The Holly House: Urban Ranch Fixer Upper

The Holly House is our current home and I can’t imagine what would ever convince me to leave. Except of course, the next house we build …

When we first looked at this house, there were 30 cats living in it. It smelled so bad, the real estate agent wouldn’t even go in the house to show it. We took it down to the studs. We had to cut out a lot of the concrete to get rid of the concrete smell. We spent weeks deciding if we should buy it because I was convinced we would never be able to get rid of the smell. JJ, my husband, assured me we would be able to, although I don’t think he was even sure himself. We were, thankfully.

I am a big fan of simple pallets because I change my mind quarterly on the color pops I want in each room. Black, white and gray is my design base. I think select two words that describe each homes style. This home is Urban Barn. Before I buy or choose any design element for this house, I ask myself, “Is it either urban or barn” If the answer is yes, I buy it. More often than not, it’s no and while I like it, it doesn’t work.

I do not believe in having people remove their shoes when they enter my home. Every home we build is designed to be lived in by our boys, our dogs and our guests without worry. To make that happen we design homes with reclaimed barn wood. Give it your best shot, you can’t destroy it.

For some “before” photos, click here.

This is our kitchen. We don’t design homes with big fancy dining rooms, we design homes with big living space where we all congregate together at all times. This is where we eat all our meals together, play family games together, have family conversations here, laugh here and make all of our family decisions here. To the left is our main room. You can see our massive tv from this island. We are a huge sports fan, so many meals are spent cheering on our favorite teams. These two rooms that make up one big room is where we spend all our time together as a family. When I am spending hours in the kitchen I am still enjoying my time with my family.

If you are standing in front of the fireplace to your right is the tv wall. Those are three big garage doors as we live in southern California and having indoor/outdoor living space is an option unlike my home state of Indiana were the bugs can be as big as your head. Or at least seem that big. That Archie Bunker chair is my husband’s. He refuses to get rid of it. I tolerate it and hide it with pillows and blankets because he builds me homes. You can see the ‘before’ view of this room here.

Our master bedroom is our sanctuary. We had to work within the confines of the original designer, Kowalski, who built our home back in the 50s and liked to have different levels in all of the rooms. Like our living room, there are two floor heights in our master. It isn’t great when you get up in the night to check on kids, but it is visually attractive.

Our youngest son’s bedroom. He asked for a platform bed like on a Disney show he was watching at the time so, of course, my husband built him one.

Noah asked for a hanging bed, so JJ made one for him too. These concrete block walls are spread throughout the house and I am crazy for them. Several people told us we should paint them white. Bite your tongue.

This is the kids’ game room. Where the xbox and ping pong rule. The large garage door is perfect for this room. It leads out to the trampoline and the yard games.

The guest house is a wonderful place to entertain family and friends when they are in town. I love to have guests in town for a couple of days when they are staying in your home. I was always taught to show up with flowers and get out before they die. Having a guest house, and independent guests never hurts either, makes it easy to entertain guests for long periods of time. This is the main room, off to the right is a hall that leads to the bedroom and bathroom.