An inside look at the DIY home decor ideas that design pro Jennifer Hutton and her husband, Gabe Hutton, used to transform this ranch-style house into their dream abode
When Gabe Hutton first showed a home listing to his wife, Jennifer Hutton, she immediately dismissed it in a “hangry” haze. “Then I got to looking at the pictures,” Jennifer says. The creative director and principal designer at Grau Design Studio later reconsidered her initial reaction to the J.P. Goforth ranch-style home in the Falconbridge neighborhood, only a mile from her office and “close to everything,” she says.
“The minute I walked in the front door, I just cried,” she says. “I was like, ‘This is the one; it works. This is where we’re going to end up.’ It was kind of like love at first sight.”
They purchased the 1,700-square-foot home, which was built in 1986 on a .35-acre corner lot, in 2022. The original floor plan included three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, a kitchen, den, living and dining room with an enclosed porch that extended their living space into a large backyard with a separate storage building.
Jennifer and Gabe, who met while working part-time jobs at Home Depot in New York, are comfortable DIYers and have renovated nearly all their past homes themselves. So far in this home, the couple has converted one of the bedrooms into a sleek gym; turned the dining room into an office; updated both bathrooms, the laundry room and kitchen; and transformed the family room into a sweeping dining and entertainment space.
“A lot of the features of this house really spoke to me,” Jennifer says. “For instance, these massive windows that overlook the front yard – they just have a really good view. And, I’m a big entertainer. I like having people over and hosting large parties. The banquette here offers great seating for that. There were a lot of features I was salivating over.”
Jennifer remembers how she and Gabe pulled up the thick, high-pile carpet in the family and dining rooms, revealing slab concrete, and put down wide-plank, white oak hardwood. “We started with tearing up carpet the weekend we closed on the house in January,” Jennifer recalls. They moved in in April, and then replaced the linoleum flooring in the kitchen with porcelain tile. “The renovations are still ongoing; we’re 65% done. It’s been a little over a year and a half, and we just finished the last hard surface in the powder room. Now, we’re gonna move on to the guest bedroom, [primary] bedroom and living room.”
Jennifer says renovations can be memorable, especially when it involves taking a sledgehammer to old cabinets or scraping up old linoleum by hand. “We’re happy to be through most of the dirty work,” she says, “and can now focus on the soft surfaces in our remaining rooms, but the long hours and [the] grind of the demo finds a way to stick with you.”
Let There Be Light
Jennifer loves under-cabinet lighting and placed LED strips wherever she could, creating a distinct and trendy vibe in the kitchen. A vent hood completely encapsulated in dimensional corrugated tile hangs over the stove, nooks stow away smaller appliances, and a display cabinet reveals a collection of well-curated mixology supplies.
“This is the first house where I am not really paying attention to resale value,” Jennifer says. “This is for me. We’ve found such a good location and a good footprint that I don’t see us leaving in the near future. I’m really just doing things how I want them. And this was one of them,” she adds, gesturing to the tiled hood.
Jennifer says she often reminds her clients that their style choices are for them, not for others. “I design for other people all day long, and this is what I hear a lot from them: ‘How’s this gonna look in five or 10 years?’” she says. “What I tell them is, ‘You’re the one footing the bill. You have to live with it, … so stop worrying about what the next [homeowner] is going to think. They can always rip that out if it really bothers them.’ You want to enjoy what you’re looking at every day until the time comes to sell the house. That’s the same stance I take when I’m the one physically doing the demo, running the electrical, putting these cabinets in– I better love them.”
Jennifer and Gabe transformed one of the spare bedrooms into a home gym, where they can change the color of the overhead LED lights to fit their mood during exercise sessions. The couple also installed an infrared heater in the ceiling to raise the temperature of the room when Gabe wants to practice hot yoga. Jennifer makes daily use of her Peloton bike, too, so they consider the design decision a wise investment. “It’s incredibly functional, because it eliminates the cost and travel time associated with a studio membership,” she says. “We are child-free, so we didn’t need a second guest/extra bedroom; for us, that space being used as a gym makes the house much more livable.”
It’s All in the Details
Gabe shares his office with the couple’s two Australian shepherds, Orson and Anka. They each have their own dog beds flanking Gabe’s modular standing desk. Opposite the glass French doors, which were installed in the original framed case opening, the focal wall is covered in an unusual pattern – snakes.
“This particular wallpaper is elegant yet edgy,” Jennifer explains. “When I saw this paper, I knew it was the one. I really wanted it all throughout the room, but my husband didn’t want to be the ‘snake guy’ in his video [meetings]. So we agreed that it was going to be on the wall where [the people on] his video calls don’t have to look at [it].”
Jennifer says the snake wallpaper is a good example of her personal taste: “You’ll find very elegant pieces that have a lot of detail to them and are vintage and time worn, and then you’ll get snakes and spikes. And there’s really no in between.”
After all, Jennifer says, that is the nature of design and art – what matters most is what resonates with the individual. “It’s just whatever speaks to you. That’s what I tell my clients when I’m designing [with them]. If you can envision yourself using [a piece of art or furniture], and you can mentally see a spot for it in your house, you’ve done a good job.”
