These Tar Heels bring the Hill home
Home renovators and UNC Hussman alumnae Sara Mathis ’09 and Kelsey Berry ’18 made room for Carolina pride in their houses.
This story was written by UNC Hussman student Claire Harutunian ’27 with photos by UNC Hussman alumnus Ira Wilder ’24 and originally published at alumni.unc.edu.
Sara Mathis ’09 wasn’t serious when she first told her husband, Taylor Mathis ’21 (MBA), that she wanted to turn her screened porch into a replica of the Dean Smith Center. But then she found 120-year-old arena-style wooden chairs on Facebook Marketplace.
“It went from a joke to, 20 minutes later, we were renting a U-Haul to go pick up the chairs,” Mathis said. That’s what happens when a lifelong Carolina fan becomes a self-taught home renovator.
“I think it’s equal parts the guts to do it and then delusion that it’s going to turn out,” Mathis said. “And somehow the guts and the delusion together did make it turn out.”
The “Screen Dome” in her North Carolina home features custom court flooring; those arena chairs, now spray painted; pillows with retired jerseys and national championship years; and a projector to watch the Heels play. Everything is a product of Mathis’ do-it-yourself approach.
When she shared the project on her Instagram account, @thehandyhalf — now with more than 100,000 followers — some commenters said they would rather watch games from their couch than from antique chairs. But Mathis usually spends games standing and sometimes yelling at the screen.
“If you can’t get back to campus all the time, then at least you can feel like you’re close by if you have something like that in your house,” she said.
True blue
Mathis isn’t the only alumna going viral for transforming her home into a Tar Heel heaven.
For Kelsey Berry ’18, former Carolina Girls dance team member, it started out of necessity. When her family bought their first home, a contractor worked to fix issues that came up in the inspection. Soon, an incorrectly installed toilet flooded an upstairs bathroom, and water poured through their kitchen ceiling. The contractor had to come back.
“I’m up here like, ‘No, you got to sand that. You have to paint that. That looks terrible,’ ” Berry said. “And it’s like, ‘I cannot believe we’re paying people to do this terrible job.’ So, when we were ready to actually do stuff to the house, there’s no way that I’m going to pay somebody to do this.”
She decided with her husband, former basketball player Joel Berry II ’18, to spend a year posting renovations to Instagram, leaning on her experience working in social media marketing and a degree in media and journalism from Carolina. She posted a new video on her account, @the.berry.home, every weekday for a year and a half. Kelsey, who now has more than 336,000 followers on that page, thinks her first videos are awful. But she found her footing.
The Berrys are a true North Carolina family. Their 2-year-old son, Beau, is named after the Bojangles Bo-Berry Biscuit. Beau and his 4-year-old sister, Karter, are growing up attending ACC tournament games. So, when it was time to renovate Joel’s office in their Charlotte home in 2025, it only made sense for it to have a Carolina theme.
“We avoided this room like the plague,” Kelsey said.
It had become a storage room Joel attempted to use for his ACC Network broadcasts. Kelsey did the Frog Tape Paintover Challenge, hand-painting 1969 alumnus Alexander Julian’s iconic argyle pattern on the built-in shelf behind the desk.
“That was a huge project,” she said. “It was three weeks of absolute insanity.”
She chose a more subtle shade of light blue for the walls, Sherwin-Williams’ Debonair, since they plan to sell the house one day. For now, the office features a lot of Carolina — Joel’s 2016 NCAA Final Four chair, pins from every game he advanced to in 2017, his jersey framed next to a dance-team top Kelsey got from the current coach, copies of The Daily Tar Heel and both of their team photos.
Kelsey won the People’s Choice Award for the paintover challenge, receiving $5,000 and a matching donation to Claire’s Army, a Charlotte-based nonprofit supporting families facing childhood cancer.
Devil in the details
When Kelsey was watching Joel’s Tar Heels win the national championship in 2017, Mathis was crying tears of joy watching from her living room. Following journalism school and work at ESPN, she was still a die-hard fan.
Her journey to create home renovation content started out of convenience. She just wanted to share project updates with her mom and older sisters without sending long texts. Mathis said her Instagram account didn’t grow overnight, but a huge social media audience wasn’t her goal. Now, she relies on home renovation as a creative outlet.
“Carolina blue is just kind of my default color. Most of my house is Carolina blue,” Mathis said. “So, when I wanted to add some light blue penny tiles to my design, it only made sense to do the Old Well.”
The bathroom tiling project was part of the social media eight-week, one-room challenge, which pushed her to share more of her journey.
Then came the screen dome, which now has a turf roll-out to turn it into “Kenan Stadium,” a Star Wars-themed nook and more renovations for her three young children. The turf video alone got over 897,000 views.
“I have a whole lot of UNC fans who follow me now, and they’re such good cheerleaders for all of my projects,” Mathis said.
Both Berry and Mathis turned their social media success into businesses, with Mathis selling her guide to hand-painted wall designs and Berry expanding into merchandise and more on her website.
The Berrys bought their home from Duke graduates. And Mathis’ husband, Taylor, teases his wife that no Duke fan will want to buy their house if they ever sell it.
“I tell him that’s great,” Sara said. “I wouldn’t want to sell our house to a Duke fan.”