Rita LeBleu/American Press

Annie Jane Smith has always had an eye for good design.

The elegant look of her home has been achieved by purchasing furnishings and decor of lasting quality and timeless style for over 40 years. Her favorite color for decorating is white, and its many subtle variations, which helps unify a 2,700 square foot three-bedroom, two-bath house.

he house was completed in 1980. Aubrey Maddox was contractor. Charles Lee, Annie Jane’s husband, helped build the house, and he takes on projects suggested by Annie Jane with an intensity not even she can match.

“He’s the perfectionist,” she said.

The Smiths are do-it-yourself-if-you-can folks.

Rita LeBleu/American Press

“I remember when we plumbed the toilet for the second bathroom of our first house,” Annie Jane said. “We had never done that kind of work before.”

Sonny (the Smith’s son, now deceased) stepped up and tentatively flushed the new toilet. When everything worked like it was supposed to, the family clapped and clapped like it was the end of a great performance.

Annie Jane loves a bargain, but not just any bargain.

She has trekked the 690-mile “world’s longest yard sale” from Alabama to Ohio, junked her way through Louisiana and Southeast Texas, and picked up treasures at local garage sales.

She is not a huge fan of antiques, she said. Her house is far from “flea-marketfind” style. However, she has vigorously cleaned, sanded down and painted a dresser because it was from the house of her husband’s aunt. The stately lines of a couple of antique Duncan Phyfe pieces from the late 1930s were added to the space in later years. And she has found a place for two antique fanback chairs that were in her mother’s home. She recovered them with an ivory-colored brocade.

 The home’s living area is decorated with light, timeless neutrals. Rita LeBleu / American Press 

She confesses the choice of white was a challenge when her children were young. They learned the importance of helping their mother maintain the look of the house. But Annie Jane still remembers when her now-grown daughter, Corliss, was a youngster and warned a visiting insurance salesman: “My mama doesn’t like it when people sit in that chair.”

Annie Jane has transformed statues punished by the outdoors into beautiful interior works of art. She painted over an Oriental print to make it work for her sunroom, her favorite room in the house.

She has, like other “value” shoppers, experienced spending more than planned to fix up a “steal.” She points to a bench at the end of the guest bedroom bed.

“I thought I had gotten a real bargain on that for $25,” she said, “until I spent $125 to recover it.”

Despite her love of a good value, she remains selective, and she admits she has never passed up something she loved – new or old because of the price.

“If I love it, I will buy it. But when that happens I know exactly where it will be used,” she said. “And it never goes out of style. It may go to the attic for a season, but I have always been able to bring it back down and use it again and again.”

Smith pointed out beautiful classics she purchased from stores no longer in business such as Rogers’ Jewelers, Lucille’s Flower Shop and The Gift Horse in DeQuincy and Hemingway’s, Pete Caldarera’s, Concord House and “Mrs. Saucier’s” (Household Furniture) in Lake Charles.

She is a collector. However, she has keeps her extensive collection, including her Andre birds, Fostoria glass and Arthur Court Designs well corralled in lighted curios.

When Annie Jane saved this old dresser from her husband’s, “Auntie’s,” house, it was blackened by age. She cleaned, sanded, painted, pearlized and added new pulls. Rita LeBleu / American Press

When asked what makes her house a home, Annie Jane answers quickly and simply: “Love.”

“I love Charles Lee as much today as I did when we married,” she said.

He yells out the anniversary date from another room: “It was 1956. We were 19. We raised each other.”

“And I love Sister (her daughter, Corliss), and I love it when she comes over here to visit,” Annie Jane said.

Corliss said she continues to avoid the white fanback chairs, choosing a stool at the kitchen’s wraparound counter instead.