This is the part of the map I know by heart.
Pottsboro, Denison, and Sherman — where the studio sits, and where I got my start choosing color for other people’s homes.
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Home base
The Ceci Bates studio is in Pottsboro, which means these towns are simply my day. I’m on job sites constantly — checking that what we chose is what actually got installed, and catching the small things while they’re still small.
That closeness is worth more than it sounds. Because I’m right here, I can look at a problem in person while it’s still easy to fix, instead of sorting it out from photographs after the fact. Many of the owners I
work with live somewhere else and can only get up here now and then, so for long stretches of a build I’m their eyes on the house.
The region is small enough, too, that a single morning can take me across the state line and back — here’s the whole footprint. And if you’d like to see how a build actually unfolds from the first conversation, that’s my process.
Because I’m right here, I can look at a problem in person — while it’s still easy to fix.
Where I got my start
Before Ceci Bates, I worked at a paint store in Sherman. It was known for paint and stain but sold tile and carpet too, so people would come in for a gallon of something and leave having asked me about their whole house — and then hire me to do it. That’s how it works in a town this size: you do good work, and people keep sending their neighbors.
I was painting murals the whole time as well — several buildings downtown, and walls at local schools. You paint one wall around here and you’re the town wall painter for a while. That store is also where Ceci Bates found me, which is how the rest of this happened. More of that story is on my about page.
Off the water, the light settles
Away from the shoreline the light calms down. There’s no second helping of it bouncing up off a lake, no hard glare rolling in at two in the afternoon — just steady, even daylight, often filtered through the mature trees on the older streets. On the water it’s the opposite problem.
That changes what I can do. A room in town will hold a deeper, warmer color than the same room on an open shoreline ever would — a richer stain, a moodier study, a saturated color on a run of cabinets that would simply wash out under all that reflected light. It’s one of the few places I get to work a little darker, and I enjoy it. Color is where I do my best work.
The three towns
Ceci Bates builds throughout these towns, and each one puts a home in a slightly different setting. Here’s how I think about them.
Pottsboro & Spout Springs
Home base. The studio is here, just off the lake, which is why I can be on a Pottsboro site twice in a day if it needs me. Spout Springs is the new neighborhood taking shape just up the road, and building where nothing around you sets the tone yet is a genuine opportunity — you can set a cohesive, timeless direction with the very first selections, rather than correcting course later.
Denison
Denison has a downtown with real life in it, streets under a mature canopy, and newer lots out toward the edges. Under that much shade I can push warmer and deeper than I would on open ground — and I’ll often pull a color straight out of what’s already outside the window.
Sherman
Sherman is where I landed when I moved up here, and where I built my name one wall at a time, so I know it from the inside. The bigger lots at the edge of town are where the more ambitious houses usually land — and a big house on an open lot has the opposite problem of a lake house: plenty of room, not much to react to. That’s when the palette has to supply the warmth itself.
Building in town?
If your lot is in Pottsboro, Denison, or Sherman — or out at the edges of any of them — I’d like to hear about it. Tell me where it sits, what’s around it, and the feeling you’re after when you come through the door; that’s where the design starts. No pressure, just a conversation.
Tell me about your vision