“Should I renovate this house, or do you think I can put a Band-Aid on it?” That was the question Trudi Norris posed to her friend Mara Steinmetz. It was the summer of 2021, and the house hadn’t been updated in the two decades since it had been built. The interior designer’s answer was swift and blunt: “Renovate. We could do so many cool things.”
The bones of the home were solid, but the floor plan was choppy and the space wasn’t suitable for a family of five; plus, Norris, an artist, and her husband, Gray, both love to entertain. With the help of architect Stephen Grotz and builder Simonini, Steinmetz flexed her design muscles to reconfigure the layout of the house and create a more open space, removing the wall separating the kitchen and dining room and installing more windows in the kitchen to let in natural light. “It made the room look classic and timeless,” says Steinmetz. The renovations, which started in December of 2021, took a year to complete.
With the layout finalized, it was time for an interiors refresh. “Trudi’s art is always so colorful and fun, but the house was very neutral. It didn’t represent her fun, colorful style,” says Steinmetz. So she forged ahead, creating an aesthetic that highlighted Norris’s bold personality. One criteria: various pieces of art needed to seamlessly blend into the design. For decades, the artist had accumulated an impressive collection that included both her own pieces as well as those of artists she admires, particularly local ones such as Nico Amortegui and Tony Mose.
In the dining room, she incorporated one of Norris’s pieces—a bright, floral landscape—pairing it with a vibrant camo-blue fabric on the dining chairs and a custom pink-and blue vintage-inspired rug. In the den, the subtle blue hue of the room complements one of Norris’s early traditional landscapes hanging above the fireplace. Steinmetz also replaced most of the original furnishings, which were too large for the space, with newer ones that reflected the modern, colorful aesthetic.
Now, after twenty years of living in her home, Trudi finally has a space that reflects her both as an artist and a person. “We’ve been living with the new space for about two years, and everything is functional and minimalistic,” the artist says. “It finally reflects who I am, who we are. I love it.”
