The Pecan House: An Old Home With A New Horizon
Once a written-off family home, The Pecan House is now worth being written about. This series will follow every step of its restoration — from demolition and design decisions to preserving the soulfulness that made it worth saving in the first place.
It has been inspiration overload from the moment I set eyes on what we now call: The Pecan House.
I'll be sharing a behind-the-scenes look at my design process for our current renovation project in east Texas — including mood boards, mockups, diagrams, floor plans and of course, progress photos. Consider this Part 1 of The Arrange Blog's new name: THE FIELD NOTES.
So, officially... welcome to The Field Notes: stories of homes, restoration, and soulful living.
If you want some context, feel free to read my previous post: Redirect, Refine, & Restore: Leaving Social Media, Editing My Career, and Building What’s Next
If you're ready to jump right in to all the design things, let's do it!
Once upon a time, there was an old worn out family house that got a chance to live another life. This is that story.
HOW WE FOUND HER & AND HOW WE FOUND HER
For months, Kyle and I had been hunting every weekend in Boerne for the perfect flip project and well, nothing was quite speaking to us. Every house we toured, seemed to be very overpriced for something very underwhelming. The thing about me and a house is, there HAS TO BE A STORY.
We had been searching so hard, you would think we were a couple of kids hunting for that golden egg on an Easter Sunday morning...
Well, it just so happens that on this past Easter Sunday morning, during a drive into the sweetest town we've been visiting for over a decade together... a town in East Texas that has over a hundred years of Rainey family history running through it, there she was: our Easter find, hidden in plain sight. Right there on Pecan Street.
When he passed by it, Kyle said, "Now there's a fixer upper just waiting to happen." To which his cousin replied, "That's my grandma's old house... and the family is actually wanting to sell it!"
I'll never forget the feeling when I saw it the first time, knowing it was for sale, knowing it had been in the family and thinking, DONE. LET'S DO IT. MAKE THE OFFER.
We hadn't even seen the inside, but this weathered country home had my heart the moment we met.
For the price they wanted, I told Kyle, "I don't care if there's a massive sink hole inside it, I still want it!" *funny enough... there kinda was, but I'll get to that in a bit*
In what seemed like the blink of an eye, we made a cash offer, I drew up the real estate contract and we closed a couple weeks later on this ~1,000sf house on a 1 acre lot, nestled in 100+ year old pecan trees... The pecan street poetry was just too much to resist.
The photo above shows how this project couldn't be more humble, but the pride I have for The Pecan House, could not be more profound.
If you know me and my brain, then you know THE MOOD BOARD was put together before we even got to the closing table!
I had every intention of blogging about this project in real-time and in the earlier stages, but dang, I underestimated the challenge of managing a project 5 hours away while also tending to other priorities like... chickens, goats, plants, and a now, FOUR YEAR OLD BOY! Stay tuned for a photo dump at the end of the life happening BEHIND the behind-the-scenes of Pecan.
Now, for some design talk!
When a house has a combination of opportunity and old character, my brain absolutely lights up with color inspiration and texture fusions that won't stop until I put it them into a mood board. Imagine that scene of Remy on Ratatouille, when he tastes a certain flavor combo, how his mind goes wild with ideas — thank you technology for the wondrous world of GIFs:
Since we already knew we wanted to try our hand at a short-term rental... the first question I had was... WHAT WILL THE THEME BE? I barely finished that question in my head before it was obvious to go with the obvious... A pecan themed rental on a street named pecan with actual pecan trees in the back yard, of course! Hosting and hospitality have always been a passion of mine and so, while creating the mood board, there were also visions of mini pecan pies for each guests stay and creating the quaintest country cottage for people who want to experience that slower, simpler living.
FIRST CONCEPT, THEN COLOR
My brown hair and brown eyes have always forced a love for the calmness and depth of neutrals and how their simplicity converts to intentionality almost immediately. Sorry, I can get a little "woo-woo" when it comes to design and color theory... so feel free to skip this part unless you want to see inside my design brain for a minute.
Brown. Pecans are brown, wood is brown. Wood is many shades of brown. But we can't have a project devoid of color so what complements this neutral? Well wood tones as we know, span a varitey of tones, especially into the color families of reds and oranges. And what colors complement those? I'll show you!
FIELD NOTE: To find a complementary color pairing, look at a standard color wheel, and the colors opposite each other are the complementary color of one another.
Why do Christmas colors of red and green work so well, for example? They literally complement each other according to color theory. See below:
Now, back to the Pecan color palette. It certainly doesn't hurt that brown is 'so in' right now and it also doesn't hurt that 'cottage core' interior style has been in circulation lately. Honestly, I coudn't be happier about the fact that that the appreciation of older, simpler things in general is so on trend. Old is the new, new, if you will.
Designers know a thing or two about color and trends and thanks to an internet search for "Pecan Wallpaper" and a designer named, Lulie Wallace, I found this beautiful ANCHOR PIECE for the project. The only pecan wallpaper I could find just so happened to be so charming and was immediately the design decision that all others would have to follow! Delicious, don't you think!?
The mood board creation was all down hill from there and I even created a template should you find yourself in need of compiling inspiration for a project of your own!
Click here for the free download: MOOD BOARD TEMPLATE
And now, for your viewing pleasure and without further ado, please see the The Pecan House Mood Board, packed with all the cottage charm, warm textures and classic patterns that one group of photos can practically handle:
Once my mind could rest after curating images to create a design guide for the project, I could move onto space planning! Side note, I'd like to point out that my favorite kind of mood board isn't always solely made up of house or room photos. In fact, I make sure to include standalone images of nature, texture, pattern and even food!
First things first on space planning... the existing floor plan. See below and believe it or not, this little house managed to squeeze 4 bedrooms into it.
Remember that sink hole I joked about before we closed? Well, it may as well have been just that. Years of water damage had left the back bedrooms in rough shape — water had poured through in places, leaving craters in the floors and taking out the subfloor and even some of the floor joists along the way. By the time we uncovered the full extent of it, the entire right side of the house had to be rebuilt. Yikes.
The next door neighbor also informed me that there was a "30 pound aggressive armadillo that lived in the house." Double yikes.
Gotta love those east Texas critters and the storytelling that is just as... shall we say, imaginative.
Existing photos, check! Existing floor plan, check! Now to start making sense of the layout. I made a list of challenges:
👎🏻 too many small bedrooms (there were 4)
👎🏻 not enough bathrooms (only 1)
👎🏻 small kitchen (about 11x6)
👎🏻 laundry not in A/C space (located in garage)
👎🏻 no pantry (only kitchen cabinets)
👎🏻 no entry (front door led straight to living room)
👎🏻 short ceilings (about 7 feet)
Now, watch the transformation below to see how we took it from a 4 bed, 1 bath to a 3 bed, 2 bath by turning the bottom right bedroom into a bathroom, complete with a double vanity, walk-in shower and freestanding tub.
To expand the kitchen, we removed the interior wall in the living room, making it more open. Then, we closed in some of the garage to create a larger dining area (hello, banquette!) and to connect the laundry room to the main house, solving our 'lack thereof' pantry problem as well.
What did we do about the short ceilings? We embraced them as part of that old house charm. Last but not least, we closed in half of the front porch to create a proper entry which will soon host that amazing pecan wallpaper to greet everyone who enters with a warm welcome to The Pecan House.
And speaking of entry... say hello to this sweet rendering of The Pecan House front porch, featuring the most charming blue dutch door painted in Sherwin Williams Debonair. I can hardly wait to see this come to life this fall!
Need a rendering? Order one from Arrange, right here:
While we're on the topic of pecan wallpaper and renderings... and now that you see what the front porch will look like... I'd like for you to cast your vote on the paint color for the entry:
Brown or Cream Paint?
0%Brown Paint!
0%Cream Paint!
Thank you for joining in the fun on how this project came about and watching how the early stages of design and demo have unfolded. In the next post, we'll dig deeper into finish selections, the lighting plan, the amazing finds on FB marketpalce, and see more progress photos, of course. While you wait, enjoy this sneak peek of the finish selections so far:
Here's that behind-the-scenes photo dump I promised of Rainey life as we know it. BONUS, I added some inspirational messaging in case you want to save or share for my fellow Pinterest lovers!
Spring 2026. Photo Dump.
Left to right: Ev in our greenhouse | A grape galette we made | Deer at dusk in the front yard | The chicks basking in the sunshine | One of our freshly born baby goats
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