Inside Houzz: An Architect's Photo Sparks a Dream-House Breakthrough
Gina O’Hara had a hard time describing her dream home to her builder. She’d been to a family reunion 20 years prior at a ranch south of San Antonio, Texas, and fell in love with the way the house had separate wings where the guests could go off on their own and feel comfortable. But she wanted it to feel like Fort Davis, an early frontier fort used to fight Native Americans, and the house in the film Out of Africa. “But just the weight of those places — with a French country style. You can see how I had a hard time explaining this,” O’Hara says.
Her builder told her she didn’t want to build that house. That no one would ever buy it. But O’Hara didn’t care. She had no plans on leaving her dream house if she could just get it built. There was one house in Austin that had a similar concept; she’d already driven by it and taken a photograph. One day while browsing exterior photos on Houzz, she saw the exact same house. She clicked on the photo, then on the name of Hugh Jefferson Randolph Architects, and was blown away to discover that his firm was right there in Austin. “It was kind of crazy,” she says.
Here’s how the rest came together:
O’Hara loved the projects on Randolph’s profile, with their thick walls and high, small windows — just like a fort. She and her husband, Bill, hired Randolph to design a three-winged, long and skinny home. She then browsed Houzz photos and created ideabooks to lay out the finer details — window style, floor color, material choices, even a chandelier in the bathroom, an idea that struck her upon viewing another one of Randolph’s photos. “The house is exactly what I wanted,” she says.
The couple incorporated barn beams that O’Hara located at a salvage yard in a muddy field. At first she was worried they weren’t going to look right, but after browsing photos on Houzz, she realized they were solid finds. “The beams looked just as rough as the others I saw,” she says.
She also got the ideas for dark stained concrete floors and an interior brick wall from photos on Houzz. The bricks were hand made in Mexico. “Finding that brick was the hardest part of all of this,” O’Hara says. “Brick isn’t attractive anymore. It’s all very square and in the same color. That’s not what I was looking for. These are unique, with softer edges.”
Sofa: Restoration Hardware
The walls in the house are all American clay, hand troweled on over Sheetrock. “It gives the space that weight and texture I wanted,” O’Hara says. “It’s dirt with pigment in it. It has a sparkle like sand; that’s the silica in it. We’ll never paint it. When it rains and the moisture gets into the house, the walls smell wonderful.”
Island: soapstone; countertops: honed Caesarstone; lights: vintage
Hand-painted Moroccan-style tiles wrap the kitchen.
Dining table: Jean-Marc Fray; chandelier: Tiplers
O’Hara based the bathroom design on one of Randolph’s photos. At first the architect had big plate-glass windows in the space, but O’Hara sent him a photo she found on Houzz with this divided window style. “It was a way to keep things fine-tuned,” she says. “I’m an insurance agent, but what I love is decorating.”
Chandelier: Tiplers; bathtub: antique
The house sits on 6 acres in the River Crossing subdivision of Cedar Creek, outside of Austin. It’s an equestrian neighborhood with a homeowner’s association that didn’t approve the house at first, believing it to be too modern. O’Hara, shown here with her husband, sent the association pictures of the 1910-built front doors she was shipping from a New Jersey salvage yard. “I told them, ‘This is not going to be a modern house,’” she says. “They accepted.”
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