Diedre Gray knows home when she sees it—even when it’s not yet hers.
Three years ago, the lawyer and mother of two spotted a white farmhouse-style home in Ladue that she couldn’t stop thinking about. Not one to wait for things to happen, she wrote a letter to the homeowner, saying she wanted to buy the house. The home had been on the market but was no longer for sale when Gray left the letter at the front door and waited for a response. Nine days later, this time with her at-first-skeptical husband, Mike, on board, she wrote a contract for the house. The 1929 double-gabled home was now theirs.
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“Nothing compares to the character of an older home,” says Gray. “I love picturing all the lives that lived here.”
Once ensconced in her home, Gray resolved to learn everything she could about it and the people who had lived there. She began interviewing neighbors and dragged the family to local archives to review dusty phone books in the hope of learning something about the home’s previous occupants.
The Grays discovered that theirs was the third house built on Picardy Lane, even before Ladue was incorporated. (The area was then called Township 45.) St. Louis firm Meier and Comfort planned the neighborhood, originally called Exermont, as one of the first private areas outside downtown, and it was completed just a few years after the firm constructed Clayton’s beloved Seven Gables building. In 1970, the homeowners expanded the kitchen and added a family room and mudroom.
Yes, the home had an interesting history, but it would need help to move into the future. “With old houses come a lot of quirks and surprises,” Gray says. Those quirks included outdated lighting, carpeting concealing oak floors, and tiny closets with minimal storage for a modern family.
With her design instincts to guide her, Gray got to work. Armed with historical research and ideas gleaned from design blogs, magazines, and Instagram, she turned an aging Ladue house into a modern dwelling that hasn’t forgotten its roots. The result is an inviting blend of traditional St. Louis architecture and chic comfort that works for a social young family.
As is the case with most growing families, adding storage was near the top of the to-do list. Gray designed built-in cabinets to store clutter and make way for framed drawings, paintings, and an assortment of Asian art objects, including a striking pair of 48-inch-tall pagodas from China. Color enlivens every space, from a living room painted the color of her daughter’s favorite ice cream—Baskin Robbins’ Daiquiri Ice—to a collection of blue-and-white china that lines the shelves.
“When you walk into a room with bold color, you smile,” says Gray.
The home doesn’t take itself too seriously, thanks to Gray’s ability to mix high-end and humble elements—there are future heirlooms from the Warson Woods Antique Gallery and chairs that Gray snagged on Craigslist and had reupholstered. As she puts it: “We’ve got everything in here from Hermès to Home Goods.”
Some of the most satisfying restoration work wasn’t about adding anything, though. It was about stripping away the unnecessary to honor the home’s past. The Grays had the vinyl siding removed, along with decades-old paint, to reveal cedar shingles that had been originally painted white. The painters gave the shingles a fresh coat, bringing the house back to its intended appearance.
“I love how quaint the house looks from the street,” she says. “We left as much charm as we could—it’s all just part of the patina.”
