As a busy mother of two young children, Royeni Tjoa, a special-education teacher at T.C. Marsh Middle School, needed some help organizing her home. While online a few months ago, she stumbled upon a Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity contest and saw an opportunity to improve her modest-sized house in Far North Dallas. She submitted an application to be a part of Habitat’s Design Duel and was selected from a group of 25, which narrowed down to five and then, ultimately, just her and another mom from southeast Dallas. “It was a really tight competition,” she says. “I kept checking online to see if I made it.” The duel paired Tjoa with designer Carolina Gentry of Pulp Design Studios and gave Tjoa $3,000 to spend at Dallas Habitat ReStores with the goal of making better use of her space. “Working with an actual designer is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that we couldn’t have afforded otherwise,” she says. Her family helped by painting and transforming her common area in a couple of days. Living room walls that were once white are now gray, and the avocado-colored dining room was repainted white to provide a more modern, open look. Tjoa and Gentry spent the $3,000 on blinds, a sturdy coffee table, an abstract wall painting, and other odds and ends at the ReStore on Marsh and Forest. The stores sell everything from coffee cups to couches at discounted prices, with all proceeds going toward building and renovating homes in the community. The new furniture and accessories give Tjoa a space that’s more suitable to her lifestyle, and that’s all she could ask for, although the bragging rights that came along with the Nov. 13 announcement that she won the contest didn’t hurt. Tjoa’s excited to come home to the same place but with a little extra pizzazz — and space. Her next big project is to repaint one of her boys’ rooms, which is currently covered with Winnie The Pooh characters she painted on the walls while pregnant. “You know teachers need to have something to do during the summer,” she laughs.
