The Starke’s turned one upstairs bedroom into a record room/closet. Johnny’s late father’s speakers pump out the sounds of roughly 14,000 LPs and 45s.
“I need everything to be symmetrical to make sense, and for Ma- rissa, chaos means balance,” Johnny said. “We don’t even really know what to call our style. But it’s a perfect mix between the two of us.” When Marissa bought the house five years ago, she had no idea what she was getting herself into. It was a foreclosure with 10 healthy layers of lead paint on every wall, dingy carpet on every square-foot of the floor, and had a tight, closed-in floor plan. There was barely any room for a couple of chairs in the living room, let alone a couch. “I was very naïve when I bought this house,” Marissa said. “It needed some serious elbow grease.”
The two are self-proclaimed “passion-workers” with Johnny work- ing in film and music, and Marissa working in art, and they weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. Johnny knocked down walls to expand the living room. They stripped layers of paint to expose beautiful orig- inal dark wood molding around the windows, fireplace and stairway. Underneath the carpet lied almost-perfect original hardwood floors with just a few scratches to give them character. The kitchen had four or five layers of flooring to remove. The whole house took a few years to get it to where it is now. And it’s still constantly changing. “Thank God for Youtube,” Johnny said. “We just had to take it step by step.”
19 vintagekc summer 2015
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