BONNER | Everywhere we look, there’s a piece of our lives.

 INTERIORS SUCCESS STORY: SENOIA GAEverywhere we look,  there’s a story and a piece of our lives.
“Our biggest challenge was to take all of our things and make them all work together. It was important to us to preserve and merge our individual histories, in an environment that reflects our past and looks ahead.”

Chuck and Theda in the kitchen of their Senoia, Georgia home.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could...?” mused Theda Tankersley and Chuck Ocheltree when describing how they visited—and revisited several times—the bedroom community of Senoia, Georgia, in suburban Atlanta, when searching for a new homesite. Upon deeper investigation, according to Theda, “it turned out that we could!”

Located in historic Senoia’s Gin Property, the site of a former cotton mill and the filming location for the television series The Walking Dead, Theda and Chuck’s home combines the best of two worlds: easy access to a vibrant urban center from the tranquility of a neighborhood-oriented home base. The house likewise had to accommodate the distinctive histories and artifacts of two very different lives. 

“Our biggest challenge was to take all of our things and make them all work together,” the couple acknowledges. “It was important to us to preserve and merge our individual histories, in an environment that reflects our past and looks ahead.”

The kitchen island features a top of hand-selected Calacatta marble. In addition to the kitchen’s ample storage, an enclosed pantry offers shelving for staples, a wine refrigerator, and a chandelier, a detail afforded all of the home’s closets. 

Seamless Collaboration

The couple’s builder, FrontPorch, introduced them to Insidesign, which provided interior design, architectural wood finishes, cabinetry, and flooring for the home. “We were confident Front Porch would build a house we wanted,” says Chuck, “but if not for Insidesign’s designer, we would not have the home we do today. He and Front Porch worked extremely well together.”

The he is Rick Anthony Bonner, the company’s Creative Director at the time. “Theda and Chuck are a remarkable team,” observes Rick. “Going in, they had a concrete idea of what they liked as well as the compromises they wouldn’t make. Theda is a Cordon Bleu–trained chef, so she had specific ideas about the kitchen. Chuck is an executive who often works at home, so his first-floor home office and the flow of the rest of the ground floor were essential to him.”

“You can have all the beautiful things in the world, but if they don’t work together, it doesn’t matter.”

Theda recalls, “When we first met Rick, I had a three-inch binder filled with all of our ideas in one hand, and my grandmother’s glass finial in the other. After our first conversation with him, there was no question we would work well together. Soon afterwards, we retired the binder entirely!” she laughs. The finial Theda carried around now rests atop one of the main staircase’s newel posts, a treasure from her grandmother’s house and one of the inspirations for the design of the interiors.

“I love this house!”

With so many moving parts, homebuilding can be a tense process. Add to the mix the merger of two distinct households, and it easily could turn into a recipe for disaster. “It wasn’t stressful for us. Everything fit together so well,” according to Theda. “As our house was built, we loved seeing the decisions we made were the right ones.”

This included a little strategic shuffling of the homebuilder’s allowances. For example, “marble for the kitchen was not in the budget,” explains Chuck, “but Rick showed us how to save money in other places so we could make this the kitchen’s centerpiece.”

In the end, the couple feels they succeeded in building the comfortable, personal, and customized haven they set out to build. “When I come home, I walk around and say, I love this house!” says Theda. “When we look around and see the things we love, we also see Rick. You can have all the beautiful things in the world, but if they don’t work together, it doesn’t matter.”

Chuck and Theda, joined in the kitchen by Maggie.

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