Designer of HGTV Gift Home in Kansas City Inspired by History

Lisa Gutiérrez
| Tribune Press Service

Kansas City, Missouri — Memphis interior designer Carmeon Hamilton had never been to Kansas City before HGTV recruited her to work on a project here.

His mission: Design the living spaces of HGTV’s Urban Oasis 2024 home.

The Maison et Jardin chain offers each year a fully decorated house in the heart of a different city. This year’s Urban Oasis takes place in an unfamiliar part of Kansas City.

HGTV optioned the house in late 2023. Then work on the massive and dramatic transformation began over the winter and was completed in July. The builder and architect was Astoria Design Build, a women-owned business in Johnson County.

The home will be revealed in a one-hour special, “HGTV Urban Oasis 2024,” at 7 p.m. on October 4 on HGTV and HGTV Go and will air on Max and Discovery+ the same day.

People can enter the contest online at HGTV.com and FoodNetwork.com starting at 9 a.m. October 2. Registrations will be accepted until 5 p.m. on November 21.

The house, all the furniture and $50,000 add up to a price tag worth more than $700,000, according to HGTV.

The two-story, three-bedroom home with two and a half bathrooms measures approximately 2,200 square feet, with a home office on the first floor, a music room on the second floor, a wellness center in the basement and a vast entertainment area in the courtyard.

Hamilton fused the modern and the Scandinavian, guided by her personal aesthetic and what she learned about life in Kansas City – its music, its culture and even its fountains.

Whimsical nods to the city are scattered throughout the home.

Kansas City almost seems like “a sister city” to Memphis where she lives and works, Hamilton recently told the Star. “So it was so fun to experience Kansas City. It seems more Southern than Midwest, funny enough.

Hamilton is a past winner of HGTV’s “Design Star” competition, described by Architectural Digest as a “rising star taking the design world by storm.”

“The city is actually what inspired a lot of what went into the house, as well as the Urban Oasis homes,” Hamilton said. “They’re still very modern but reminiscent of the cities they’re in.” So we’re always looking for ways to incorporate special elements of the city into the house. So my job is to translate that in some way, shape or fashion.

HGTV has distributed homes in New York, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Louisville and other metropolitan areas since 2010.

“Just knowing that Kansas City…is a huge arts scene, the jazz culture is so ingrained…of course (you) have the sports teams…Kansas City is such a vibrant and fun city,” says -She. “So the house is also very entertainment-focused.

“So it’s a modern house, but we also wanted to warm it up a bit with lots of wooden elements. I am a huge believer in adding warmth and texture to a space which is why you see so many wooden elements and of course all the different textures in furniture and fabrics which are also found in any the house.

The living room is a great example of this with its ash beams reflecting the warmth of the white oak floors below. All floors on the first and second levels are oak.

She chose a chenille sofa, looped chairs and other velvet seating to add warm texture to the space.

She didn’t miss an opportunity to add texture around the house, as evidenced by the fluted wall panels leading to the basement wellness lounge. “This room, I’m jealous of the winner,” she said.

The house, built in 1939, “had a basement that was unfinished, actually very dark and damp, wet and disgusting,” she said. “We weren’t allowed to go there until the construction and finishing work was completed. There were no stairs for a long time.

A once-abandoned space now has comfortable seating, a large projection screen on one wall, and a “tea bar” on another wall that can be converted into a desk for a second home office. There is also a dry sauna. The flooring is made of cork, which is gentler on the knees during workouts.

Proudly Kansas City

What happened in this project?

“A lot of love, brains and hands,” Hamilton said. “I am so grateful to the team around me to make this space as beautiful as it is. It’s kind of crazy to think about designing a house in Memphis and making it as beautiful as it was.

She paid homage to Kansas City throughout the house, starting at the front door where limestone fence posts, a nod to the area’s abundance of stone, were repurposed for lighting outside.

A custom artwork on the living room wall mimics the design of the Kansas City logo fountain.

Little treat in the upstairs laundry room: ruffles on the orange wallpaper, just like the giant one on the lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Hamilton jokes that she didn’t know what ruffles were before working on this project.

She honored the city’s jazz history by creating a second-floor music lounge where she hung trombones on the wall as art — also a nod to her trombone-playing son — and installed shelves built-in shelves high enough to hold albums.

A massive corduroy sectional sofa—more texture—provides ample space for lounging, listening to music, or just relaxing.

All three bedrooms are on the second floor, including the master suite decorated with retro wallpaper reminiscent of the 70s, a balcony overlooking the courtyard and its own bathroom with a freestanding bathtub in a wet room. The room is all about color and pattern, Hamilton said.

A design tip to borrow: Bring two small pieces of furniture together to mimic one large piece, like Hamilton did to create a chest of drawers and two nightstands.

She transformed a second bedroom into a colorful “bunk room” complete with full-size bunk beds.

She created a moody guest bedroom with upholstered paneling behind the bed — which doubles as a plush headboard — made from foam panels wrapped in wine-colored fabric.

Hamilton hopes projects like DIY wallcovering and his use of boldly patterned wallpaper will inspire people to stretch their design legs in their own homes, because only one person will win this oasis.

“The whole idea of the HGTV giveaway homes is not just to bless a winner, but to inspire everyone, to get them to think outside the box about their own home,” Hamilton said.

Designed to entertain

His fearless use of color is on full display in the contemporary blue kitchen at the back of the house, which in its previous life was much smaller and awkwardly placed. It is now spacious enough for entertaining, wide open to an adjacent dining room with a built-in bar.

The blue of the custom flat panel cabinets and range hood was inspired by the tile on the living room fireplace. But “once we realized how many sports teams in Kansas City were blue, we knew it would be very well received by the citizens of the city,” Hamilton said.

A sprawling island big enough to fit four people “is just pure real estate to set up for game day, Thanksgiving,” she said.

A pass-through window near the sink helps connect anyone working in the kitchen to one of the home’s most spectacular features, a sprawling backyard designed to accommodate a business.

A large grassy backyard “was a big part of why the house was chosen, because we wanted a house where outdoor living was a selling point,” Hamilton said.

She created a dining space off the kitchen and placed comfortable seating around a fireplace on a lower level.

Because she was not designing for a specific client, Hamilton kept her own family in mind when creating these spaces, ensuring there was a welcoming and functional space for everyone.

“You’re in the heart of Kansas City,” she said. “So you want this house to instantly feel like home when you walk in.”