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Dallas Remodeling Woes: Honey, I’ve Just Found A House On Craig’s List With A Swimming Pool In The Center

I hate remodeling, partly because I hate living with the mess of it right under me. My deal was, if we are going to remodel, we move out of the house. Fat chance for that. One night I came home from the grocery store to find my husband listening to the walls of our “library” (really a panelled study with oak walls that conceled many, many secrets) with his stethoscope. There was a leak, and he began dismantling the wet panels on top of my books and papers and pretty things as water was gushing everywhere. That’s when we learned for the first time that the library had once been the kitchen. Took me one week in the psych ward to recover from that. There were so many surprises behind those panels, a case of Clorox Clean-Up was like tinkling in the ocean. (Someday I’ll tell you about the repairman who went under the house to find the source of leaking water and said, do me a favor, go flush a toilet!) This is why I like to build homes — I am one of those buyers who says, gee, you don’t mind if I dismantle the walls, do you and please get out everything from under all the sinks. Too OCD.

So when I interviewed Jan and Michael Davis for our July/August issue of D Home, , I was mesmerized by their tale and have to admit — the house they are redoing is hands down A CHALLENGE! (To put it mildly.) First of all, Michael found the house on Craig’s list because the poor Realtor was probably desperate — 8,000 square feet, two bedrooms and a kidney-shaped swimming pool smack dab in the center of the house? Call it the focal point. Because we have to edit everything for the print product, thought I’l give you the longer draft that was edited down for space. You may have guessed that when my precious editor, Laura, asks for 500 words, I give 5000…p.s. stay tuned for photos: 

October, 2007.  I was at the grocery store when Michael called and said, honey, you’ve got to get right over here. I’ve just found a house on Craig’s List, it’s amazing, I want to put a contract on it tonight. So I put the ground sirloin back in the freezer and peeled out of the parking lot to 10877 Crooked Creek. And when I got there, I almost fainted.

 I walked through the double carved mahogany front door, very retro seventies, into what I thought was going to be a North Dallas ranch home. There was a terrazzo floor, then some wood, then I stopped dead in my tracks!  Right in front of me was a kidney shaped swimming pool just steps away from the front foyer right in the center of the house!

 This was an 8000 square foot house with only two bedrooms and a pool as the center focal point. Glass windows in every bedroom look out onto the pool and bar, almost like a motel. (No wonder the poor realtor had it  on Craig’s List, who wanted it?)  This was going to be more than a major project. I sat down on the steps leading down to that pool and  pleaded with my husband of 38 years: oh baby, no, please, let’s just build a house.

 But I had never seen Michael so encouraged — this was the man who swore up and down we would never lead our wonderful Warrington condo. He showed me around, one design disaster leading to another. The home, he tells me, had originally been built by a major collector of western art, a man named William Buford, who owned Texas Art Gallery, which explained why the walls look like mottled Swiss cheese. The second owner was a Dallas Cowboys  player named Laroi Glover, who added his touches, like the mirrored ceiling in the wine cellar, the remodeled master bath with basketball-player sized vanities. We could practically feel the vibes from all the parties — the bar by the pool, the huge kitchen with three Sub Zeros plus a caterer’s kitchen  with a silver closet.

 It was such a deal, said Michael.

 I thought it needed to be gutted. To convince me, Michael brought in the big guns: our architect, Todd Hamilton.

 Todd sold me on the dream. He and Michael both saw the potential. We spent the next year  going hog wild on plans . That’s when I started getting excited.  We put our Warrington condo on the market , and I was ready. With six grandchildren, the balconies on the high rise made me  nervous. After eight or nine years of condo living, I wanted dirt.

 Speaking of dirt, I also began to see how unbelievable the property was, almost three-quarters of an acre with great, huge trees overlooking this great creek.  We had been thinking about building a lake house or country home family compound, but then we realized how hard it would be for the Colorado and California families to get there. The whole point of this house, what Michael saw, was that it could be our country house in Dallas! Walk through that door, you feel like you are on vacation. We sold our condo last in June, 2008, moved out and rented in Uptown.  Here we were, grandparents, living around twenty-something’s. But the plans were fantastic and we were all set to start demolition in October, 2008, about one year after I got that call from Michael.

 But before we whacked one inch of that pool plaster, the financial markets melted. We pulled back and  put  a year’s worth of planning on hold until this summer.

 We are in no huge rush — maybe that’s the beauty of being empty nesters. Because of the economy, we’ve scaled back our original plans and created three stages of demo and finish out, each to be completed depending on the economy. 

 First we will tear the roof off over the pool  — did I tell you they actually built the home around the pool, it was not an add-on? We’ll open this area up to light, and fill the existing pool. We are going to built an amazing outdoor kitchen:  stove, two warming drawers – one for chips and salsa — sink and prep sink, dishwashers, steam oven, barbecue grill, refrigerator, wine cooler, cabinetry for dishes, coffee system. It will be so complete we can use it when the inside kitchen is being redone. So that will be done first. We will build a 36 by 18 foot rectangular pool further out, overlooking the creek. We will have a large spa we call “the harbor”, and of course a big treehouse in those wonderful huge trees for the grandchildren.

 Phase two will be taking the existing two bedrooms making three — with windows to look outside. The third stage will be the interior kitchen, which will be a huge 21 by 26 foot room where three generations of family can congregate. (My mother is moving into the guest quarters over the garage.) The center island will be enormous and, at one end, I want a booth where I have this vision of everyone sitting – my mother, my grandbabies finger-painting, all that. With all this planning, that booth was the only thing Michael and I disagreed on. Michael doesn’t like booths, don’t ask me why. So I negotiated, I said OK baby, tell me what you want -stone floors in the kitchen, he said. I really didn’t want stone floors in my kitchen but I said, you’ve got it. You get your floors, I get my booth. We’ve been married for 39 years and have done so much remodeling together we’ve got it down. In fact, now we’re informally counseling other couples in communication techniques and teaching them how to negotiate through a remodel.