Text by Bethany Adams
When Meredith and Ray Hadaway decided they wanted to live in Round Top, Texas, they knew finding their perfect place wouldn’t be an easy task. Rather than give up the dream, however, they chose to sell their home and move into an 800-square-foot rental with their daughter while they waited for an opportunity to arise.
It wasn’t long before one did, and the Hadaways found themselves making an offer for the house a local couple had raised their children in. “We fell in love with where it sat,” Meredith says. “It’s a very quiet road, and it had a lot of potential.”
They spent the next few years removing the layers of shag carpet, vinyl, and paneling that had accumulated since the home’s construction in the early 1900s. “We peeled away the layers and got down to the beautiful longleaf pine floors and the gorgeous shiplap walls and ceiling,” Meredith says, noting they wanted to bring the house “back to its glory days.”
They ended up with, as Meredith says, a “wonderful structure with great bones,” which they then updated with their own unique flair. As both artists and antiques enthusiasts, it was natural for the couple to fill the home with a colorful and eclectic smattering of styles and decades, from the 100-year-old European front doors to the mid-century modern chairs in the living room.
In the same space, an antique French Champagne rack mounted on the base of a potbellied stove provides a place for the couple to display their coffee-table books, and a European piece that might have once been a pie cabinet holds more of their book collection. “My husband and I love to find pieces that speak to you and have soul,” Meredith says.
And when they can’t find them? They make their own, as they did with the chandelier created from beams discovered beneath the house. They wrapped the beams with old wires, from which they hung Edison bulbs, mercury glass ornaments, and telephone-line insulators collected by Meredith’s father. To one side, Meredith displays silver pitchers that he, a champion marksman, won in the 1960s.
To maintain the aged spirit of the home as much as possible, the Hadaways sought out materials that would have existed at the time the home was built, such as the corrugated tin they used in the kitchen. Reclaimed from an old barn, the tin features the patina that Meredith wanted to see as well as a thinner corrugation that played into her love of texture.
That love is also seen in the primary bedroom, where a headboard made of an antique suzani injects the room with vibrant personality. “To me, it’s the color and the texture of the piece,” Meredith says. “It’s a piece of art.”
And, as a textile artist married to a painter, that’s something Meredith would know something about. Even their daughter “has it in her blood,” she notes, and the house is filled with pieces created by favorite artists discovered on the family’s travels.
While many might have shied away from the challenge of combining such a wide variety of styles and eras into one space, it was a challenge that these artists at heart knew exactly how to tackle. Under the skilled eyes and hands of the Hadaways, each piece came together and—much like the Hadaways themselves—found its perfect place in this lovingly restored Round Top cottage.
