Mementos add personal touches to couple's Fairmont Boulevard home

Gay Lyons

Special to the Knoxville News Sentinel, USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee

Carey Hodges and Doug Johnson love their cottage on Fairmont Boulevard.

“People here are very proud of their neighborhood,” says Doug. “People have lived here for decades. It’s very tight knit.”

The charming exterior of the home of Carey Hodges and Doug Johnson blends well with other homes in the close-knit Fairmont Boulevard neighborhood.

“The first week we were here, we were invited over for coffee, the Christmas party and the neighborhood book group,” recalls Carey. “We love it. Our friends live near here. We can walk or ride bikes to each other’s places.”

Carey Hodges and Doug Johnson love the painting by Katy Smith that now hangs over their living room sofa so much they got married in front of it.

Carey and Doug met in Knoxville and then moved to Washington, D.C., for seven years.

“We loved D.C.,” says Doug. “We made a lot of friends. But the housing market’s insane there. We didn’t want to pay three to four times more for a house.”

“Our families live near here,” says Carey. “And music’s important to me; we missed the shows here.”

“If we miss anything (about D.C.), it’s the food,” says Doug. “You can get anything there.”

“There’s something to be said about the mountains,” Doug continues. “I think we took them for granted when we lived here before. It’s beautiful. There’s a good quality of life.”

Doug, producer for the 6 p.m. news at WVLT, and Carey, senior content strategist at Big Wheel, a marketing firm, got to know each other when they were seniors at the University of Tennessee, at WUTK, 90.3, on the “Indie Aisle” show. Their ties to the station are such that Benny Smith, WUTK’s general manager/program director, got ordained in order to marry the pair in September 2016 after they returned to Knoxville.

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The couple found their house when Carey came to Knoxville for a job interview.

“I was interviewing for my current job,” says Carey, “and my boss-to-be said he had a friend who was getting ready to rent a house. I looked at it and said, 'I’ll take it!' ”

Photographs of Zeus and the shy Calico cat Penny hang in the "cat room" of the home of Carey Hodges and Doug Johnson.

Doug says, “I was at work in D.C. and she called and asked, ‘Do you trust me?’ ”

The decision to move to Knoxville and to choose their home happened more quickly than Doug’s proposal to Carey.

“I’d had the ring for the longest time,” recalls Doug. “I bought it at an antique shop in Alexandria. We were going to be in Nashville for New Year’s Eve, so I thought, ‘I’ll take her to the bridge overlooking the Cumberland River and propose.’ But she wouldn’t go to the bridge.”

“I’d been to the bridge already,” says Carey.

“So we were on Broadway,” Doug continues. “The ‘most romantic' of locations.”

“The karaoke bar next door was playing 'I’ve Got a Bad Case of Loving You,' " remembers Carey.

“So I used that as my ‘lead in,’ ” says Doug. “There were lots of people there for the holidays. It turned into more of a scene than I expected. People were taking our pictures.”

The photograph of a young Elvis playing football was given to Doug Johnson, a Memphis native, by a colleague. The colleague's uncle was a photographer who took the shot at a pickup football game.

Mementos from their wedding and travels, things given to them by relatives and friends, and art created by friends make their home personal.

Carey’s grandmother’s bar sits next to the living room sofa and a contemporary lamp and adds an authentic hand-me-down midcentury modern vibe to the room. The look is further complemented by a vintage table and record player from Pop Weasel.

All the furniture in the home is simply designed with clean lines. Interest is added with objects such as Carey’s grandmother’s bell, a coffee set Carey purchased in Istanbul, and photographs of the couple. The biggest splash comes from their art.

Carey Hodges' grandmother's bell, a mask from a friend's trip to Thailand, a drawing by C.C. McBride and a framed photograph of Hodges and her husband, Doug Johnson, share shelf space.

“We knew we wanted our paintings to be the focal point,” says Carey. “I like to have muted furniture but bold accents. It’s warm and safe and comfortable.”

A large bright painting in the kitchen is one of Carey’s favorites.

“I’ve had it since I was 18,” she says. “I always admired it. It was in my very first apartment. It’s been in six different residences in 10 years.”

“We used it as a headboard at one time,” says Doug.

“It’s a trooper,” Carey agrees.

Carey Hodges and Doug Johnson have filled the built-in shelves, which were there when they bought the house, with things that are meaningful to them. "Everything on the shelves has a story," Carey says.

“I end up being an editor sometimes,” says Doug. “We’ve narrowed things down so that everything has a story: the scarab a colleague brought from Egypt, the chess set my sister brought me from China. There’s nothing here that’s just a thing taking up space. Everything has meaning.”