"They knit the house into the landscape and help you appreciate the plants more because they are higher," she says. Around the patio out back, Julie designed raised beds. "Cover new plantings with deer netting for a few weeks," she suggests, since no plant is really safe from these hungry animals.
She also installed blousy plantings, including palms and deer-resistant picks like lantana, oleander, and Mexican oregano. Garden designer Julie Blakeslee of Big Red Sun Austin took down the heavy, boxwood-laden garden beds to keep "the facade friendly to the street," she says. GAF's Slateline in Antique Slate shingles have multiple shades of gray, which soften the roofline.
#TEXAS LIGHTSMITH NICKEL SINK WINDOWS#
They squared off the front columns and dormer windows swapped out ill-fitting windows and shutters for brighter, right-size pairings and installed a new Marvin front door with sidelights. Chris and his team edited down some of the facade's inconsistencies to achieve a simpler, more charming look. Instead, just a few small tweaks were made to soften the exterior. While the broad hipped roof and the wide front porch are classically Southern (these elements are both common to the West Indies-style architecture that migrated to Louisiana and spread from there), the white Austin Chalk limestone "ties the house to its Texas identity," says Chris, who didn't tamper with the home's striking form.
Hector Manuel Sanchez Styling: Buffy Hargett Miller But this year's fantastic fixer-upper was worth a little insomnia. "There were sleepless nights," admits David. Once the entire team agreed that this home (which is located in the Northwest Hills area of town) had good bones and plenty of room for improvement, everyone went to work on a tighter-than-normal timeline (four months-from January to May) to meet our magazine deadlines. "The listing had posted at 4:30 a.m., and it struck me as having potential," she remembers. Our next step was to set the criteria for choosing the right property: It was important to have "quick access to downtown, be in a good school district, and be about 3,000 to 4,000 square feet with space for four bedrooms and four baths so a family could live comfortably," recalls Hunter.Īfter viewing 35 houses with an agent and combing neighborhoods for any "For Sale by Owner" signs, Meredith finally found "the one" while she was checking real estate websites at 4:36 a.m. First, we picked our Lone Star State dream team–including Hill Country native and designer Meredith Ellis, who spent over a decade decorating in New York and LA with Bunny Williams and Michael Smith before returning home with her husband, Hunter Ellis, who runs operations for her other business, James Showroom Chris Sanders, the whip-smart architect originally from Lufkin, Texas, with a few dozen remodels under his belt and David and Catherine Wilkes, the husband-and-wife contracting duo who have made careers overseeing hundreds of down-to-the-studs renovations in Austin. Photo: Hector Manuel Sanchez Styling: Buffy Hargett MillerĪs we started planning the 2018 Idea House, we had a few specific visions for the project: We wanted to do a real home makeover (rather than build new construction) we had our eyes–and hearts–set on Austin, Texas and we were determined to complete the renovation with the best local talent.
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