July 6, 2020

This Light-Filled Tennessee Dream Home Was 40 Years in the Making

– Franklin is, it's a small town.

It's not numbers-wise anymore.

But the quaint nature of the downtown area has been preserved.

It's peaceful.

(upbeat music) Dorinda and I have livedall our lives in the south.

– My father bought this property in 1946 when he came back fromserving in World War II.

– This was her dad's farm.

Early on after we met, Dorinda said, hey Brant, let's go outwalk on the farm for a bit.

And she pointed down and said, I'm gonna build my dream home here.

– I built this house inmy head for 40 years.

Decorated it, planned it.

I wanted it to be ahome where we would have a lot of cousins, and relatives, and friends coming inand out of the house.

– At our age most people arethinking about downsizing.

Well, we upsized.

We had already downsizedwhen the kids moved out and went on to their careers, but this was the dream.

That place where we could entertain, and kinda ramble around, and look at the beautifulsunset to the west.

– Houzz was invaluable to us, with ideas.

So I thought, I bet I canfind an architect on Houzz.

Really great to have the reviews.

Figure out that it wassomebody we could work with and who would be a good communicator.

– Bill and Christianlistened to our vision.

– Every client that we have we tell them, if you're not on Houzz geton Houzz, create an ideabook.

– She would share images, and I was like, got it, I know exactly how she wants it to feel, I know how she wants it to look.

– The thing that wasthe most important to me was this great room.

I wanted it to have a good flow and be good for entertaining.

It was important that thekitchen be part of that so that I would always be included with whatever was going on.

I also wanted a lot of lightand I wanted good circulation.

– So there's not a lot of walls when you have these big wide open spaces with all this naturallight and these doors you don't have a ton of wall space.

So you don't really havea place to hang artwork like in a traditional home.

Our solution to thatwas to provide dimension with the trim work andon the coffered ceiling as much as we could.

– I didn't even know whata coffered ceiling was when this whole process started.

– It's beautiful work, and it's consistent with all of the differenttrim in the room.

I want people to comehere and be comfortable.

(calm music) – Dorinda wanted thisspace to entertain 12 at any day of the week.

And space planning for 12 is a tall order.

It really is.

When you think about thescale and still being able to kind of walk aroundthese pieces of furniture.

– The sofas and the chairs are very cushy.

They're the kinds that you curl up in.

The chairs that are by the fireplace rock and you kinda sink into them.

And just feel like a big hug.

– With Dorinda's ideabookI could definitely tell that she had a transitional style.

She preferred grays andtransitional kind of patterns.

Different elements like metals and woods.

– The great room fireplace, we looked at a couple options with the mantel.

It could've been stone, or it could've been a heavy timber piecethat's non-combustible.

But Dorinda really wanteda stained wood mantel.

So if you have a woodmantel and it's combustible it has to be a certain distance from the top of the fire opening.

So the mantel had to move up, the bigger the fireplace got.

That was obviously a big focal point, book ended by the tilebacksplash in the kitchen.

We wanted those twoelements to really pop.

She didn't want a separateformal dining room, she wanted the built-inbanquet for all of her guests.

So having that area tied to the kitchen was really important to her.

– [Dorinda] I found a table onHouzz as part of my ideabook.

– A walnut live edge, walnut wood table.

– [Dorinda] I wanted tohave a table that was large enough to at least sit 12.

I can actually get probably14 people around that table.

– It's the biggest table I think I've ever installed at a client's house.

It's I think 10 feet tall, 10 feet long.

– We provided deep drawerson either end of the banquet for cookbooks and othermiscellaneous things that you may not need every day.

It was really important toDorinda to have a baking center, she's a big baker.

And it has a few cool features.

The toe kick of thecabinets can be pulled out to give her a little stepto kind of elevate her while she's using therolling pin or mixer.

The mixer's on a lift, so you don't have to physically lift the mixer onto the counter or have it sitting out all the time.

It can be hidden or put awaywhen you don't wanna see it.

– All of my baking sheets are right there, all of my baking tools are right there.

So I'm pretty delightedwith that baking center.

We put in a lot of drawers.

We don't have a ton of cabinets 'cause drawers work much better than trying to fish for things in the back of the cabinet.

– [Jennifer] Dorinda liked the marble look of countertops but.

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– I don't like the upkeep with marble, I don't like the expense of marble, – [Jennifer] So we wentwith the quartz product that has that marble look, so you still get thatveining and that striation, but you don't have to dealwith some of the upkeep issues.

– We've used that prettymuch all over the house, and love it.

– [Jennifer] One of ourmost popular pictures on Houzz is the keeping room.

– [Brant] Which is the smallsitting room off the kitchen.

– It's lovely to sit in that space in front of the fire in the winter.

Or in the evening sometimes we'll sit and have a drink lookingoutside through the big doors.

It's just lovely.

– We did a tile surroundon the fireplace below and then shiplap above, so it has a little bit of a farmhouse feel and kind of a nod to the adjacent countryside.

– So the space thatBrant and Dorinda live in on a daily basis is a smaller portion of the overall size of the house.

– We don't have to go upstairs for anything in our daily lives.

– We kept the master suiteand the master bathroom on the lower level, so they don't have to go up and down the steps.

When you go into the bedroom you can turn to the bathroom.

And they have his and hers sinks, and then they have a curbless shower.

Should they ever be in a wheelchair they can have ease of access there without having to go overa threshold or a curb.

– In terms of creating that separation between the public and the private spaces that aren't used all thetime, like the extra bedrooms for family and friends, Dorinda had one of her wishlist items was tocreate a hidden stairwell.

The stairwell is literallyhidden behind a door that's hidden in the trim.

We tucked that up nice andneatly behind the fireplace.

And designed the trimso you really can't tell unless you've been told thatthere's a door behind the wall and that you can go upbehind the fireplace.

– Upstairs we've got twobedrooms with two bathrooms.

As well as a gallery.

So it's kind of a livingarea up in the upstairs, so that when our daughters come and stay, or friends come to stay, if they want to stay up later than what we wanna stay up they can watch TV, orread a book, or whatever.

We were looking to dothe exterior with stone, but the cost of stone is pretty expensive.

So we decided to go with another option that the builder recommended, which was to put a wash over brick.

And on Houzz I keptlooking for that option and then I found thepicture of what I wanted.

The color of the brick, the color of the wash, how much wash to put on it.

And I gave that picture to the builder, and I said, this is exactly what I want.

– Knowing Dorinda's backstory and that this has always been her dream, to actually see it cometo life for one thing.

But then to also haveit be what she expected and hoped for is just unbelievable.

– So much better than whatI ever thought it could be.

– We're gonna be here forthe rest of our lives.

And it's the kind ofplace where Dorinda says, I'll leave this house feet-first.

(upbeat music).

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