When you open the front door of travel and event coordinator Stacy Sadler’s upper Homestead home, the first thing you see is a Bechstein baby grand, and just beyond that, enormous windows framing a vast landscape—a still-life vista of the Eagle River undulating downvalley, with Castle Peak cleaving the distant horizon. For more than 30 years the piano, a family heirloom dating from the 1880s, has served as an objet d’art, an interior focal point dictating the layout and design of various homes over the years.

A Texas native, Sadler moved to the Vail Valley in 2007 to escape the heat, bringing with her a deep curiosity for international travel and the interconnectedness of global socioeconomic, cultural, and political climates. These interests help explain the framed copy of Proclamation 505, a resolution the Texas State Senate passed in 2006 recognizing her service in numerous local and global nonprofits. “As a descendant of the Alamo with deep Texas roots, this recognition is the ultimate honor that I could ever receive,” she adds.

A peripatetic life devoted to volunteerism, coupled with adventure travel around the globe (Sadler has visited more than 80 nations and all seven continents), left her with very little time for creating—not to mention, living in—a home that felt like her own. But when COVID-19 grounded her in 2020 she decided it was time to tackle a remodel of her Homestead residence with the help of Edwards-based interior designer Patti Dixon.
“Patti has a unique ability to push her clients outside their comfort zone,” says Sadler. “She presented me with choices I never would have considered on my own.”

Such as the wall covering Dixon suggested for the master bathroom—one of the first areas to be remodeled—a pattern called Koi that, true to its name, represents a koi pond. “It actually reminds me of a coral reef on a night dive,” notes Sadler, an advanced open water diver who traveled last fall to Raja Ampat, Indonesia, with Vail-based Beaver Divers to complete her 800th dive.

Elsewhere, Sadler’s predisposition for exotic travel is reflected in many of Dixon’s material choices, including a kitchen island fabricated from a quartzite dubbed Infamous. “When Patti and I found this piece, I knew it was the one,” she explains. “I’m a geography nerd, and to me, it looks like the Okavango Delta [in Botswana]. I didn’t need to see anything else.”

Dixon, who specializes in creating personalized spaces for a wide range of clients, says Sadler’s home is truly representative of her goal with every custom project. “It’s like a puzzle,” she explains. “I put it all together with my client’s perspective and personality in mind. Once you have the information, it’s easy to present the right options almost immediately. The more you know, the more success you can have.”

For a client with wanderlust, that can create a dilemma. “I think I’ve perfected the art of not sitting still,” sighs Sadler, so content in her new habitat, she’s sometimes reluctant to leave it.