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Cantoni House — Free Lunch For Realtors

This is Cantoni’s new show home at 5903 Lakehurst , where listing broker Briggs Freeman is serving lunch today (Friday June 26) from twelve to two for Realtors. Agents get their first shot to tour the exquisite contemporary design – check out the master bath, master closet and upstairs media room. The home is open to the public on Sunday, June 28, from two to five p.m. Price tag, not including furnishings: $3,895,000.

Cantoni Celebrates 25 Years of Contemporary Design and The Bugatti Grand Sport

Well, now I’m really offended. I see that my colleague Kristiana Heap got to actually DRIVE the Bugatti Grand Sport , while when I asked to have a photo taken in it (just to give my husband apoplexy) I was told, no way. Please step away from the car. The $1.96 million dollar, 16-cylinder, 1001 horsepower (Jeeze Louise) auto was parked last evening in the pristinely beautiful garage of the new Cantoni show home at 5903 Lakehurst, another listing kudo for Briggs-Freeman, agent Linsey Barnes. Oh yes, I forgot: I write about homes and real estate; Kristiana, who is young, fun and beautiful, writes about fast cars. 

At it’s Metropolitan Home sponsored debut party Thursday night, the new Cantoni house cradled these puppies as eye candy. There was the newest Bugatti and a few Bentleys ranging in price from $135,000 (the cheapest) to $1.1 million, I think, my head was swimming once I saw a car priced for more than a million dollars.  Good thing I toured the contemporary masterpiece the previous day; the 7500 square foot home was bursting at the seams and loaded with every design/architectural Who’s Who in Dallas, from the 22 foot long counter connecting the bar with the kitchen to the exterior pool-side linear fire pit. I could see why they wanted the cars there — the Cantoni homes’ garage is like a piece of art, with clean lines, porcelain tile floor, and sliding glass doors. Perfect showplace for designer cars. The idea, which is so smart, is that you arrive home every night in your garage, you see this room every day, sometimes more than you’d like. Why not make it attractive? Or enjoy the same foyer your guests enjoy — the house is designed so that you enter the front foyer from the garage and walk into the most beautiful formal rooms first thing. The view from the garage is spectacular.

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Building or Remodeling? Formals, Wine Cellars Are Out

Toured several new homes in Dallas yesterday, including a new, gorgeous $2.9 million spec home that has no formal living room. According to the architect/designer, Don Caperton, Caperton Johnson, two things are out: formal living rooms and wine cellars. The formal living rooms are considered a waste of space and building dollars. Unsaid but widely known: they also keep the Dallas Design District afloat and serve up to many a Dallas husband heart-attack-sized design bills. Wine rooms are also over-rated, costly to install, a legal nightmare if you have teenagers, and people never end up filling the cellar with all that wine.

They just drink it.

Next thing you know, people will be filling their swimming pools.

Portrait of the Artist At Home:Pamela Nelson’s Commode

In case you decide to get creative this weekend.

Dallas-Palm Springs Real Estate Hook Up At Mecox

Not only did the Dallas design community come out of the proverbial woodwork for last night’s fabulous party at Mecox on Cole, so did the Realtors: I saw my buddies Erin Mathews, David Nichols, Charles Gregory and Dave Perry-Miller, who LOVE Mecox, DPM may soon be showing Palm Springs homes to owner Mac Hoak. Though Mac told Peggy Levinson that the Dallas store is one of the lone bright spots in the country — he told me the rent on the NYC store is astronomical — he also said that the LA store tops sales. So the next time the Southampton resident is in LA, he just may pop down to meet Dave in Palm Springs and check out the bargains. Can you imagine what Mecox could do to this?

Real Home Buyers: KRLD’s Ernie Brown’s New Plano Digs

KRLD radio personality Ernie Brown recently moved from the West Village to a new “stately Brown manor”  WAY up in Frisco — Shoal Creek Villas — so close to 121 you can see the highway from his second floor. But for Brown, it’s well worth the drive.

“It’s the quietest house I’ve ever lived in,” he says, “it took me two weeks to know that no noise is normal.” The house was so quiet it was keeping him up at night, in fact. You would think he wanted to be closer in to his job, like he was when he lived five minutes from the KRLD studios at Mockingbird and Central.  In fact, that was TOO close to work for him — Brown says he’d often go to a sandwich shop just to mentally prepare himself for work. Or wake up.

So here’s the bachelor pad, a two story, 2800 square foot home he picked up in the mid $300’s. Smart buy: Brown’s surrounded by homes that are more expensive, including the one next door listed for $424,000. For a bachelor, the house was in great shape. His kitchen stove was so spotless I asked if anyone ever used it.

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Dallas Dirt Comments

We have people of superior intelligence commenting here on Dallas Dirt. Proof: someone just posted a comment that I think is brilliant and appropriate for Earth Day. Why don’t electricians wire houses so that, as you walk out the door, you could flip a switch and turn off all electrical outlets? Not only would that save electricity it would prevent potential fires from hair dryers/curling irons/irons/Christmas tree lights left plugged in. Our house is wired as a “smart house”, meaning we are able to access electronics (lights, music) from our cell phones or computer. Naturally, I have done it once in nine years. But if I could shut down the juice remotely, I might do it more often.

Building Notes: Put Outlets In Your Drawers

I thought I was such a clever lass to put outlets in the knee space below my vanity bench so I can keep my hair dryer plugged in perpetually, but this makes much more sense: the hair dryer or curling iron can be plugged in all the time, and if you do this in the kitchen you can keep all those gadgets that need charging plugged in and out of site.

Building Notes: Hide Your Jewelry From The Burglars

I go through A LOT of homes, handy camera in hand to snap little details that make me say, why didn’t I think of that? Like these hidden drawers in a beautiful new home at 4436 Brookview Drive in Dallas, which I hear will be open this weekend. How great to be able to hide cash, jewelry, whatever, in these sub-drawers located in the master closet.

Don’t tell anyone.

Laura Hunt’s Front Door

What lurks behind this beautiful door above the Regent’s movie theater at Highland Park Village? One of the world’s best designers, an Architectural Digest 100, creating beautiful design from her Dallas base.