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hen the Justice family first purchased a 3,300-square-foot home on Memphis’ Minden Road, the plan was to quickly flip it for resale. After all, they already had a few smaller flips under their belt and, with their seven-month-old baby taking up plenty of time, moving into the a place wasn’t really in the cards. But then something surprising happened. “We quickly fell in love with the street and the neighborhood,” Brooke Justice explains. “It also didn’t hurt that some of our best friends bought the house across the street!” With the shift in plans, the scope of the project quickly changed. “We loved the original ranch style and layout of the house,” Brooke says, but the 1956-era home was in desperate need of a makeover. Enter the renovation dream team: architect Brad McMillin, builder Lockwood Griffin and decorator Sarah Spinosa. First, McMillin drew up new plans that, according to Justice, helped the family “see the potential of what could be.” And what could be was a total transformation. The home grew to 5,300 total square feet, about 4,400 of which was finished and fitted with four bedrooms and four-and-a-half baths. “We wanted to make sure the family was creating enough usable space,” Griffin explains. As for the unfinished square footage: the intention, Griffin says, “was to give them room to grow.” Which, as it turns out, was a good thing, because as of publication time, the family had just welcomed their second child! The inside wasn’t the only part of the house to get a makeover—the exterior got quite the facelift, with Griffin and his team adding brick and siding to the façade “to better fit into the neighborhood.” The crew also dug out the existing pool and installed a new pool/hot tub combination, adding front and back porches to the home in the process. With the new, open-concept floor plan in place, Spinosa wanted to create a design concept that highlighted the architectural features of the freshly renovated home. “Making each room flow was important, and we wanted to create a comfortable, airy feel,” Spinosa says. She chose to work with “light, neutral colors. White and light ‘greige’ are carried throughout, with added punches of color through cabinetry and decor.” In the kitchen, particularly, this interplay of neutrals and colors takes a dramatic effect. For the perimeter kitchen counters, Spinosa helped the family select a honed black granite countertop. “It’s extremely functional and impossible to damage,” she explains. The room’s dose of ‘greige,’ and its wow factor, comes in the form of the kitchen island’s Calcutta marble countertop. “It took an entire slab!” Spinosa says. “Brooke and I picked out the specific slab and fell in love with it as soon as we saw it. For me, it’s like a piece of art—the tones and the movement make the space!”
24 | At Home Memphis & Mid South • March 2017