Tour a Spring Hill Home With Timeless Design

Creating a home that looks timeless while being brand new calls for a strong vision, a dream team and a touch of interior design magic.

Photos by Laura Rowe

THE FOYER
A mix of old antiques and new additions adds an element of unexpected visual interest to the room. Ramona’s appreciation for antiques and excitement for furniture allowed the design team to anchor rooms off specific pieces before the house was even framed.

GREAT ROOM
“In the open-concept kitchen, dining, and living areas, we were able to blend a lot of classic, traditional elements, like seagrass wall coverings, florals, rich wood tones, and classic Quaker inset cabinetry with contemporary light fixtures, contrasting fabric dining chairs, clean lines and fresh colors,” Rachel adds. “The layering of those contradictory elements within one space keeps it balanced but interesting.”


On a mission to find their forever home, Ramona and Paul Weaver drove from one end of Mobile County to the other, out to the sprawling acres of Grand Bay, and across the bridge to booming Baldwin County. After many miles and much searching, they stumbled upon the perfect home. There was just one problem: it wasn’t for sale.

“We were driving around one day and turned a corner, and there sat the house I had been looking for,” Ramona recalls. “We later found out it was designed by Bob Chatham, so we met with him and told him what we wanted — that house on a smaller scale — and he gave it to us. Ben Stewart Builders took the reins from there and brought it to life on Rochester Road in Spring Hill.”

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With the frame and exterior in good hands, Ramona knew she wanted to feel equally as confident with the interiors.

“When we built our first home, we ordered drapes and attempted to hang them ourselves — you would have thought World War III was happening,” Ramona laughs. “We did one window, and the next day we hired a professional and agreed to never hang drapes together again.”

So for the sake of her marriage, Ramona began a new search, this time for a local interior designer. After one phone call with Rachel Anderson and Natalie Roe of March + May Design, Ramona knew she had found her team. 

THE STUDY
Or a man cave as Paul fondly calls it, was another dream realized with the help of Rachel and Natalie. In it hangs a stunning 18th century painting shipped straight from Europe, and it’s flanked by two beautiful pheasants that Paul himself killed years ago, the birds’ beaks pointing in toward the painting as if paying homage to the art itself. Books line the floor to ceiling shelves facing Paul’s desk, and an oxblood leather recliner relaxes in a corner, another sanctuary in a house built by the love of family and the thoughtful design of two talented sisters.


“It can be tricky when you’re starting from scratch with mostly brand new furniture to make a house feel like a home,” Rachel admits. “Natalie and I’s mission is to create a home that feels like it’s always been there, that feels like it was built with a lot of love over a lifetime, and this home embodies that goal.”

In the main area, the vaulted ceilings heighten the allure of a space that triples as living, kitchen and dining rooms. “The builder joked with me, ‘I’m going to get you a lectern in here, and you’re going to do a sermon,’” Ramona laughs.

With five grandchildren coming and going at Grandaddy and G’s house, a sermon might be necessary.

“We’ve got 19, 14, 8, 6 and not quite 2,” Ramona rattles off their ages proudly. “They love it here. We host pretty much everything —
Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays — and I love doing it. We’ve always had a home that could handle it.” 

And this home is no exception. It was intentionally created and designed with guests in mind, boasting a living area that can seat as many layers of family as shades of Ramona’s favorite color blue that bounce from the chairs to the pillows to the drapes, and performance velvet dining chairs put everyone at ease when spills disappear with one wipe. The massive kitchen island can easily accommodate the whole family, and the meticulously organized walk-in pantry ensures even the littlest guests can reach their favorite snacks. 

When fresh air is needed, the outdoor area is even roomier, with a giant dining table that seats twelve, a large grilling station, a floor to ceiling stone fireplace with an accompanying metal firewood station custom built by Ben Stewart, oversized chairs just begging for someone to sink into them, heaters to guarantee comfort no matter the weather, and a beautiful view of the big backyard that stretches the length of the property. 

The Weavers did make one change during the planning process after they received an unexpected surprise: their first granddaughter.

Even Ramona does not shy away from the special place her only granddaughter holds in the family. 

“I didn’t say no to much,” Ramona admits with a smile. “She is our princess.”

GIRLS ROOM
“Once we heard the news that we got to design a little girl’s room, we went all in,” Rachel recalls. “We did a custom canopy over the bed and custom flower block-printed shades on the lamp sconces and commissioned a really pretty flower painting just for her—any chance to add more girliness, we did it.”

BOYS ROOM
“Because boys will be boys, everything is durable and practical; nothing is untouchable in this space,” Rachel says. “It’s handsome enough to grow with them — the mature plaid, the leather bench, the grid of fish prints — but right now it’s a fun space that they think is super cool, and then when they’re older it’s a good, classic room that doesn’t look too baby boy.”


For the final guest room, the designers infused every inch with all of Ramona’s favorite shades of green and blue, creating such a haven of serenity that Ramona almost likes it more than her own master bedroom — almost. 

One look at Ramona’s master suite cements the reason for that keyword with a massive walk-in closet that is the dream of every living and breathing woman on the planet. “It is my room, even though I have to share it with my poor man,” Ramona laughs.

Paul did make one request that was honored in the adjacent master bathroom: heated floors. “After a stay at the Old Edwards Inn in Highlands, North Carolina, and one night with the heated bathroom floors, he knew he had to have them in the new house,” Ramona explains.

In the master bedroom, natural light spills in from a wall of windows facing the backyard, flooding the room from floor to ceiling in warm sunlight. The room, and Ramona’s smile as she stands in it, speaks for itself.

“I had a vision,” Ramona recalls. “I wanted comfort and peace around me. That’s all I wanted. And that is exactly what March + May delivered.”

That same level of intentionality can be seen and felt throughout each space in the Weaver’s home, seamlessly weaving each room into the next. The marble floor tile in the master bathroom mimics the plaid pattern seen in the drapes in Paul’s study and is reflected again in the bed pillows in the grandsons’ guest room. In the same way family members call back to one another — a set of green eyes found two generations apart or a single dimple shared between a grandfather and a grandson — the complementary design elements found throughout the house are the perfect representation of a close-knit, multi-generational family.

LAUNDRY ROOM
A sophisticated pop of color on the cabinets brightens the laundry room, making even the mundane work of a big family feel joyful.

POWDER BATH
“There were a few sentimental pieces Ramona wanted to incorporate in the new home, so we made every effort to honor those things that were meaningful to her,” Rachel says. “A great example of this is in the powder bath, where we were able to repurpose Ramona’s grandmother’s antique washstand by keeping the base and the sink and adding a beautiful marble top. This intimate nod to Ramona’s past is accented by a custom Gracie wallpaper mural of local flowers and butterflies in a rich sea of green. It’s the unexpected mix of traditional and contemporary that keeps it fresh and modern, while also grounded and classic.”


When the Weavers finally moved in after almost a year and a half of building, designing, dreaming and scheming, Paul asked Ramona if she would do anything differently. Her answer came easy: “Not a thing.”

While it was difficult to leave the decades of memories they shared in their previous home, Ramona knew it was time.

“We had already done what we needed to do in that house and wanted somewhere to age in place peacefully with family,” Ramona says. “We spent 30 years there, our children were raised there, so it was hard to leave. On the night of our last holiday there, my brother-in-law brought us all to tears when he tapped the side of the house on his way out and said, ‘It’s been a good one.’”

After one peek inside the Weaver’s forever home on Rochester Road, still sparkling with the magic touch of March + May Design, there are no doubts that every holiday — and each day in between — is bound to be a good one there, too.

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