Several chapters later, what started out as a child-like love for design has grown into a full-fledged passion.
My name is Grace Mitchell, and I live in Fort Worth, Texas with my husband and four children. We live in an old neighborhood in a house that is nearly a hundred years old. I started writing “A Storied Style” in 2012 as a way to keep my toes in the creative world while my babies were small. (At the time, they were under 1, 1, 2, and 3!) Once my kids were a bit older, I started taking on interior design projects for clients. It has been quite the adventure the last several years watching my site and work lead to opportunities to collaborate with and design for major brands, along with writing for magazines and being featured in them, and even a television project!
I love creating interiors that evoke a story — a history of sorts — of the owners. You can often find me on the hunt for incredible antique and vintage furniture, always searching for that special one-of-a-kind piece to be the focal point of a space. Often, with kids in tow! My home, a 1919 foursquare, has become a design lab of sorts – A Storied Style often chronicles our journey through its renovation. And boy, has it been a process! It has taken us six years of renovating to get where we are now. After experiences like a bathroom coming through a downstairs ceiling, hauling four tons of concrete and plaster out of the porte cochere after the ceiling collapsed on our car, and exploding plumbing pipes, we have learned so much about construction, and the importance of thinking through the art of crafting a house you love to come home to.
Over the years and through different stages of our family life, I learned where to spend and where to thrift and redo, where to dream and where to be practical. Creating a home that is functional and beautiful is a balance of those elements. When I am working with clients or simply talking with friends on where to begin the design process, my advice is simple:
Start with your story.
Think about places you visited that are interesting to you, or a special memory, and try to incorporate that into your space somehow. People often try to copy a magazine or a picture that they see on Pinterest. Sometimes when you recreate those things, they’re nice – but they’re not interesting. They don’t tell anyone anything about you. To me, doing design work is more than just creating a pretty room. What’s special to me about a space is what it says about the people who live in it, what makes them interesting, and what they love – how it tells their story. That is what makes a room memorable, and that is the heart behind what I do.
Through these writings, as I document the ideas constantly swimming through my brain, inspiration I discover in everyday life, my never-ending home projects, and my client work, my hope is that you, the reader, will find your own Storied Style.
