FEATURED
Cover Story: Tell Me A Story
Really, that’s how so many people came to me
before the show. When I was taking on clients,
they would say, “Oh, I scoured Pinterest, and I
found all the things that I liked, and I put that in
my house, and I still hate it.” And it’s because it’s
not meaningful to them. Of course you’re going
to change out pillows or change out wallpaper
here and there, but I found that if you’re really
orchestrating your home around your story and
what’s important to you that it makes it more
timeless and you’re happy with it longer.
RT Today: In terms of more difficult
projects, your own home took seven years to
renovate. Can you tell me a bit about that
process?
GM: Well, have you ever seen the movie The
Money Pit? Well, my husband and I had never
seen that movie when we bought this house, but
we fell in love with the house because it has an
enormous yard, and we have four kids, we’re
44 Residential Tech Today | Jan/Feb 2020
really close to downtown, and we’re basically in
the heart of the city of Fort Worth. But, we still
have all of this land, so we just loved the house
because of that.
But about six weeks after we moved in, the
bathroom fell through the living room ceiling in
the middle of the night. And then so many of
our friends started telling us about this movie.
“Have you seen this movie?” Because we had all
these stories about this house. And when we
watched the movie, my husband and I literally
were crying, laughing so hard because so many
of the things that happened in it have happened
to us in real life in our house. So, it was a labor of
love for sure. But we love that house, and we’re
only the third owner. It’s a hundred years old.
So really we did our house like a lot of people
do their own homes. We wrote down a list of
projects that we wanted to do. We would save up
over time. We would tackle one of the projects,
and then we would stop and save more money
and then tackle the next project. And, for us, it
took about seven years. So we had to share this
tiny little bathroom for several years while we
saved up money to get the other bathrooms
working correctly. We made it work, and it was
really good for our kids, too, because I think it’s
neat to see that we got to work on it together. It
was really a family project, there was a lot of
family input, and they got to see all that went
into it.
There’s something almost spiritual to me
about watching something that is ugly and
broken and not at all attractive and taking it and
turning it into something that’s beautiful and
special. I just love that so much, and I’m so
thankful that I get to do it.
RT Today: Do you find yourself drawing
from your personal life as inspiration for
your projects?
Grace Mitchell’s design vision can see
on the HGTV program One of a Kind,
where she collaborates with
homeowners to turn historical homes
in reflections of themselves.