photograph by john pickle
Tara Engelberg decided to radically change careers and become a designer after overcoming breast cancer. The Baum family were one of her earliest clients.
When Tara Engelberg moved to Memphis, the experience of setting up a new house in her husband Jeff’s hometown awakened a creative urge. “We hired a firm out of Chicago to help us with the design process,” she says. But when they finally got their home like they wanted it, “I was not ready to be done. I had nothing left to do here, but I was so geared up. The creative juices were flowing. I looked at things in a different way. I started going to people’s houses and noticing things. How would they like drapes there? Or, I feel like these pillows are wrong.”
Then, a breast cancer diagnosis knocked her life off track. As she endured six months of grueling treatment, she reconsidered her career goals. Once she fully recovered, she took a leap of faith and launched Tara Felice Interiors.
“When I’m first talking to clients, what I tell them I do is ‘sophisticated comfort.’ I want it to look nice and sophisticated and polished, but also very user-friendly.” — Tara Engelberg
“That was really scary,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘Who the hell is going to hire me?’ … Spending someone else’s money was a very different experience. It is one thing to make a mistake on my dime. It’s a whole other thing when someone else is buying. But I have to tell you, the cancer experience led me to this feeling of, ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ The wrong size sofa is not a life-or-death matter. If I need to pay for someone’s sofa, then so be it. I have to learn somehow.”
photograph by john pickle
This buffet in the formal dining room sports oversized Art Deco-style hardware. “I think mixing [styles] is the key to a more classic, longer-lasting design,” says Engelberg.
A Fixer-Upper
Around the same time, her cousins, Ryan and Maureen Baum, were in the process of rehabbing a home in East Memphis. “It was a hoarder’s house, so it was effectively condemned,” says Ryan of the three-bedroom, 1964 home. “I did all the rehab myself. I tore out all the drywall, all the electrical, all the plumbing, all the HVAC.”
He discovered the house came with a surprise. “When I went to tear out the last little bit of drywall, there were 75,000 bees in the rafters, and they had 16 gallons of honey up in the braces.”
After calling in a professional to take care of those unwanted visitors, he says, “It’s fun to look at parts of your house and realize, there used to be a wall there, or, I tore that floor out. The house is more meaningful to me because I put my blood, sweat, and tears into it. I didn’t just write a check and say here, y’all take care of it. I spent the first six months filling eighteen thirty-cubic-yard dumpsters with flooring and insulation. It’s definitely been a labor of love.”
photograph by john pickle
This cozy den was a portion of the back deck when the Baums recently expanded their home. The end table was created from scrap wood and broken glass, then encased in a block of resin.
The Baums decided they wanted to work with Tara. “When they were starting on the house,” she says, “I was just starting my business and needed experience, so I reached out to them. ‘Hey, we’d love to help you guys out. I need the experience. I’ll give you guys a great bargain for letting me kind of experiment and work out all my business stuff.’ Since then, we’ve become really good friends.”
“I feel like even if I didn’t know Tara, I would use her, because we work so well together,” says Maureen. “I’m always shocked with just how patient she is. I feel like many husbands don’t necessarily have design opinions, but my husband has an eye for design, and he has opinions. So it’s not just Tara and me working together.”
Being involved in the creation of the home from the ground up helped Tara refine her design style. “When I’m first talking to clients, what I tell them I do is ‘sophisticated comfort.’ I want it to look nice and sophisticated and polished, but also very user-friendly.”
photograph by john pickle
The black tiled walls make the pink from Dolly Parton’s bubble gum pop in this downstairs bathroom.
In this case, “user-friendly” meant childproof. “I think when I first met her, she knew my style,” says Maureen. “I want modern, and I want glam, but I also have kids, so we need to keep it so they can’t destroy everything. She was able to execute that so well.”
Tara says good design “is all about finding the best pieces that fit the functionality of the room. That is always the first step —meeting with a client and seeing what they want to do with the space. How do you live? How do you want to use this room? How is this going to function for you? It’s just having a deep understanding of the client, I think.”
The clients were a growing family. “We knew they were going to be a kid-centric family, and we knew this wasn’t going to be the kind of family that was like, ‘Oh, kids, you can’t go in that room.’ That’s not how they are. That’s not how they live. So we built the design around that.”
Thus, the decor favors sturdy, natural materials like wood and marble. “Some stuff patinas really well, the more you use it,” says Tara. “If a kid digs a fork into the table, it adds more character, you know? That’s the way I look at it. Nothing should be too pure, in my opinion. Nothing should be too precious.”
photograph by john pickle
The unique, wraparound butcher block countertop was added to the kitchen island along with a second sink. The light wood and marble define the kitchen’s color palette.
Growing with the Family
Tara’s business and the Baum family grew together. “I’m now at a point where I’m crazy busy, but I hate to turn people down,” she says. “It’s like, can you wait a few months for me to be able to work with you?”
So when Maureen told her they were expanding the house because a fourth Baum was on the way, she knew she would be returning to the site of her first assignment. The plan was to add an extra bedroom upstairs, fully integrate the hearth room and kitchen, and enclose part of the back deck to create a new den.
“I think mixing [styles] is the key to a more classic, longer-lasting design. It just gives a depth and personality to a home, so it doesn’t feel so staged. I never want a room to feel like you purchased it out of a catalog.” — Tara Engelberg
“I was involved in the planning stages with the architect,” says Tara. “How should it flow? How should these rooms function? Should we have doors to the outside here? It was those kinds of decisions.”
In the kitchen, a U-shaped island enclosed a booth with built-in seating. It seemed like a good idea, but it did not function as intended. “It was like a jungle gym for the kids,” says Maureen.
The booth was removed and replaced with more storage and a unique, wrap-around butcher-block countertop. “I have a butcher block in my house, and Maureen really liked the look of it,” says Tara. “And it’s very useful, too.”
The expanded hearth room now sports a long, wooden table that seats ten. In contrast to the bright, open space of the dining area, the sunroom is painted a glossy black. “That black was our choice together — Maureen and I are really on the same page, design-wise,” says Tara. “She’s super fun to work with. We tend to come up with some crazy, dramatic, and moody ideas.”
photograph by john pickle
The glossy black paint on the walls and ceiling gives the sunroom a stylish shine. Engelberg chose the large, square coffee table to ground the spectacular chandelier. “Light fixtures are the jewelry of the room,” she says.
The jumping-off point for the sunroom was a minimalist, contemporary sofa Ryan found, which influenced choices like the area rug. “Sometimes,” she says, “a client will send me a picture of something. ‘I love this. Can we make it work?’ If a client loves it, I want to give it to them. It’s their space, not mine.”
The common denominator in all the rooms is statement light fixtures, like the sunroom’s stunning globe. “Light fixtures are the jewelry of the room,” says Tara. “I think they change the entire look and feel. The room feels more casual or more dressed up, depending on what you choose. I think it’s a place to spend money, because kids aren’t going to damage it. Lighting is everything, and I love multiple sources of light.”
photograph by john pickle
In the formal dining room, a rough-hewn wooden table echoes the gold colors of a classic starburst light. The shade of green seen on the walls is derived from the leafy colors in the Andy Warhol prints from the artist’s 1964 Flowers series.
In the formal dining room, a mid-century modern starburst hovers over a rough-hewn table. “That’s a classic,” says Tara. “I try to incorporate some classic elements, and I like to do some trendy stuff. I try to make it so clients won’t have to redo their house in five years because we went so trendy, and all that is out now. I think mixing [styles] is the key to a more classic, longer-lasting design. It just gives a depth and personality to a home, so it doesn’t feel so staged. I never want a room to feel like you purchased it out of a catalog.”
The story of the home is also the story of two transformations: a falling-apart house becoming a beloved home, and a woman discovering her dream career. “Tara’s done an unbelievable job,” says Ryan. “We saved the house, and she’s done all the decorating with my wife, and that’s been the icing on top.”
Maureen says of her friend, “It’s nice that she can take everybody’s opinions, and make everyone happy.”
