With our Book Club series, we hand over the proverbial mic to our Experts—letting them share their work, thought process, and best tips, all in their own words. The following is an excerpt from Stephanie Sabbe's new book, Interiors of a Storyteller, published this month with Gibbs Smith.

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A lesson I learned in childhood: the way you start does not have to dictate how you finish.

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Our Leipers Fork project is a prime example. An adorable little historic town thirty minutes south of Nashville, Leipers Fork was settled in the 1700s and is home to some of the most charming shops and restaurants in our corner of the South. Surrounding the tiny downtown are large plots of farmland, making it a popular destination for families looking to step away from bustling city life.

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This was the case for Jordan and Brad Huggins, who in 2020 began planning to relocate their family of four from Boston to the Nashville area. The project began in a very atypical way for our firm. Our friend Lauren called to say she had been working with a client to select finishes for a spec house. Due to unforeseeable circumstances, she was not going to be able to help them finish the project. Lauren thought our firm’s default style, along with our background with work in New England, would align well with the Huggins’ vision. She reached out to see if we may have the bandwidth to jump in. We took the project under the assumption that we would purely be furnishing a new home. Little did we know our role would snowball into something much more involved than simply selecting sofas and rugs.

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Spec houses are strange beasts that I did not fully understand until taking on this project. Our experience lies more in custom and renovation work. The home was presold prior to completion, most definitely as a result of an unknown market amid the COVID quarantine. Our clients were told they could select their finishes, plumbing fixtures, cabinetry, and lighting. When the contractor realized he had inadvertently gotten himself into building a custom home, he went dark—he completely cut off communication and finished the project how he wanted. Unapologetically he apparently offered our clients the opportunity to walk away. That is when I realized how crazy the spec-house world can be.

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But in the time between the accepted offer and the close date, the home had already greatly appreciated—a surprising twist of COVID’s effect on the real estate world. Our clients chose to not walk away. They instead took on the enormous task of making changes post-construction completion to get the home they thought they had agreed upon in the first place. And if you’re wondering, “How could the contractor do that!?” I have no clue. Maybe the customization was all a gentleman’s agreement? But just know that he can and he did. But here’s the secret: people hire and work with an architect directly if they are building a custom home. Otherwise, if it’s builder-led and you’ve never met the architect, it’s most likely a spec house.

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My friend Catherine Sloan, a local architect known for her gift of creating “new-old homes,” had drawn the original plans. We worked with that set to instruct our game plan for getting this home to resemble her initial design. We ripped out the modern fireplace surrounds and poorly designed cabinetry. We painted, wallpapered, and did everything we could come up with to take this all-white, drywall box of an interior to the charming, New England–inspired country home our clients had dreamed of. We pulled together vivid patterns and rich textures, sourced vintage rugs and antique furniture—all to give this standard-issue space a one-of-a-kind story.

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The muted blue in the foyer wraps upstairs into the playroom, where we created a stage-like niche complete with operable curtains for the two young boys to put on shows for their parents. I always pride myself on being very involved with the architectural interiors of a project and this project made me realize that magic can be had without tearing the whole house apart.

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From the alternating-stripes sofa in the family room, to the velvet canopy bed in the primary bedroom, to the circus-inspired toile in the dining room, the home is truly a visual feast. It’s not the house my clients initially thought they were purchasing. There are no interior transom windows, no paneling along the walls. The handrail to the stairs looks to be from a much more contemporary home.

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But through some fairly noninvasive tweaks (the fireplaces absolutely had to go), it’s an escape from the city where Jordan grows dahlias and the children perform plays. It’s not the house they thought they were getting, but in so many better ways, it’s the house they now happily call home.

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Order Stephanie’s new book for more inspiration, or book a consultation to get personalized advice for your space.