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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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Dallas Home Seller’s Weekend Chores: Caulk It Up

Don’t even think it’s Miller Time until you have these pre-sell, honey-do’s out of the way:

Getting Your Home ready To Sell: Live Eye Candy — Swans!

June, the biggest month of the year for brides and home sales, is here. Every agent will be back in town selling.  Or at Neimans’ sales, spending. (Ebby Halliday promises a real “barnburner” of a month,  stay tuned for deets.)  If you’re selling, you know what you have to do –clean, pare down, stage. You might also want to try some live eye candy, especially if you live near water. Our staff photographer snapped these beautiful Black Swans a few weeks ago. They belong to the flock of Braden Power, who owns one of the most delectable listings in Dallas at 3816 Turtle Creek Boulevard. (This video  was shot when the house was listed for $13 million with Eleanor Mowery Sheets. It’s now reduced to $9.8 million and listed with the fabulous Doris Jacobs, Allie Beth Allman.) Could ornamental swans enhance your property value? Most definitely. Knox Swan & Dog sells and ships swans humanely throughout the U.S. , Delta being the preferred airline carrier because, as a company official told me, sometimes the Post Office (which charges $360 to ship a pair of birds) is idiotic enough to leave the poor creatures sweltering on a hot dock. The Mute Swan, immortalized by Tchaikovsky,  is the company’s most popular and economical bird.  You can buy a pair of healthy Mute Swans for $600 that are guaranteed to breed. Some folks buy or rent them for weddings. The lovely creatures pictured here are Black Swans from Australia, slightly more costly: $800 for a one year old pair (Will they breed? Is he really into her as a life-mate?). $1500 for proven breeders — Black Swans who do not, apparently, need Viagra. Swans are generally faithful to each other and mate for life.   Clutches (litters) average five eggs but can be as many as ten.  So say you shell out $600 for a pair of Mute Swans, plus $250 air freight, you could end up with two or three clutches a year — 18 baby birds! But then you have tend them, and I’d hate to think of what might happen if they met up with a Dallas coyote. Still, what better way to make a buyer fall in love with your manse than to have graceful swans in full view.

Room Makeovers:You Get One Shot To Impress Buyers

I cannot tell you enough how important it is to clean, style and stage a home for successful showings. Recently, while touring a four-plex with builder Kimberly Raphael, she gave away a huge builder’s secret: IKEA. Builders who need to flesh out barren, empty rooms often pop up there for beds, bureaus and linens. (One of the agents in this article used an air mattress!) I found these before and after photos really cool with one exception: I prefer the blue bathroom “before” — do you?

Drive Up Appeal Begins At The Front Door

A frantic reader has asked me what she can do to “spiff” up the  front of her home, namely the front door and entrance.

“Help,” says she. “I have no time to even begin with the inside, so I figured I’d spend the only 5 minutes I have where it counts — at the front door.”

Good move, say my experts, Jane Mills and Cliff Ellman of Spiffi Decor. That’s exactly where you want to begin. The front door is where the love affair with a home begins, it’s the bride on the threshold. The buyer absorbs all senses around him as he (she) stands there and really decides: am I going to marry this house? Let the pheromones begin!

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Video’s Up For Local Family Getting Extreme Makeover

Talking major house plastic surgery here. Kyle and I drove out to Keller, Texas Monday afternoon to see the Augustin family off in the limo. Darn it, no Ty, no Paul, but we hear they are heading our way. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition has selected Amber and Peter’s family to be the recipients of a brand new home to replace their old one damaged by a flood last year. If you know the show, you know the routine — down comes the house in a matter of hours and working 24/7, the crew will build a new one in 106 hours… Texas-based Wall Builders know they have to finish the job on time, or else!

Calling Fellow Clean Freaks

OK, so we go a bit overboard. (I love that there is an ad for Lexapro bannered across this webpage!) Also a new book out that says what I know but refuse to alter: we are over-obsessed with cleanliness.

When Housing Blogs Throw Stones

Ths is a must-read article for anyone who reads real estate blogs, a Bible for anyone who writes one. Thought I might take this as a sweet opportunity to talk about how mean people can be on this, and other, blogs.

Here? On DallasDirt? Just read some of the posts, you’ll see that Thorazine must not be getting covered by a lot of HMO’s these days.

(See? I’m being mean! Bad blogger!)

“Everything inside is nothing but beige and barf”: what one commenter wrote about a home on the Real Estalker — I won’t even repeat what the Real Estalker wrote about Phil Romano’s home.

(Hate to be picky, but barf is not always beige.)

Why do we have to be so mean and put down other people’s homes? Are we just envious? Maybe some people like their homes all huge and purple, like a bruise. (Slap me!) We cannot all afford the Taj Mahal one of the Ten Most Beautiful Homes In Dallas, nor can we all afford to hire the likes of Trisha Wilson, Emily Summers, Neal Stewart or Michele Nussbaumer to create exquisite, tasteful home environments. (Maybe some of us would rather be altruistic with funds and buy back a foreclosed home for a sobbing woman.) We are all to do this tasteful decorating on our own? (Hello, why do you think Pottery Barn was created.)Well, what if we cannot? Is that why we offer up snarky opinions on photos of homes that are not to our liking, or remind us of (give me sunglasses) pre-school?

But who would be stupid enough to leave an exercise bike smack in the middle of the room he was trying to showcase for sale? 

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Designer’s Choice Home Tour Less Than 12 Hours Away!!!

Tomorrow —- October 18, the Designers’ Choice Home Tour. Don’t miss the chance to see some of Dallas’ great design talent’s best work: Cole Smith, Bernbaum-Magadini, Robyn Menter and Richard Drummond Davis (this is their collaboration), Gary Riggs, and Tracy Rasor. Just check in at the Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church at 10 am and be prepared to be inspired. Garry gussied up the $15 $17.9 million dollar Andrew Merrick spec home at 3500 Beverly I wrote about in D Magazine…. most talked about house in town and a must see. We’ll be bringing you a video but nothing beats the real thing in the flesh!

Pumpkin Time At The Pumpkin House

This is Kay Week’s listing at 6138 Waggoner Drive, and the smart, smart folks at Ebby and Dr. Delphium Designs turned it into a pumpkin paradise last week. We caught it for you on video and asked some inquisitive, reporter-like questions such as: how many pumpkins does it take to do this, what kind of glue gun works best, how do the trellis/topiaries stand so tall (click here for all those answers) and how much if you hire Dr. D to do this for your home? (About $4000.) And despite the bad vibes eminating from W-Street, Dr. D says their schedule is booked solid this year to turn Dallas solid orange.�