooke dresses in vintage quilts and afghans, many of which she bought at estate sales. “A handmade goodie treasured throughout the years is always special to me,” says this self-confessed “thrifting” junkie. While out on a photo shoot, Adam found a lighted “Good Morn” sign in a dumpster in Grapevine; the sign casts a warm glow against the boys’ soft gray walls.
Until they complete the new master bedroom upstairs, Brooke and Adam have decamped in the suite original to the home. She chose dark grey for the walls to make an oversized, cream-colored macramé wall hanging (another gift from her mother-in-law) pop. They redid the bathroom with white subway tile and charcoal grout. A room divider Adam recently procured from a church that was about to be torn down now delineates the closet.
“That divider is just the kind of thing I love,” Brooke says. “Warm wood, great lines, vintage and free.”
Published December 2013
