A South Carolina home begins a colorful new chapter – Garden & Gun

In the entryway of Charlie Smith and Louise Alexander’s Greenville, South Carolina, home, a pink banquette nestles elegantly in the corner. Against a backdrop of springy lotus wallpaper and springy yellow trim, the newlyweds often meet there during the week for lunch—between Alexander’s anesthesia shifts at the hospital—or for coffee before dropping the kids off at school. Alexander had the banquette custom made for her Nashville home before her job brought her to Greenville and fate brought her to Smith. “But it fits perfectly, like it was made for this room,” says the couple’s interior designer, Whitney McGregor. “If I had it custom made, it would be the exact same dimensions.” Some things, as the saying goes, are meant to be together.

But if it had been up to Smith and Alexander, they wouldn’t have been in this house at all. Although it was beautiful and well located in a leafy, hilly neighborhood south of downtown, it carried the burden of history. Smith bought the house with his bride Ashley in 2008. It was here that they brought their babies home from the hospital – first Charles in 2012, then Katherine in 2015. It was here that they watched them grow up. It was here that Ashley learned she had breast cancer in 2016, and after several years of remission, it was here that she passed away in 2021. The family has been mourning here ever since.

After meeting and falling in love with Alexander, Smith wanted a fresh start. “We knew a change was needed so we could come together as a couple and as a family,” he says. But the real estate market had other plans and their search for a new home proved futile. “We ran into so many closed doors,” Alexander says. “But when you give up, so much good and surprising comes along.”

The first glimmer of hope on the housing front appeared a few months before their 2023 wedding, when Alexander emailed McGregor to ask if she had time to spruce up Smith’s house. McGregor, who had gotten to know Alexander and Smith separately over the years, responded with an emphatic YesWhat began with a few color and lighting tweaks turned into a seven-week renovation that included transforming the foyer, living room, den, master bedroom, kitchen, porch, downstairs powder room, playroom and guest bedroom—with a firm deadline of early June, when the couple would return from their honeymoon. “It was like a fire drill,” McGregor says.

The couple, however, gave the designer almost complete free rein, stressing only that they wanted to bring as much color into the house as possible. “Something terrible had happened and the house felt kind of frozen in there,” says McGregor. “But the family is so vibrant. They wanted to bring more color and more life into it.”

To achieve the quick turnaround, McGregor decided to complement the pieces the family already had with vintage and secondhand finds. “We didn’t have time to think too much,” she says. A bold mirror by Fleur of New Orleans added a touch of sass to Alexander’s antique pine dresser in the entryway. A blue-and-white striped slipcover over a vintage sofa brightened the den. McGregor found a kidney bean sofa for the living room on Facebook Marketplace and painted the walls around it a calming shade of green. “The green room is where the four of us come together as a family,” Smith says. “It feels so cozy and safe.”

While McGregor created functional spaces for the family to gather, she also created places to retreat. The breakfast nook feels like a cozy cafe alcove in the middle of the busy kitchen. The patio table could just as easily host a homework session as a dinner party. Upstairs, McGregor left the kids’ rooms untouched but added a playful touch by painting thick yellow stripes on the playroom walls. When eight-year-old Katherine first saw the house, she spun around the rooms with delight.

Alexander and Smith took a slower approach, taking in every detail: the crown molding in the guest bathroom, the pop-art installation by Olivia Bonilla in the master bedroom, the gallery of family photos leading up the stairs. “It took us hours to walk through the entire house,” Alexander says. “We were so impressed.” When she first laid eyes on the screened-in porch with the pink and olive geometric quilt pattern painted across the floor, she burst into tears. “Pink is my favorite color, and green is Charlie’s favorite color,” she says. “Whitney had taken everything she knew about both of us with her. To feel deep pain and grief and know that there’s room for that…but now there’s room for hope and beauty too. Color has brought so much joy.”