Why did two Pittsburgh designers unite in the freshening up of this 2008 brick home? “I’m very inspired by the historic elements of houses,” says Popple, founder of Katy Popple Design. “I try to marry the house history with the family that’s living there and figure out how to best support the way they live.”
McCall, the self-taught founder of Christine McCall Homes, shares a similar ethos. However, where Popple typically focuses on interior renovations, McCall specializes in furnishings. “I’m really interested in bringing pieces into a home that are reflective of the owners’ season of life and interests, and how those pieces fit into the style of home,” McCall says.
Interior Collaboration for a Modern Americana Home Remodel
Although Popple and McCall both started companies around the same time, they didn’t meet until Alisha Gwen, a fellow designer and founder of Pittsburgh-based Alisha Gwen Interior Design, reached out to connect the dots between a few newer designers in the area. Together, Popple and McCall traveled with Gwen to the biannual High Point Market, the world’s largest home furnishings trade show. “It’s overwhelming if you don’t know anything about it,” Popple says. “Alisha invited us to go around with her and follow her itinerary.”
Popple and McCall hit it off. Perhaps it was a similar way of approaching a shared passion, but it wasn’t long before McCall called Popple about collaborating. “A client reached out to me about a residential project in Squirrel Hill,” McCall says. “I still had a young son at home and didn’t really have the time to get into a full renovation project. So, I reached out to Katy.”
On that project, Popple handled most of the renovations while McCall took care of furnishings. The two worked so well together that in 2022, McCall went back to Popple for another project. “Christine contacted me and said she had a project that was essentially a whole house renovation: kitchen, the pantry, a bar downstairs,” says Popple. “There was a primary suite upstairs as well as a laundry room. She already had a good sense of the aesthetic that she wanted, but it was just such a large project that she felt like it could be even better if we were both involved, because then we could bounce ideas off each other.”
An Americana Home’s Timeless Charm
This was the South Hills project shown on these pages. It’s the perfect distillation of their respective tastes; throughout the project, both designers had free rein to lean into bold decisions.
Upstairs, the house had “an extremely long and large bedroom that was a lot of empty space,” says Popple. To fix this, she shrunk the bedroom (“which is usually the opposite of what you want to do,” Popple notes) and created a larger pass-through closet that was fitted with custom cabinetry instead of typical wire fittings.
For the walls, McCall chose warm, neutral colors that allowed her furnishing choices to shine. “Having that neutral base allowed us to mix in different textures and materials that create the visual interest that color normally would,” she says.
Of course, like any good Pittsburgh designers, the duo leaned into the talents of several locally-owned small businesses: Daum Contracting, Don’s Appliances, Myers Custom Woodworks for the cabinetry, Ultimate Granite for the marble, Premiere Granite & Stone for quartz, Tile & Designs Inc. for the laundry and bathroom tile, Rex Glass for the shower, and Virgin Carpets & Flooring for the bedroom and closet carpeting.
Sometimes, two plus two is more than four, and a final product is greater than the sum of its parts. Such is the case in a charming renovation in Pittsburgh’s South Hills.
Story by Kenny Gould
Interior design by Katy Popple and Christine McCall
Photography by Erin Kelly
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