Domaine des Azalées

Domaine des Azalées is where we actually live. It is an early 1990s house in Covington, and when we took it on it still wore that decade honestly: pink carpet, popcorn ceilings, golden oak cabinets topped with thirty-year-old cultured marble and gold faucets, and heart-themed wallpaper in a surprising number of rooms.

The plan was multigenerational from the beginning. My mom took the first-floor suite, which meant a secondary bathroom — the one with the pink carpet and the dormer window I immediately wanted a dressing table under — had to stop behaving like a kids’ hall bath and start working like a primary one. That single decision drove the first big remodel here.

This house is also where the lessons from Maison du Lac get spent. The whitewashed tongue-and-groove ceiling I finished overhead the first time got pre-finished on the ground here. The window trim I accidentally hid behind curtains there, I worked out how to keep visible here. Those posts are coming.

The property is more work to manage than the house itself, which is its own kind of trade. We are nowhere near finished.