There’s a new house here whose builders are expecting 12,000 visitors this week. It’s unlikely that the guests will all show up at the same time, but, hey, if they do, this house is ready.
It’s big, even by Texas standards. Heaven knows, it has plenty of bathrooms. And its designers say the house was planned for people who like to party.
To be fair, “party” may be too colloquial a word for the mission of this enormous residence, built as a showcase for the annual convention of the National Association of Home Builders, which concludes here Monday. Rather, the mission of this stately, traditional edifice may be more genteely described as “entertaining.”
For starters, the two dining areas are designed to seat up to 22 guests. That’s separate from the pub room upstairs and the family room/kitchen. Guests might also find amusement in the home theater. And let us not overlook opportunities to hang out around the screened loggia and outdoor fireplace near the pool.
All in all, guests will have about 7,385 square feet of space for their idylls.
This is the New American Home ’96, the annual showcase created by the builders and assorted other interests to show off the latest in home technology, building materials and design. This one is the 13th house to carry the designation, and if it doesn’t break a lot of ground in the “new” department, it takes the title for the largest, according to the builders’ group.
Where previous New American Homes have endeavored to depict trends in family living or to knock visitors’ socks off with their technological whizbangs, this house seems to be mostly about style. But it has a few things to say about Americans–principally that we’re still interested in working at home and that even in the rarefied air of this Houston neighborhood, home buyers are concerned with providing for the needs of their extended families.
Mostly, however, it confirms in flamboyant strokes the notion that we are becoming a nation of maturing stay-at-homes. If Richie Rich were to turn to “cocooning” in his adulthood, he’d do it here–with Mrs. Rich and the frequent companionship of a couple of dozen of their closest friends, of course.
“The home was designed for just a couple” to live in, explained Robert Dame, who with partner Patrick Carmichael designed and built the home in the Houston development called Enclave Lake at Parkway Villages.
Nonetheless, the stork visited the mythical homeowners in the form of interior designers, who transformed one of the house’s four-plus generic bedrooms into a little girl’s room for the showcase.
But by and large it’s a very grown-up home–though these grownups do seem to enjoy themselves, with an emphasis on big-screen televisions, video, the consumption of fine wines and any number of ways to bathe. Prime play areas, to be enjoyed by themselves or in combinations, include:
– Adjoining the dining room (about 16 by 18 feet, allowing service for 14 or so) is a gallery that leads to the sunken wine room. This room not only houses the wine; “it also was designed to accommodate a dining room for eight,” Dame said. “Therefore you can seat 20, maybe 24 people at a dinner party, with some degree of intimacy. What we didn’t want was to have one grand dining hall, which can be overpowering,” Dame said.
– “The other primarily entertainment zone would be the kitchen-family-breakfast room zone,” Dame said. The family room (23 by 18 feet) has a 35-inch video screen, one of several electronic entertainment centers in the house. The breakfast room has a TV, too, in case you don’t want to walk all the way across the kitchen to watch the one in the family room.
“And between the family room and the wine room is a bar, where you could also entertain.”
– In Houston’s warm climate, the swimming pool is almost obligatory. This pool sits alongside a screened loggia, which is a cross between a porch and an open space measuring 12 by 20 feet and containing a two-way fireplace that can be seen both from the loggia and the pool.
The same wing of the house also has an exercise room and a 32-jet shower for two. If that isn’t enough, the shower also has a sound system built in.
– The second floor of the house has a “pub room”–that’s “bar” to the rest of us–in addition to the one that is on the main floor. It is decked out in custom-made cherry cabinetry. Although the room that adjoins it is the one that’s decorated as a little girl’s room, it was intended to be a billiard room. Despite the decorating, one can visualize Col. Mustard here anyway, committing the evil deed with the lead pipe.
By now you get the picture: This is not Cul-de-Sacville. Nobody clips coupons here.
For that matter, nobody does anything here, because nobody lives here.
When the design of the house got under way more than a year ago, Carmichael/Dame Builders was designing it for two real clients, who began to have second thoughts when the costs and complexity of the house began to spiral right toward the big Texas sky. Now the couple are investors, along with the builders, who have put the Big House on the market.
It’s listed for about $1.5 million, although the value of the materials that were donated by manufacturers in exchange for a plug during the builders’ show have put the house’s replacement value at about $2 million, according to Carmichael/Dame.
And if you didn’t buy this particular house, you can build one that’s just like it. The plans are being marketed by the Design Basics house plan firm of Omaha, which reports that even before the showhouse opened, the company was fielding calls from people who were interested in building a clone. Dame said he was expecting a visit from a couple who had read about the home and had made up their minds to have one for themselves in Kansas City.
If you were to buy it in either form, what you would get, besides the glamor, is a home that has some pure-and-simple ’90s aspects.
Because the original clients in Houston were both executives who worked at home occasionally, the house has three home offices, if you count the study, which is currently outfitted more as a traditional library.
In the Houston version, just about any mechanical function that can be computerized has been. Heating, cooling, security and more can be controlled from a central location. Although these are not particularly new features, it is apparent with this showhouse that their refinement continues unabated. For instance, the house has no water heater; that function has been integrated into the furnace.
Even in this bracket, “extended family” is a design buzzword, although in this house, it takes some heavy imagining to picture Grandma and Grandpa living in quarters over the garage. However, that’s one of the possibilities that the designers have planned for.
“You could use that space as a living room and a bedroom for a boomerang child,” Dame explained. “And it could be an in-law suite.
“The cohabitation of generations is occurring in our market, particularly among Asians, who are starting to have a lot of buying power around here,” he added. “It’s not uncommon for them to buy a home like this here, and because of the nature of their families, they would be living on the premises, with the younger generations taking care of the older generation. You would have three generations here.”
This speaks to the much-harped-about return to “traditional values,” as does the design of the house–both what it is and what it is not.
“About two years ago, we saw a return to people wanting more timeless and traditional spaces,” said Dame’s partner, Patrick Carmichael. “They have been getting furniture from parents and bringing it into the design.
“Before that, everybody was having furniture custom-made, with bright colors,” he said. “For a while, everything (structurally) was white and light and open. But now people want more definition in spaces and more traditional spaces.”
And, oh, yes. Bathrooms. If the New American Home is any kind of indicator, we appear to love them as much as ever. This house has six full baths and three half-baths. Each full bath has its own whirlpool tub.
Don’t they know that if guests get too comfortable, they might forget to go home?
