If you are a long-time reader, you may remember when three years ago I showcased a house furnished by Houston interior designer Tami Owen of The Owen Group. The house was dubbed “The Octagon House” HERE because many of the rooms were actually octagons. The house was a stunner and for months people emailed me asking for sources. It’s funny how fitting the name of the house was – because the octomom’s babies were born just a few weeks prior to the opening of the showhouse! Over the years, Tami has done more showhouses and continued designing for clients. She is extremely talented and very hard working and it shows in all the details she puts into her houses.
Today, I am thrilled to have gorgeous, professionally taken photographs from Tami’s latest endeavor. This house brings together the team Robert Dame of Robert Dame Designs and Brian Thompson, of Thompson Custom Homes. Tami was involved in the project from the very beginning. The house was built using elements with patina to give it a timeless feel. The exterior was based on the traditional Southern Acadian House, from Louisiana. The house has sold, so after the showcase, the furniture that wasn’t bought was moved out. But before that happened, Tami hired a photographer to capture the beauty of the architecture and furnishings. Enjoy!
You call tell the house is special just be the stone driveway. A row of French doors open onto the long porch, reached by brick stairs and iron railings. There is a mixture of stucco and wood on the exterior. Notice the charming brick fence with a little gate on the far left that leads to a courtyard. There is a another courtyard and gate on the right side.
And looking straight on at the house – notice the row of tiles that highlight the roof’s lines. And on the right, notice the darling little windows with their own tiny shutters that flank the door in the courtyard.
Here, at sunset, you can see the gate to the courtyard that leads to the kitchen. Notice the tiny window with its French inspired shutter – so cute! The little window is where one of the powder rooms is located. And notice the lantern above the door. Inside, the row of small windows open to the computer room.
Inside the brick courtyard, tiny steps lead up to the door. Before the half wall is a fountain:
Close up of the tiny fountain.
The front door is the center door on the long porch. Further on, is the courtyard on the left side house that leads to the family room and billiards room.
Upon entering the front door, a parquet basket weave pattern floor leads down the center aisle. To the left is the study and to the right is the dining room. Straight ahead is the living room that opens up to the backyard. All art work in the house is by Michelle Y. Williams Gallery. Rugs are from Creative Flooring. Most lighting fixtures are from Brown. The flooring is 150 year old reclaimed flooring from Custom Flooring in Houston. The wall color is Sherwin Williams Ermine and the doors and windows are Sherwin Williams Anonymous.
The study’s shelves were accessorized by Tami – I love the way she chooses and displays her accessories.
All the curtains were designed by Tami and made by Custom Creations HERE. Custom Creations also provided almost all the furniture found in the house. These curtains – with trim down the leading edge, match the ones found in the dining room across the hall.
Close up of her shelves. Love it!
The dining room faces the front porch. The table was made by Custom Flooring out of the same flooring found throughout the house. The rug has just a hint of blue to match the antique cabinet from Joyce Horn Antiques.
Looking the other way – the room connects to the butler’s pantry. Love the two lanterns.
Close up of the Joyce Horn chest and mirror. Walls downstairs are Venetian Plaster.
I borrowed this picture from Love Where You Live so you could see the curtains with the beautiful tassel trim. I love the French doors with the bottom panels made of bead board.
The butler’s pantry leads from the dining room into the kitchen.
The front door leads straight back to the living room, which overlooks the back yard. One side of the living room has a large stone fireplace where four club chairs surround a mirrored table.
The beamed living room is divided into two areas, one around the two sofas and the other around the fireplace. Past the fireplace is the kitchen. The same French doors found in the front of the house are found here too, looking onto the back yard and swimming pool.
And looking the other direction – past the living room is the family room and billiards room and bar. The flooring in that area is brick, which you can see here in this picture. Notice the gorgeous wood plank floors found in the living room. There are 150 years old reclaimed.
The architecture of the house is so pretty – it really shines in the back half of the house where the rooms are in an enfilade, opening off each other without the use of hallways. You can see from one end of the house to the other: from the family room on the left side, past the stair hall, past the living room, breakfast room and through to the kitchen on the far right of the house. Outside, a long covered porch connects all these rooms together. With Tami choosing only two paint colors – the rooms all blend together – creating a cohesive design. The choice of the muted area rugs is another element that creates the serene look Tami was after. And of course, the lack of bold patterns also helps to create the quiet interiors, which allows the architecture to take center stage. My favorite part of the house is it is casually elegant. No rooms scream “off limits” – it is all welcoming and invites you to lounge in the living room as much as the family room.
On the other side of the living room fireplace is a small fireplace in the breakfast room and kitchen area. The lighting in the kitchen and breakfast room is from AREA (713) 668-1668.
Looking the other direction at the kitchen with its Calacutta Ora marble counters and backsplash.
The kitchen over looks the covered patio outside with its fireplace and outdoor kitchen.
The island top was custom made using the same wood as the flooring. Bar stools by Custom Creations.
The marble is so beautiful – love the slabs used for the backsplash.
And facing the front right courtyard is the computer room with its herringbone pattern brick floor.
And, off the courtyard door on the right side by the kitchen is this powder room with its old marble vessel on a custom iron base.
Walking over to the other side of the house – on the left, past the living room, is the stair hall – with the bar that stands across from it. Past the stairs and the bar is the family room and billiards room. You can see the living room here.
Across from the bar is the stairhall with its wood treads and brick floor.
And underneath the stairs, off a door that leads to the back yard is this powder room, with its marble sink on a concrete counter. This counter and the bar’s counter and various other concrete work was created by Gunnells Concrete.
Across from the stairs is the wet bar that faces the front porch. Again, with concrete counters by Gunnells.
The wet bar with the wine refrigerator and flatscreen tv.
Past the stairs and the bar is the billiards room with a game table that overlooks the front left courtyard. The plank wood ceiling is painted the same color as the French doors found throughout.
Cute slipped chairs surround a game table that overlooks the front courtyard.
And, past the bar and stairhall is the family room with its ginormous flatscreen! Wow! That has to be the biggest TV I’ve ever seen. Ben would NEVER leave this room if we had a TV like this. Fabric covered doors hide the speakers and woofers.
The serene family room over looks the backyard and the side of the house. I love the slightly darker trim on the chairs’ hem. I love the wall hanging lanterns.
All the bedrooms are upstairs. Cute bench. I think these long benches are a great idea for a hallway. The laundry room is to the right of the prints.
This bedroom has wall to wall seagrass (as do all the bedrooms besides the master.) Cute tufted chair. Love the headboard and skirted tables.
Closeup of the skirted tables – oval pleats with x detailing. Great headboard by Custom Creations!
This bedroom overlooks the front of the house – its windows are front and center.
Closeup of the trendy burlap styled headboards and Swedish chest.
This bedroom was finished in golds and creams. Darling lantern and tiny windows.
One of the bathrooms – love the wall hanging faucet. Notice the doors – these are found throughout.
Another bathroom with white marble and wood vanity.
Upstairs vignette leading to the bedrooms. Love the way Tami accessorizes. Such pretty rugs too!
The master bedroom is found through double doors. The high, vaulted ceiling has a chandelier and a fireplace. This room overlooks the back yard.
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The headboard is white tufted, flanked by light painted chests.
All bedding in the house came from Kuhl Linscomb.
Close up of the wood framed tufted headboard with its tiny nailheads. So cute!
The woman’s master bath with its marble tub and crystal chandelier.
Cute fabric covered vanity.
The man’s bath is more masculine with darker woods.
Night time view of the back yard
Here, the living room is in the middle of the house. To the left is the kitchen and to the right is the stair case and family room. Above in the center is the master bedroom.
View of the swimming pool with its fountains.
Off the kitchen is the sitting area around the fireplace. The outdoor kitchen is right under the windows.
The outdoor kitchen sits right outside the kitchen window. Slate floors.
And the fireplace – with its flatscreen above it! The architecture of the porch is so pretty with its vaulted ceiling and slate and brick floors.
Whew. I’m exhausted just writing this! I can’t imagine how HARD Tami Owen worked on this house with the builder Thompson Custom Homes and the designer Robert Dame. This project was HUGE. It must have taken over at least a year to get it all together – and then to install it. It’s a shame it was only open for a few weeks!! The house sold so as soon as the show was over, it all had to be taken down. Can’t imagine the effort it all took. Tami is incredible. Her eye for detail and just her zest for her job is amazing. To contact Tami Owen, go HERE. And to read more about this house go to the blog Love Where You Live – Susan interviewed Tami and she has more details and pictures HERE.
A HUGE thank you to Tami Owens for letting me use her photographs of this amazing house.
Saturday, May 5, 2012
The Southern Acadian House
Friday, May 4, 2012
Real Estate Rumor and Gossip: Huguette Clark
**If you'd like a good long look at all three of the floor plans for Huguette Clark's former digs at 907 Fifth Avenue, click here.
The 12th floor spread—a 14-room, half floor, park-facer with about 5,000 square feet—was listed in early March (2012) and went into contract less than a month later for—so the story goes—close to its $24,000,000 asking price.
Miz Clark's two other apartments on the 8th floor at 907 Fifth Avenue—where domestic doyenne Martha Stewart maintains a pied-a-terre—each measure in around 5,000 square feet. The adjacent units are not combined but together comprise one entire floor of the building. One, listed at $12,000,000, has 12 rooms (2 bedrooms, two bathrooms) and oblique park views, and the other, listed at $19,000,000, has 10 rooms (3 bedrooms and 6 full and 5 half bathrooms). Both eighth floor apartments have reportedly gone to contract for close to their respective asking prices that total $31,000,000.
No word has yet to reach Your Mama about the identity of the buyer looking to snatch up the 12th floor unit but Your Mama did hear earlier this week—and again this morning—from I.B. Uhrealestateuberinsider that the two 8th floor units are actually in contract with the same buyer: Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber bin Muhammad Al Thani, otherwise known as the Prime Minister of Qatar.
I.B. Uhrealestateuberinsider also dished that word on the Fifth Avenue real estate street is that the Qatari prime minister might also be interested in the acquisition of a trio contiguous residences on the 7th floor, currently listed as a group with an asking price of $25,000,000.
Should the prime minister pass muster with the building's board—he is not, according to I.B. Uhrealestateuberinsider, a shoe-in despite the fact he could probably buy up half of Fifth Avenue with the change he loses in the cushions of his sofa—and be given the go-ahead to purchase both of Huguette Clark's 8th floor units and the trio of apartments below he'd possess more than 15,000 contiguous square feet on two-park-facing floors with a staggering, pre-renovation room count of 40 (or more).
Just take a moment to think about that...40 or more rooms on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
The current asking prices put the combined asking price of the quintet of co-operative apartments at $56,000,000 with, according to listing information, combined maintenance and common charges that add up to $28,915 per month or, according to our rudimentary calculations on our bejeweled abacus, a heart-stopping $346,980 per annum. Have mercy! And that's just to keep the keys turning in the locks and does not include staffing fees, utilities, renovations and improvements, furnishings, mortgages and other expensive what-have-yous.
If you think $56,000,000 might be too much for a bunch of fixer uppers in upper Manhattan consider that the prime minister (allegedly) spent more than a quarter billion bucks building his 430-plus foot long boat, Al Mirqab, and several well-connected sources have repeatedly snitched to Your Mama that he paid Los Angeles-based billionaire Tom Gores a bracing $34,500,000 in December 2010 for three vacant—vacant!—hill top parcels that total more than 8 super-prime acres above the Bel-Air Country Club and once had a rose-tinted asking price of $65,000,000. We don't have any details about what the prime minister plans to do with the land but it's probably pretty safe to assume whatever he would build would be nothing short of monumentally scaled and immodestly palatial.
All just rumor and gossip, children, delicious rumor and gossip about the staggeringly profligate real estate ways of the global giga-rich.
exterior photo: Brown Harris Stevens
Kelsey Grammer Does It in the 90210
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $6,500,000
SIZE: 6,093 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: After a trip to Cedars Sinai to visit a funny lady with a new hip and big dinner in a not particularly fancy eatery in downtown Bev Hills, we returned home last night to a covert communique from a dear informant we call Mister Platinum Triangle who snitched to Your Mama that recently divorced (and already re-married), Emmy-winning sitcom star and producer Kelsey Grammer (Cheers, Frasier, The Simpsons, Boss) recently completed the purchase of an historic and particularly lovely, medium-sized mansion in Beverly Hills, CA.
A cursory investigation into the property records reveals the very same trust (and trustee) associated with most of the many other luxury residences owned by Mister Grammer coughed up $6,500,000 in late April (2012) to acquire a fully renovated, Spanish Colonial Revival-style mansion designed by esteemed SoCal architect Ralph C. Flewelling and built in 1926.
Mister Flewelling, in addition to a couple of well-regarded civic buildings in Beverly Hills, is the same smart architect, some of the children surely recall, responsible for the original design of the fully-rehabbed Spanish Colonial Revival-style pile in Bev Hills celebrity house-flipper Diane Keaton renovated and restored and sold to Glee creator Ryan Murphy in September 2010 for exactly $10,000,000. Remember that one, brass buttons?
Anyhoo, a double-gated gravel motor court lays out in front of the dignified and fully-rehabbed two-story residence that measures 6,093 square feet and includes a total of 6 en suite bedrooms and 7.5 bathrooms contained in the L-shaped main house and detached guest house. Painstakingly clipped, ankle-high boxwood hedges and a pair of beanstalk-like cypress trees signify entrance to the mansion through an arched, wrought iron and glass front door. An exceptionally long foyer/gallery/stair hall stretches deep into the house with dramatic double-height ceiling, octagonal Spanish tile flooring, lots of arched doorways and a long row of wide, arched windows that open to the backyard and swimming pool. At the far end of the gallery, near the powder pooper and much to our pleasant surprise, there's a wood-burning corner fireplace, the first of six in the house.
A party-sized, step-down formal living room has a voluminous, vaulted wood-beamed ceiling overhead and espresso-colored hardwood floors underfoot. The room opens generously to the outdoors on three sides including through a pair of French doors that flank a wood-burning fireplace and open to a west-facing loggia that overlooks the piazza-like backyard and swimming pool.
A surprisingly compact formal dining room has direct access to the motor court through French doors and connects via butler's pantry (with refrigerated wine cabinet) to the expensively- and well-equipped but hardly colossal kitchen. We'll probably have to endure a lashing or two from some of the sassier children for saying this, but we're swooning for the playfully over-scaled, chevron-pattern green and white tile back splashes and foot boards and we are—we admit—deeply and painfully envious of the 800-pound, glass-fronted Sub-Zero fridge/freezer with its pocketbook punishing manufacturer's suggested retail price of $15,540.
The remainder of the family/service wing, according to listing information and other online marketing materials, includes an adjoining breakfast room with built-in banquet seating, a den with fireplace and direct backyard access, media room and over-sized utility room (with attached bathroom) easily converted to a live-in staff suite.
Like the lower level foyer and gallery, the unusually long and wide, wood-floored second floor gallery has a (corner) fireplace and an orderly echelon of floor-to-ceiling arched windows that look out over the backyard and surrounding tree-tops. The upper gallery acts as the primary thoroughfare that joins the 5 upstairs bedrooms that include the master suite and that each have, according to listing information, access to an en suite facility.
Listing information and property records show the corner parcel measures just over a third of an acre in a fairly prime section of the south-of-Sunset Bev Hills flats not so far from the where busy Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevards frenetically instersect. The house sits a comfortable walking distance to downtown Beverly Hills, as if anyone in Beverly Hills besides the child minders and household domestics actually walks anywhere farther than the end of their gated driveway. (Simmer down Bev Hillians, we're just teasing. We know you also regularly amble the aisles of Saks and frequently walk from the valet stand to some restaurant or another.)
Despite its relatively compact size, the landscape architects managed to pack a lot onto a small lot. In addition to the double-gated gravel motor court at the front, there's a detached three-car garage (with adjoining 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom guest house) at the rear of the property. The main house hugs a courtyard-ish backyard with flagstone terracing, swimming pool and vine-enshrouded open-air dining pavilion. Tucked into the far back corner between the main house and guest house/garage, a wee, flat grassy pad will be perfect, we imagine, for the installation of a shockingly expensive jungle gym for the twins Mister Grammer—already a father of 4 and grandfather of 1—and his new (and much younger) fourth wife Kayte are reportedly expecting.
Long prior to his not-amicable divorce with third wife (and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast member) Camille Grammer, Mister Grammer went on a wild goose hunt for a New York City nest to feather with his then-girlfriend-now-wife Kayte. There were reports of the May-December duo looking at multi-million dollar apartments in many the best starchitect-designed buildings both uptown and downtown. Finally, according to a November 2010 report by the kids at Curbed (via the Post), Mister (and soon-to-be-fourth Missus Grammer) settled on a 3,076 square foot, 3-4 bedroom spread on a high floor at an exuberantly articulated Jean Nouvel-designed building in Chelsea. The apartment Mister Grammer (allegedly) bought was listed for $7,250,000 and sold in late 2010 for $6,400,000 to a limited liability company that may (or may not) be connected to Mister Grammer.
As decadent (and expensive) as owning a sexed-up apartment in New York City and ritzy new mansion in Beverly Hills is, they are hardly the only luxurious residences owned by Mister Grammer, wildly successful, enormously rich and well-known for constantly rotating his property portfolio that, until recently, included more than half a dozen high-priced and high-maintenance homes from Hawaii to the Hamptons, several of which were photographed over the years in all their glossy glory for Architectural Digest.
As far as we know—which is next to nothing—third ex-Missus Grammer, Camille, retains use and ownership of the erstwhile couple's former family seat, a 4.77 acre, park-like, equestrian estate tucked into the back of the guard-gated and celebrity-stocked Serra Retreat in Malibu purchased in May 1998 for $4,500,000.
A 1.67 acre tennis court estate in the Hamptons—once optimistically listed at $16,100,000—was sold in May (2011) for $9,995,000 and a gigantic ski chalet in the Bachelor Gulch area of Avon, CO—listed in March 2011 at $7,900,000—is currently available on the open market and priced at a recently reduced $6,995,000.
A 10,567 square foot English Country-style mansion in the hoity-toity Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles was built in 1980 for composer Henry Mancini and later owned by baking soda heir Michael Hammer who sold it to Kelse and Cammy in September 2007 for $13,700,000. The real estate fickle couple quickly flipped the 7 bedroom and 9 pooper pad back on the market less than a year later with a substantially higher asking price of $19,900,000. Bless their real estate hearts, the house did not sell and according to property records we peeped, continues to be owned by one or the both of them. The plush pad is not, as far as we know, on the market but we'd be shocked if qualified buyers were unable to schedule a showing iffin they know which of the right Platinum Triangle property purveyors to ringy-dingy.
Mister and third ex-Missus Grammer, Camille, have owned at least two Hawaiian hideaways, one on Maui sold in 2005 and another, we think, still owned by one or both of them.
Additionally, and finally, Kelse and Cammy owned—and still own either separately or together, we don't know—a bucolic country estate near the semi-remote Catskills community of Andes (near Margaretville), about three hours north of the city and—in case anyone might care—about 40 miles down Highway 28 from the gigantic farmhouse on 400 pristine acres above the Ashokan Reservoir Your Mama rented for almost 2 years back in the olden days before we met The Dr. Cooter and, as our pithy pal Falsetta Knockers sometimes joshes, married up and bought a turn-of-the-20th-century shingled farmhouse in an historic whaling village on the East End of Long Island.
But we digress with our nostalgia...
listing photos: Sotheby's International Reatly / Brentwood
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