Deer Park couple turned their garage apartment into a weekend hideaway

When Sherry and Larry Howard want to get away for the weekend, they merely have to step out the back door, walk around the pool and climb some stairs. With the help of their son - a building design and construction specialist - the Deer Park couple has remade a dumpy garage apartment into a charming, cozy retreat in their own backyard.

The space, roughly 500 to 600 square feet, is simple but stylish. On one wall hangs an old sign that says "Howard's Hideaway" - the very sign that hung in a cabin Larry's grandparents owned on Matagorda Beach, one they had to rebuild after Hurricane Carla destroyed it in 1961. This backyard haven isn't even close to the beach, but among family and friends, it, too, has become known as the Hideaway.

The Howards moved into their three-bedroom main house in 1995, when their two sons were still living with them. Back then, the apartment had blue carpet, striped wallpaper and one long, narrow living space.

"It was kind of an ugly room," Larry admits. And it had just a half-bath and no kitchen, "so it could never function as a true apartment."

Even so, their older son talked his parents into letting him claim it as his own. "He moved up here his last year of high school, and he stayed here until he finished his Ph.D. at the University of Houston," Sherry says, adding that when Larry Landon Howard left in 2007, "it was really kind of empty."

The Howards decided to gut the place in 2009. They wanted to do something with it, but they weren't sure what. Initially they talked about a game room, but then Sherry started discussing possibilities with their younger son, Spencer, who owns the Houston company Design & Construction Management. The plans became more ambitious, and they decided to transform the space into a clean, bright, livable apartment.

Spencer delivered the architectural drawings on Mother's Day in 2012. Then he, his father and one of their craftsman friends did every bit of the work to make it happen. They installed whitewashed poplar panels horizontally along one wall. Overhead, poplar beams provide structural support and serve to break up the studio space visually, gently dividing it into areas for eating, lounging and sleeping. Near the front door, antique stained-glass window lets in light through blue and green panels.

"The sunbeams that come in, in the morning - it's just a gorgeous window," Sherry says. "Even in the evenings, the glow from the moon - we'll see it reflecting in here all night long."

To decorate, the Howards started with furniture pieces they had already. An antique Duncan Phyfe table and reupholstered chairs fill the tiny dining space. The headboard of the bed, meanwhile, is made from the Jenny Lind crib the couple's sons used as babies.

While the apartment morphed into the Hideaway, they also decided to remodel the adjacent pool, making it more lagoon-like with dark surfaces and a rocky waterfall. The couple now has the perfect spot to host family and friends on the weekends.

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Deer Park couple turned their garage apartment into a weekend hideaway