photographs by Christina Iovinelli
The living room welcomes guests for parties and get-togethers, but also serves as a family spot for cozy movie nights.
Andrea and Kyle Morgan knew they had found their new home when they reached the backyard. The previous owners had redone the space recently, adding a pool and a patio with an outdoor living area. It was beautiful and functional, great for entertaining.
The house, too, had more space than the one where they were living at the time, just about five blocks away. The extra space was a must: Their fifth baby was on the way. “But, really,” Amanda says,” to have a space where people could gather — a lot of people, whether that’s our family coming in from out of town or just our community and friends — this backyard checked a lot of those boxes.”
photographs by Christina Iovinelli
Catherine and Ian Hyde, a couple in business and life, transitioned from commercial work to residential renovation.
So, knowing the outdoor area’s importance, when Catherine and Ian Hyde of Hyde Design Build, were tasked to renovate the Morgans’ kitchen and living room, they looked first to the yard, aiming to bring the outdoor living space in — the function of it, the beauty. The two spaces had to coexist and have “a good flow,” Catherine says.
While the backyard was “impeccable,” the kitchen and living room did not fit the Morgans when they closed on the home last July. A bit dated, with stucco walls and drenched in dark tones, rather than the light neutrals they’d grown accustomed to, it wasn’t a space they could really see as theirs.
“That’s where I spend a lot of my time,” Andrea says, “feeding my family, hosting people, all of that. … And Kyle looked at me and said, ‘What if we just made it our own? What if we did it?’”
Before the Morgans, the East Memphis home had four or five owners, and each seemed to renovate or extend the house in some way. “Kyle had been saying, ‘Let’s make this kitchen our kitchen — let’s leave our mark on this house.”
photographs by Christina Iovinelli
For the Morgan home, a kitchen that made smart use of space and left room for family time was a must.
The dream scenario, they knew, was to tear out the walls, the cabinetry, the tile floors, everything — and they knew they wanted to do it with the help of the Hydes. They had worked together before, enlisting the couple to design a homeschool classroom for their previous house when their oldest daughter, now 13, was about to start kindergarten.
“We loved the idea of helping support people in the neighborhood,” says Kyle. “They had this vision of design [that we liked] and it was kind of fun, all those years ago with the other house.”
That homeschool classroom was early on in Hyde Design Build’s portfolio of projects, Catherine and Ian say. “It was when we first started our business [in 2017],” Catherine says. “It was probably, like, our sixth project.”
Both had experience working commercial projects, Catherine in interior architecture, and Ian in contracting. Their turn to the residential came when they started renovating their own East Memphis home, a project that captivated their neighbors’ curiosity. “They were like, ‘We, I need help on my house,’” Ian says.
At first, the Hydes were resistant — both held full-time commercial jobs — but at their neighbors’ persistence and encouragement, they began taking on jobs here and there. It helped that Catherine had been looking for something more in her career.
photographs by Christina Iovinelli
Arched pocket doors to the walk-in pantry echo archways (left) throughout the home’s living space.
She had designed spaces for the Orpheum Theatre, for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, for hotels, and for schools, but they weren’t fulfilling her. These side home projects they had been taking on for others, though, reminded her why she started her career. After all, it’s where she found her niche, in college and even as a child.
As she explains, with a rough childhood, “My house became my friend. I was always moving stuff around. … I made floor-to-ceiling murals in my room.” Once she began designing residential spaces, “I went back to being a kid seeing a house as my friend. It brought all that back. It was so natural. I was able to crank out stuff really fast. I was able to really connect and just felt like where I needed to be. I just really kind of fell back in love with design.”
As the number of projects accrued for the couple, and grew in scale, the two were able to focus on their business full-time, and Ian found himself falling harder for residential work, just as his wife had.
photographs by Christina Iovinelli
“I got to work on some really cool historic projects and buildings that affected our skyline in Memphis and the community, and it was great,” he says. “But it just wasn’t personal enough. I kind of got to a point where I was feeling I wasn’t really making a difference.”
But with someone’s home, the couple could help clients reimagine their most intimate spaces. “Catherine and I both believe your home is your sanctuary and your second skin,” Ian says. “It’s where you can be yourself and you can take off all the things you have to put on to go out into the world.”
“We’re very thoughtful with it,” Catherine adds. “We have a questionnaire depending on the type of project. We ask about their lifestyle habits, what they like to do, what times of day they use their spaces, and if there’s anything they want to change with their habits — that kind of thing.”
For them, design isn’t just about making a space beautiful; it’s about making a space functional according to a family’s needs and wants. “In your home, you can be you, and it’s for you,” Ian says. “It’s not just about having a 48-inch range or a big island with pretty countertops. It’s about what you want to get out of that.”
For Andrea and Kyle’s renovation, Catherine came up with the walk-in pantry first. Tucked behind a custom-made arched pocket door, the pantry is lined with neutral green cabinets with brass finishes, complete with a sink, an appliance garage, and a beverage center. “It’s like a mini kitchen in and of itself,” Kyle says. “Before, we had a pantry, and now it’s a pantry-plus — that’s not in the high area of traffic in the kitchen.”
photographs by Christina Iovinelli
The walk-in pantry allows the Morgans room for appliance storage and a beverage station.
“I saw function could improve from our previous kitchen to what we were dreaming,” Andrea says. “Our old refrigerator, where [the kids] fill up their water bottles, inevitably ice or water would shoot out of there, as soon as I was trying to make lunch. Or I’d walk by and the toaster would be out and crumbs would be all over, and we’d stash it away in a cabinet but crumbs would fall out. Or Kyle would make his coffee, and that was in the upper cabinet, but it was kind of all in the same kind of main area, spots where we would all just prepare food.”
This new pantry, though, alleviates those problems, with an ice machine and water filter for the kids to self-serve their own beverages and the appliance garage to tuck away the unattractive appliances like the blender, toaster, and coffee maker. “And then obviously having that space helped me lay out the rest of the kitchen,” Catherine says, “which then when you walk down into the space from the dining room, I really wanted that beautiful custom vent hood that we designed and that beautiful 48-inch range that could really provoke people to come into this space.”
The space itself presented its own structural challenges in the beginning. Like the rest of the house, with its numerous additions and renovations, the kitchen, Catherine says, “had been added onto probably three different times, so it was hard to really understand how the house was put together and how the different spaces were combined. We had to go back and do some forensic framing work to tie things together a little bit better and marry all three of those different additions so that the space flowed better.”
Take, for instance, the beams that line the ceilings in the kitchen and living spaces; some of them hide necessary rafters while the rest carry through to keep the visual cohesion. Another effort of visual cohesion: the arched shelves in the living room to match the arched pocket door in the pantry.
That pocket door, which could close easily during parties or any get-together the family hosts, was a sticking point for Andrea and Kyle. “We’re pretty easy-going, but we were like, ‘It’s got to be those wood pocket doors on the pantry.’ We’re like, ‘They definitely have to be arched.’”
And Catherine and Ian agreed, even knowing how much work would go into constructing them. “It’s not like your pocket door at your grandma’s house that never works and everybody hates,” Ian says. “It soft-closes. It soft-opens.”
“We never just accept things at their face value,” Kyle adds. “We always go into it with that mindset of: Anything’s possible.”
photographs by Christina Iovinelli
The Morgan family pose outside their High Point Terrace home: (l-r) Kyle, Evelyn (11), Abel (9), Ellery (13), Alden (6), Andrea, and Boaz (1), plus Bishop the pup.
That mindset also led to the Hydes renovating the guest bathroom, a side project during the kitchen and living room renovations. Once the Morgans had lived in their house for a bit, and during the other ongoing renovations, they realized the bathroom, too, could use some updating. “There was kind of a funky closet, but we’re like, ‘We kind of want to tear down the wall in between and make it a big bathroom,’” Andrea says. “And what we appreciate about Catherine and Ian is they have the imagination to see it. They’re not just going to go for the most simple, easy fix. They’re going to really imagine a space and be excited about it.”
Of this work, Catherine says, “It’s really magic when you can really change somebody’s life, and I feel like we did that.”
photographs by Christina Iovinelli
The guest bathroom was enlarged and updated as a side project during the renovation.
Now that their kitchen and living room are complete, Andrea and Kyle are using their home to its full entertaining potential, though they were hosting in it all along, through construction and everything. “We turn on music and have dance parties in the kitchen,” Andrea says. “[In the living room,] we snuggle on the couch and do Friday night movies.”
Their oldest daughter, Ellery, 13, has also been making use of the kitchen, using her sourdough starter whose home is on the floating shelves. “She’ll make desserts and stuff all the time. But it’s sweet that she has like her little corner, she can kind of bake and do prepping and then I’ll be at the island right behind her making food.”
The Morgans’ younger children, ages 6, 9, 11, also join in the cooking, pulling up the barstools to the counter and reaching into the cabinets at their heights. (The couple’s 1-year-old has yet to join in on the fun.) They’ll soon be entering baked goods into the Delta Fair’s kids’ cooking contests.
In the meantime, the family will keep hosting, from their weekly church small group to kids’ birthday parties — and they’ll continue to make their mark on their home.
