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At Home with Tracey Overbeck Stead

A look inside the Austin interior designer’s soulful, family-filled home.

Ask interior designer Tracey Overbeck Stead about anything in her house, and you won’t hear her talk about color schemes, furniture arrangements, patterns or textures. Instead, you’ll get a story. Ask about the elaborate black and gold clock in her living room, for example, and she’ll show you a newspaper clipping featuring her grandfather, who had more than 300 clocks in his collection. The ornately carved wooden chair in her living room yields a story about her grandmother, who poured herself a glass of Champagne before bed every night and lived to be 92 years old. And when you ask her how she went about designing her house, you’ll get a refreshingly honest answer.

“The house is like the cobbler that has no shoes. I go out and do these amazing homes and hotels, and I come home and I want to burn this place down. But then I sit back and think, ‘This is me.’ Everything we’ve collected over the years just sort of trickled down into this house. Nothing in this house was bought as a place filler; it all has some soulful meaning. Nothing is here without a reason,” Overbeck Stead says. “I don’t have a particular style. For me, it’s more about having items in my home that mean something to me, but obviously artfully arranged in a way that is functional for family and to the eye. I like the unexpected. It’s an old house, but when you walk in, it’s not your typical overstuffed furniture with an antique china cabinet in the corner. It’s sort of the way we live life. It’s hectic. It’s spontaneous.”

How Overbeck Stead came to own her prairie-style house in the heart of Central Austin can be summed up with one word: kismet. Built in 1922, the house is one of the original six homes that now comprise the Old Enfield neighborhood, which is the oldest section of the historic Old West Austin neighborhood. It was first occupied by James and Ruth Graham. James Graham was a city commissioner and a pioneer pharmacist. Overbeck Stead happens to be the granddaughter of Ladner Nau, pharmacist and owner of one of two Nau’s Pharmacy locations at 24th and San Gabriel streets. The Nau’s Enfield Drug location at 12th and West Lynn streets, owned by her great-uncle Hilton Nau, is still open and beloved by locals for the old-fashioned burgers and soda fountain.

“My mother and father, Gary and Nannette Overbeck, are both pharmacists. My father bought the pharmacy from my grandfather in the ’70s, and my mother owned Austin Parenteral Services, which was a home infusion pharmacy. My cousins own Tarrytown Pharmacy. It’s so cool that the house started with a pharmacy family and is currently loved by a pharmacy family,” Overbeck Stead says.

Fast-forward to 2005, when Overbeck Stead and her husband were living in the Old West Austin neighborhood and caught wind of an open house a few blocks away. They raced over and discovered the seller was a musician in the San Antonio punk band Butthole Surfers, whose music Overbeck Stead loved when she was a teenager in the ’80s.

“I walked into the house and I just kept squeezing my husband’s arm,” Overbeck Stead remembers. “There were all these people that put bids in on the house, and I didn’t think we were going to get it. When I met the gentleman that owned the house, I told him, ‘I used to sneak out of the house to come see your shows. I’m a huge fan.’ He liked that I wanted to keep the house original. And so he [sold] us the house.”

Remaining true to her promise, Overbeck Stead only made necessary updates to the house’s kitchen, lighting and electrical, plumbing, paint and window treatments. She also preserved the house’s original floorplan and features. In the hallways, dampers that once brought heat to the house using coal remain untouched. In the family room off the kitchen, the striking arched windows were once features of an open porch, which the house’s previous owner enclosed by adding glass to the arches. And sitting in the upstairs bathrooms are what every lover of old houses secretly hopes to have in their own home: clawfoot tubs.

“Obviously, we needed to make some updates to the house just so it would function in today’s world, but I didn’t want to change anything architecturally. Ten years ago, everyone wanted to rip out walls to make a big kitchen-living area and put in granite counters and sunken tubs,” Overbeck Stead says.

Despite that Enfield Road has become a busy thoroughfare in the 93 years since the house was built, the home remains a quiet oasis suitable for family living. Overbeck Stead shares the house with her husband, Ethan, and their three boys, Whittier, age 2, Elliot, age 8 and Griffin, age 10.

“The wall around the house shields us from city living, even though we’re five minutes from downtown. When the gates are closed, it’s really quiet. All the first-floor windows are original, but the second floor has double-paned windows because the previous owner had a recording studio up there. When you’re upstairs, it’s totally quiet. It’s amazing,” Overbeck Stead says.

As Overbeck Stead leads a tour from room to room, it becomes clear family is very important to her. Each room has a cool factor you’d expect from a talented interior designer (The family room has a signed Banksy print on the wall.) but it doesn’t sacrifice on the warm and familiar feelings one typically associates with home. Just around the corner from Banksy, her three boys’ heights are marked on the kitchen wall. Opposite the giant octopus painted in a corner of her bedroom, a photo of the lighthouse where she and Ethan were married hangs above their bed. And everywhere in the house, her grandfather’s clocks can be heard ticking softly in the background.

“My grandparents played such an important role in my early childhood because I was an only child with a single mom who worked full time,” Overbeck Stead says. “My mother and father got divorced when I was 5. It was just my mom and I until I was 9. And so, I was with my grandparents a lot. My grandfather would be at the pharmacy, and my grandmother would pick me up and take me there. Or she’d take me home, and we’d hang out until Granddad got home and he’d make me a chocolate milkshake. When my mom remarried and I got a dad and two brothers, they took them in as if they were their own. We were all really close.”

Overbeck Stead travels up the wonderfully creaky stairs, coming to Whittier’s nursery, a controlled explosion of colorful Japanese prints and toys. Next door, Griffin and Elliot happily share a seaside-themed room complete with side-by-side boat-shaped beds. Their bedroom walls depict the scenery surrounding their vacation home in Martha’s Vineyard, where the family spends their summers together.

“My husband grew up going there in the summers and he took me there when we first started dating. Three years later, we got married there,” Overbeck Stead says. “We loved it so much that we bought a cottage there in 2007. I spend June through the end of August there with the kids [and] we go for Thanksgiving, Christmas and spring break. We’re there a lot.”

Back downstairs, Overbeck Stead recalls that she had a creative relationship with space at a young age.

“I would rearrange all the neighborhood kids’ rooms, and I would rearrange my room all the time,” she says. “My mom knew from the get-go there was something artistic about me. I always had this creative outlet with my space and surroundings.”

Overbeck Stead’s artistic streak led her to pursue a fine-arts degree in college, but her plans quickly changed after receiving a not-so-stellar grade in her first art class.

“I got a D, and thought, ‘Yeah, OK, maybe I’ll do this as a hobby,’ ” she says with a laugh. “I’ve always loved kids, so I got a degree in early childhood education and taught preschool for nine years. When I was a preschool teacher, my room was elaborate. I would always change it around. I even bought my own furniture for the room.”

Overbeck Stead began working for a local decorator while teaching at the same time, eventually deciding to go back to school to pursue a degree in interior design at the University of Texas. After graduating, she began working for the prestigious commercial architecture firm Page Southerland Page.

“I love commercial design because it’s very gratifying to me that there might be 1,000 people that walk through my design and experience it,” she says. “But there’s also something really gratifying about helping someone walk into their house and get that feeling of serenity, that feeling of ‘I’m safe. I’m home. This is where I want to be.’ Our space, whether it’s 300 square feet or 20,000 square feet, is very personal.”

Overbeck Stead’s passion for residential design led her to begin taking residential clients on the side, with the firm’s blessing. In 1996, a client approached her with a big project, a four-story building on Congress Avenue that he wanted to turn into his personal residence. It was exactly the push she needed to start her own interior-design firm.

“The project was going to take at least two years, so I knew I could go off on my own and I would have two years where my bills would get paid. It gave me a little bit of security to jump off the bridge,” Overbeck Stead explains. “I grew up watching my mother and my father, who were both entrepreneurs, and my grandfather, so I felt it was a natural path for me. From there, it was a domino effect, and I haven’t looked back.”

Though she’s appreciative when clients come to her with reference materials from magazines and books, Overbeck Stead says she likes to begin the design process by getting to know her clients.

“I think one of my best features is that I can read people well,” she says. “I’m very open. I’m a huge people person. First, I go to their space to see how they currently live. Then I say, ‘Tell me about you. Where do you travel? What do you love to do as a hobby?’ I try to get into my clients’ heads through conversation. I don’t give them homework of ripping out pages in a magazine or book. I really just try to get to know them.”

Overbeck Stead enjoys the personal relationship that comes from working so closely with her clients. Many of her longtime clients, she says, are like family to her.

“If I’m your interior designer, I know everything about you,” she says. “I know how you go to the bathroom because we’ve picked out toilets together. I know if you have anything under your bed because I’ve seen it. I know what medication you’re taking because we’ve talked about your storage needs by your bed. I know what you like to eat and when. I know how you like to get dressed and where. I know where you like to lounge and how. It gets so personal and so into those minute details, I can’t help but get close to my clients. And I love that.”

The hard work of planning down to the tiniest details allows Overbeck Stead to create a space that is both beautiful and functional.

“Form is always in the back of my head, as far as you walking in and loving what you’re looking at, but I try to never forget why you’re in the space. I don’t want you to sit on an uncomfortable sofa. I don’t want you to need three grab bars and a pulley to step into your beautiful freestanding bathtub. You can still have beauty with function. A lot of people think you can’t, but you actually can,” Overbeck Stead says.

The end result is everything a home should be: comfortable, functional and most of all, personal.

“The analogy I use with my clients is that I can put them in front of a mirror and make them look the best they can look, but it still looks like them,” she explains. “There’s not one project I’ve done where you would walk in and say, ‘Tracey Overbeck Stead did this.’ I design to my clients. I’m very into making their personality and their soul come out in their house.”

It’s clear why Overbeck Stead is so successful at building those deep relationships with her clients. She even asked this interviewer personal family-related questions, job-related questions and house-related questions. Overbeck Stead herself is an open book. She shared that she likes to play the drums, would drive a Formula 1 racecar if she could and loves to shoot guns at her parents’ ranch.

But talk always seems to circle back to interior design and why doing what she does is important to her.

“Life is so hectic these days. We’re such a fast, here-and-now culture,” Overbeck Stead observes. “I have clients that say, ‘I just want to come home and feel like I’m home.’ They always emphasize that word: home. As humans, we need a place where we go that’s ours, whether it’s an apartment, a trailer, a plane, a condo or a hotel room. … Interior design is so powerful because it can make someone feel good when the rest of the world outside their space is so fast-moving. Space is so important in our lives. It’s so fun to be able to shape it. To help someone’s vision of their safe, special place come to life is such a gift to me.”

 

More stories from Tracey about the pieces in her home:

Black and gold clock: “This clock was one of my grandfather’s favorite clocks that he owned. He was in the newspaper years ago for his house, and of all the clocks in his house, he chose this one to be photographed with. My grandmother and my grandfather were such an important part of my life, so it means a lot to me.”

 

Palm tree painting: “This painting was painted by Mickey Mayfield. One of my mentors/clients/best friends Roger Joseph—he’s 80 years old—he gave this to me. He’s still alive and doing wonderfully. It’s nice to have something from someone who is still really dear to you in your life.”

 

Gun lamp: “The gun lamp is designed by French Architect and Product Designer Philippe Starck. [At a showcase,] Philippe came up to me and asked who I was. I was like, ‘My name’s Tracey. I’m from Austin, Texas, and I’m such a huge fan. I bought one of your lamps!’ He goes, ‘You must be really rich.’ Uh, no! I go to pick up my lamp and they had already swiped my credit card. I had no money at the time because I had just started my design firm, and I worked my ass off to pay off my lamp. Every day when I walk into the house and I look at it, I’m reminded of how hard I worked.”

Giant foot: “A store I bought furniture from for years was closing, and they knew I loved this rubber foot. They gave it to me as a present and I thought, ‘It’s going to look so gorgeous in my front yard.’ I put it out there and my husband was like, ‘It’s a sponge! The first time it rains, it’s gone.’ So it’s in the dining room. My kids use it as a slide.”

 

Graffiti Matthew Rodriguez in stairwell: “It was Mother’s Day, and my husband and I had no money. I had just started my firm. The parents of my dear friend from high school owned a bar on Sixth Street called the Black Cat. When the bar closed, Matthew [Rodriguez] tagged it on these boards. And for Mother’s Day, my husband went there in the middle of the night, took the board down and had it framed. He couldn’t afford to get me a piece of art, so he went and stole one. Matthew would be proud!”

Black and white elephant print: “This print is by fine-arts photographer Debra Sugerman. We were neighbors for years. One day she said, ‘I’m going on the road for the next six months, and I’m going to lend you this print because I know how much you love it.’ I told her, ‘Deborah, if I ever make enough money to afford a piece of your art, I will buy one.’ It was over my fireplace for nine years before she took it back. When I had my first big commission years later, I called her up and said, ‘I’m ready to buy my elephant.’ ”

 

Tracey Overbeck Stead on the Whale House and Her Love for Martha’s Vineyard

Our Whale House is located in the historic neighborhood of Oak Bluffs, Mass., on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. It is one of our two homes we own on this magical island. We purchased the Whale House back in ’07 because we fell in love with the summer lifestyle of being stuck in time with the way of life our neighborhood continually provides 180 years later; it is Americana at it’s finest. Everyone looks after everyone. Everyone loves their neighbors. There is a sense of community that no longer exists in other American cities. It also has that island-time schedule. Everything moves a bit slower and a bit more thoughtful.  

For me, the challenge was turning this piece of history into a vacation home that a modern-day family with two young sons (now three) could enjoy while still preserving its architectural integrity and abiding by the strict historic rules and regulations of the neighborhood. 

Drawing from the cottage’s Cape Cod setting, the interior reflects a coastal style, with local antiques from years gone sourced from local farmhouses and shipyards. Completing the interior required sleuthing for old costal antiques, local materials and new, inviting pieces that were available on island or were purchased through vendors off island, who we had to beg to ship via the ferry. All local artisans were commissioned in transforming this labor of love. 

Each cottage in this neighborhood is required to have a name. My son Griffin, then 4 years old, endowed our cottage with its name: the Whale House. One outcome of this project is that I have now passed the obsession for Martha’s Vineyard on to my three sons, who wake up nearly every morning in Austin and ask me if today is the day we are going to the Whale House.

 

To learn more about Tracey Overbeck Stead and view her design portfolio, visit traceyoverbeckstead.com.

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