Dream Home Fall 2017

Our fall Dream Home, built atop a hill in Benbrook’s luxury La Cantera at Team Ranch gated community, doesn’t overwhelm. Even at 5,300 square feet, four bedrooms, four bathrooms and three half-baths, with views of downtown Fort Worth, it’s not complicated, and that’s by design.

Its new owners wanted a home packed with the latest amenities and features, but without haughtiness. The color palette is full of creams, grays and taupes. Arrays of large windows allow light to flow in and augment the spaces without the need for a lot of added light. Designers Brenda Blaylock and Susan Semmelmann — whose Grandeur Design & Interiors was in charge of the construction detailing, finishes, furnishings, accessories, and artwork — elevated the Dream Home’s straight lines and monochromatic scheme with contrasting textures and use of natural materials like woods and metals.

There’s also a nod to the TCU Horned Frogs here; its new owner played football at the university, and the Dream Home has splashes of purple throughout: in the lighting for the kitchen’s glass-enclosed wine wall and living room’s gas fireplace, blooms in the outdoor Texas sage, and custom sofas and Frog memorabilia in the game room. Even the pool’s underwater lighting is programmable in numerous hues for light shows, like red, white and blue for the Fourth of July and purple for the family’s Frog football parties.

“They wanted a rustic, modern home that was very clean, very minimalist, very simple,” Semmelmann says. She and Blaylock planned and sourced or fabricated the Dream Home’s flooring, tile, paint, fixtures, furnishings, accessories, artwork, floral, drapery and bedding. (Grandeur, through its manufacturing center, made virtually all of the Dream Home’s accent pieces, including artwork, floral, drapery and bedding.)

This Dream Home, like our others, is going to be doing a lot of entertaining, and its owners want it to invite. “They want there to be warmth, rather than just hardcore modern,” Blaylock says.

This is the 16th in Fort Worth Magazine’s long-running series of Dream Homes, in which we team with builders and vendors to present the latest in luxury building and fashion trends. Dale Grandmaison of Grand Home Designs designed the home, built by Bryan Braswell of Braswell Homes. The home will be open for tours in October (see box) to benefit the magazine’s charity, a Wish with Wings, which fulfills wishes for sick children in Texas.

The Dream Home’s contemporary vernacular is the latest transitional move away from Old World styles that have dominated Fort Worth’s luxury scene. Transitional is in vogue; this home draws its flavor from the Texas Hill Country and midcentury modern designs.

Its exterior is in gray leuders stone and stucco. The extended roof overhangs offer more shade, particularly important around the pool deck. Its ample Jeld-Wen window treatments and double-glass entry door by Durango Doors provide a transparent street profile. Inside the Dream Home, the floor plan is wide open — a characteristic of transitional — and enhanced by 22.6-foot ceilings and glass. “There’s a lot of light; it feels like you’re outside, almost,” Braswell says.

Braswell, whose home and story we featured in the September issue of Fort Worth HOME, entered construction doing remodeling work as a teenager and then started a roofing company at 18. Two years later, he built his first home and then went into business with a friend building houses. “We built six customs together, but I realized I really didn’t know what I was doing,” Braswell says.

So he went to work for David Weekly Homes and then Village Homes, while getting his bachelor’s degree in marketing from the University of Texas at Arlington. Then in 2001, Braswell, who grew up in Arlington, went out on his own with a partner, building houses in Mansfield in the $400,000-$800,000 range. 

“And architecturally correct houses,” he says. “Mansfield didn’t have any of that. It had just cookie-cutter houses.” He soon moved into building luxury homes in Fort Worth in neighborhoods like Montserrat.

Today, Braswell says he likes to run seven to 10 projects at the same time, including the major remodels he does. And “it’s just me, a superintendent, and one office person,” he says.

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Living

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Showing Off The Dream Home, for its simplicity, shows off several design flourishes.

A floating urban-flavored corner staircase connects the first floor to a second-floor bridge. The bridge looks down into the dining and living rooms and kitchen, and out onto the pool deck through double doors in the living room’s all-glass, backyard-facing wall. It connects both ends of the second floor, including two bedrooms and a game room.

The staircase — made of black metal stringers and rails, stained wooden treads and white oak banisters (also mimicked on the bridge) — is accented by a floor-to-ceiling gray, dry-stacked tile wall evocative of midcentury modern architecture, and illuminated by four windows. The open stairwell contributes to the oversized feeling of the foyer.

The living room is anchored by another dry-stacked tile wall, which frames a linear gas fireplace and serves visually as a simultaneously grand but understated mantel, with a built-in white Advanced Architectural Stone cast stone bench at the foot of the wall. The Dream Home’s direct vent fireplace, provided by Nix Door and Hardware, draws combustion air from outdoors and sends its exhaust through a second vent, circulating the warm air and keeping the cold air out.

One wall of the Dream Home’s kitchen is accented by a 400-bottle-plus wine closet featuring stainless steel walls, stainless steel cable rack system, floor-to-ceiling double glass doors, one-zone cooling system, and high-density LED lighting. Vendors Vineyard Wine Cellars, Petro Metal Fabrication and J&S Air worked together to create the attractive and functional closet.

The modern kitchen is modest in scale, but the contrasting finishes add another focal point to the Dream Home. The cabinets are Wood-Mode Fine Custom Cabinetry, provided by The Kitchen Source, the Dream Home’s longtime kitchen cabinetry vendor. The subtle weathered finishes are in grays and mostly whites. The fronts of the upper cabinets, refrigerator and freezer are in white back-painted glass. The stainless steel vent hood and metal tile backsplash add further texture and contrast. The result is a “stunning ultramodern finish,” says Elizabeth Tranberg, The Kitchen Source lead designer on this project.

The appliance package, provided by Expressions Home Gallery, includes a Sub-Zero refrigerator and freezer, Wolf oven, Wolf steam oven (“You can cook your steaks in that,” Braswell says), six-burner Wolf gas cooktop, small Sub-Zero wine refrigerator, and Asko dishwasher. More and more, with the aging population, Braswell says he finds homeowners shy from ranges in favor of built-in ovens. “People don’t want to bend over,” he says.

The kitchen’s island and breakfast bar, topped by a gray waterfall edge Quartz Master countertop, features a 5.5-foot Galley Workstation stainless sink that includes a sliding colander and brings “new definition to how you prep, cook, serve and entertain,” Tranberg says.

The cabinets themselves are highly functional, with plate racks and defined drawer and rollout storage for flatware, cooking implements, oils and spices, cookware and bakeware, and trash. A pocket door system hides a coffee and beverage bar that’s plumbed for water. The upper and lower cabinets feature soft LED under lighting. An adjacent butler’s pantry includes a microwave, icemaker and more storage space. “We’re doing a lot of back kitchens,” Braswell says.

The master bath is one space in the Dream Home that’s “over the top,” Semmelmann says.

It features his-and-hers vanities and water closets, with a glass-enclosed, three-sided, double-door, triple-headed shower room in the middle of the bathroom. A white acrylic tub fronts the shower enclosure. The cabinetry, by Mike Conkle's Custom Cabinets, includes interior plugs and concealed storage for devices like hair dryers and shavers.

The triple mirrors over each vanity are framed by Carrera tile backsplashes, painstakingly cut and laid in intricate herringbone patterns. The countertops are Quartz Master. The floor, ceramic tile, is also laid in a herringbone pattern and is fully heated.

The three-sided wainscot wall of the shower enclosure is in marble. The interior shower wall is done in a waterfall-patterned steel, glass and marble tile down the middle, surrounded on both sides by the same marble as used on the exterior of the enclosure. The shower floor and ceiling are in the Carrera stone, laid in herringbone. A built-in bench in the shower is done in the marble. LED tape under lighting on the vanity baseboards and recessed lighting in the ceiling throw off soft light in the evening, and six 5-foot windows bring the outside in. Vintage Floors laid every piece of flooring and tile in this Dream Home.

A giant walk-in closet by The Container Store mimics the feel of a country club locker room, featuring ebony cabinets with LED soffit and under lighting on dimmer switches, stackable washer and dryer (one of two laundry centers in the home), laundry chute from the children’s room upstairs, and an island dresser. “The LEDs make the whole room,” Braswell says.

The cabinets — from The Container Store’s TCS Closets line — are made of 1-inch thick Thermofused Laminate boards fabricated from recycled and reclaimed wood and have soft-close solid and glass doors, chrome hardware, tie rack, valet rod, belt rack, full-length pivoting pull-out mirror, and double and long-hang capability.

The master bathroom is one distillation of Grandeur’s contributions to the Dream Home. It’s the third Dream Home for Semmelmann and Blaylock. The first two were a green home in Montserrat and a transitional in Fort Worth’s Edwards Ranch.

The two partners first teamed up in 2001. Grandeur prides itself on being involved at the design stage in its projects, planning all finishes, furnishings and accents, and manufacturing most of the accents it puts in. “We don’t go out and buy lamps from anybody else,” Blaylock says. “We don’t buy candles from anybody else.”

To Semmelmann and Blaylock, finishes work together within each room and flow perfectly from one to the next. “Everything feeds off [something else],” Blaylock says. “There’s not anything odd.”

The gray prefinished, engineered hardwood flooring they chose runs through the Dream Home’s common spaces, and cream and gray carpet highlights all of the bedrooms. Woods and metals — chrome, stainless steel, nickel, platinum, and metallic colors — are found in the furnishings, fixtures, and accents. Wood-like texture and metal are also found in some of the tile.

The Dream Home’s dining room offers another distillation. Semmelmann and Blaylock contrasted the room’s straight lines and color with a mix of furnishings: rustic wooden Bernhardt dining table with stainless legs, and curved-back gray fabric chairs with stainless nail heads. The set sits on a patterned rug with grays, creams and blacks. To draw the eye up, they hung three cylindrical metal-and-glass pendants from Ferguson Bath, Kitchen & Lighting, and floor-to-ceiling accent drapes on both sides of the windows.

Semmelmann and Blaylock created a tabletop centerpiece of floral, driftwood and metal. Because the home’s new owner is a horse lover, Semmelmann and Blaylock found a photograph of two horses running in a river, enlarged it to 10 feet by 8 feet, cut and mounted it on four panels, and erected it on the room’s one full wall. Homages to horses, wildlife and nature can be found in Grandeur’s accent pieces throughout the Dream Home. “The way you change things up is by changing the texture,” Semmelmann says.

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Kitchen & Dining

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Ties That Bind The Dream Home’s dining room, living room and kitchen flow easily together. The dining and living rooms are separated visually by archways created as part of the bridge.

The living room vignette, like others Semmelmann and Blaylock chose for the Dream Home, is simple, with sectional sofa and blended fabrics, two stainless-frame chairs, wood and stainless tables, and hair-on-hide pillows. The two lamps feature curved stainless bases and circular hide-covered shades and hair-on-hide pillows.

For the master bedroom, which has his-and-hers entry into the bath, Semmelmann chose a combination of contrasting rustic and modern treatments infused, again, with nature. The bed canopy, in white oak with stainless accents, comes from the same product line as the dining room set. The base is in light textured raffia wood. The shams are in animal fur, and the comforter, snake print. The furnishings include a shiny metal applique dresser and stainless-and-leather bench.

Upstairs, which includes two bedrooms and a game room with an exterior staircase leading to the pool deck, the Dream Home shows off more flourishes.

One of the bedrooms, for the owners’ young daughter, features a play loft with vaulted ceiling and an iron ship’s ladder created by Aaron Iron Works. The room is decorated in soft pinks, grays, and whites, with treatments like white suede and porcelain flowers on the wall above the bed.

The game room’s feel is decidedly masculine, from the point you enter through an industrial-style, wood-and-glass sliding door. Decorative pine beams adorn a recessed space in the ceiling. The room is decorated with TCU memorabilia. The boxes in the built-in wooden bar wall feature mirrors and LED lighting, which illuminates the owner’s bottle selection. The room is linked to the Dream Home’s whole-house audio system, installed by Universal Systems, which also put in the security system. A pool table from Fort Worth Billiards sits on one end of the room.

On the other end of the game room, Kisabeth Furniture of Haltom City turned out the custom sofas and chairs, done in grays and purples and arranged in front of a large wall-mounted flat-panel screen. The company had clear marching orders for the furniture, says Lauren McEuen, Kisabeth’s creative director.

They were to be larger and very durable and comfortable, “but still high-style,” McEuen says. (Kisabeth also made the three conical-shaped barstools for the Dream Home’s kitchen breakfast bar.)

For the sofas, McEuen and Grandeur decided on a hybrid of Kisabeth’s popular Gunnison style. Its sofas typically are 96-inch or sectionals, but the Dream Home’s design team decided on two 84-inch custom sofas.

The downstairs barstools were the biggest challenge, McEuen says. “They’re completely custom,” McEuen said. Before approving the final design, the designers had questions. “Are they going to be top-heavy? Can we put them on a swivel?”

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Master Suite

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Bringing the Outside In The Dream Home’s outdoor living spaces, like the rest of the home, are highly functional, built around the home’s C-shaped footprint, with the pool and spa notched in.

The covered galley-style outdoor kitchen, made of the same leuders stone that’s on the home’s exterior, features a built-in grill with vent hood and poolside walk-up bar with sink and refrigerator. Steps away, a covered dining vignette seats 10.

And on the other side of the pool is the master bedroom’s own covered patio, with a built-in fire pit and giant flat panel. Yard Art Patio & Fireplace provided the outdoor furniture.

The outdoor kitchen, dining area and master patio are heated by Infratech infrared electric, flush-mounted heaters, installed by JetStream Outdoor Cooling. JetStream also installed a proprietary cooling system for the master patio.

JetStream’s pump misting system allows “flash evaporation” of the moisture to occur, cooling the air and dropping the ambient temperature by up to 25 degrees, JetStream’s Forrest Woods says. The cooling system is concealed and ducted, requiring accessible attic space above the patio.

The heating and cooling systems are easily controlled. The heaters are provided by switches that provide off, low, and high choices. The cooling system includes independent switches for the blower and mist pump. The blower can be used without mist to circulate air.

Claffey Pools built the linear, contemporary jump pool, which goes to a depth of 7 feet 6 inches, and spa. The eight-person rectangular spa has a full-perimeter overflow, glass-tile edge on all four sides; when the water is still, the top of the spa looks like a sheet of glass. The pool also has glass tile accents.

The pool and spa lighting and variable-speed pump can all be controlled by mobile app. The sections of the concrete deck around the pool are accented by artificial turf. “The project is an extension of the home and provides a great entertaining atmosphere,” says Shelly Claffey of Claffey Pools.

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Gameroom

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Smart: Efficient Dream Home The magazine’s Dream Homes are remarkably energy-efficient. This Dream Home’s efficiency starts with its Jeld-Wen’s Siteline windows and patio doors, which meet or exceed 2016 Energy Star 6 standards and were provided by Texas Custom Window & Door.

Siteline’s LoE 366 glass blocks infrared rays. In warm weather, the glass reflects the sun’s energy and prevents it from entering the home. In cold weather, the glass reduces heat lost by reflecting it back inside.

The Dream Home also sports ZIP System sheathing, an engineered wood panel with built-in wrap that reduces air leakage and moisture damage inside the walls. The attic has full foam encapsulation in the attic and walls.

The Dream Home has a Trane XR17 central air and heat system with a two-stage outdoor compressor system and a variable-speed indoor furnace, provided by J&S Air. The system also has Trane’s new Wi-Fi capability, allowing the Dream Home’s owners to control operations by mobile phone. The speed and size of the HVAC system change to accommodate the temperatures needed throughout the day. Mild days require low speeds, while hotter days require high speed and more cooling capacity.

All of the Dream Home’s light fixtures — the interior and exterior lighting being provided by Ferguson Bath, Kitchen & Lighting, and landscape lighting by Passion Lighting — feature LEDs. “They are 80 percent more efficient than a standard halogen light,” Braswell says. “And the new LED lights have a 25,000-hour life.”

And the Dream Home’s two tankless water heaters, provided by ProServe Plumbing, mean the Dream Home expends energy heating water only when hot water is being used. “It is an on-demand system, only heating water when it is necessary,” Braswell says.

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Bedrooms

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Final Frontier: Garage Our Dream Homes typically have three- or four-car garages and lots of storage space, but we don’t tend to write about the space beyond that. In this case, we made an exception.

The Dream Home’s new owners chose to trick out their three-car garage with a package provided by Garage Living of Dallas/Fort Worth. And they’re not alone. The New York Times, in December, called garage finish-outs the “final frontier” in high-end homes.

Why? Because a clean, well-designed garage space can serve as an extension of the rest of the home, serve as an extra entertaining space and accommodating surrounding for the homeowner’s luxury vehicles, and support a home’s value, according to Garage Living of Dallas/Fort Worth, which designed and installed the garage floors, cabinetry and slatwall organizers.

The Dream Home’s garage shows off a textured Floortex Coating for the concrete floor. The color: “Nightfall.” This unusual airy garage, like the rest of the home, sports plenty of windows, including diffused glass divided lights in the doors.

Garage Living’s GL Cabinetry modular units — dark gray with black trim — are power-coated welded steel, with magnetic door latches and large lockers for sports equipment. The gunmetal gray and black slatwall organizers allow the homeowner to hang up tools, toys, tires, bikes and golf clubs.

The garage also has a motorized attic lift that enables the easy movement of items for storage into the attic above the garage.

Modern: It’s Coming On The Dream Home stands out now as unusual in Fort Worth, but expect to see more of it. If modern is difficult to find in the Fort Worth area, that starts with the dearth of available lots, says Braswell, who built his own modern home in La Cantera.

“Right now, it’s hard to even find a place to put it,” he says. “But it’s coming on.”  

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Vendors:

Design: Grand Home Designs 817-696-0520, grandhomedesigns.com

Interior: Grandeur Design & Interiors855-894-7263, grandeurdesign.com

Builder: Braswell Homes817-564-3101, braswellcustom-homes.com

Appliances: Expressions Home Gallery 817-259-0920, expressionshome-gallery.com

Backsplash installation: Vintage Floors 817-877-1564, vintagefloors.com

Bedding (sheets): Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams 682-312-6220, mgbwhome.com

Cabinet and door hardware: Pierce Fine Hardware and Plumbing, 817-737-9090piercehardware.com

Cabinets, kitchen, design and production:The Kitchen Source 817-731-4299, thekitchensource.net

Cabinets, non-kitchen: Mike Conkle's Custom Cabinets, 817-478-2447, chipskitchens.com

Concrete: Tarrant Concrete 817-926-6660, tarrantconcrete.com

Corbels, exterior steel: Petro Metal Fabrication 817-645-9127, petrometalfab.com

Countertop fabrication:The Granite Shop972-221-4165, thegraniteshop.net

Countertops material: KLZ Stone 972-807-6187, klzstone.com

Doors, exterior rear great room; exterior master and rear: Texas Custom Window & Door 817-909-0179, texascustomwindow.com

Doors, front: Durango Doors 817-732-8181, durangodoors.com

Doors, interior and trim, lumber and trusses: BMC817-737-8877, buildwithbmc.com

Electric labor: C&B Electric 972-790-0707, cbdallaselectrician.com

Fence: Magnolia Fence & Patio 817-995-7467, magnoliafenceandpatio.com

Fence and gate, stair railing, ships ladder: Aaron Ornamental Iron Works 817-731-9281, aaronornamental.com

Fine art photography: Peter Robbins Photography 214-616-4635, peterrobbinsart.com

Fireplace and firepit: Nix Door and Hardware817-920-9221, nixdoor.com

Fireplace cast stone surrounds: Advanced Architectural Stone817-572-0018, advancedarchitectural-stone.com

Flooring (carpet and wood) and installation: Vintage Floors 817-877-1564, vintagefloors.co

Foundation and piers: Ideal Partners866-573-1795, idealpartners.com

Gameroom box beams: Olde World Finishes | 817-313-3103

Gameroom custom furniture: Kisabeth Furniture | 817-281-7560 | kisabethfurniture.com

Garage doors and openers: Open Up Garage Doors | 817-399-9092 | openupgaragedoors.com

Garage interior: Garage Living of Dallas/Fort Worth | 972-355-2281 | garageliving.com

Home entertainment system: Universal Systems |  817-589-9966 | uni-sys.com

HVAC: J&S Air | 817-695-1840 | jsair.com

Insulation: Red Oak Insulation | 972-617-0740 | redoakinsulation.com

Landscape: ProScapes Professional Landscapes | 817-337-3336 | proscapeslawnand-treecare.com

Landscape irrigation: Phillips Lawn Sprinkler | 817-478-7383 | phillipslawnsprinkler.com

Light fixtures, interior: Ferguson Bath, Kitchen & Lighting | 817-348-8489 | ferguson.com

Lighting, exterior: Passion Lighting | 866-226-6555 | passionlighting.com

Master closet cabinets: The Container Store | 682-224-7460 | containerstore.com

Mattresses: The Mattress Factory | 817-334-0361 | themattressfactory.com

Mirror and glass: Ajax Glass | 817-732-3359 | ajaxglass.com

Paint labor: J&V Painting | 817-994-3277 | jandvpainting.com

Paint material: Sherwin-Williams | 817-989-8000 | sherwin-williams.com

Patio cooling: JetStream Outdoor Cooling | 817-944-9085 | jetstreamoutdoor-cooling.com

Patio furniture: Yard Art Patio and Fireplace | 817-421-2414 | myyardart.com

Patio shades, retractable: Southwest Shade Solutions | 817-329-4161 | southwestshade-solutions.com

Plumbing hardware and fixtures: Ferguson Bath, Kitchen & Lighting | 817-348-8489 | ferguson.com

Plumbing labor: ProServe Plumbing | 817-200-4465 | proserveplumbers.com

Pool and spa: Claffey Pools | 817-488-5795 | claffeypools.com

Pool deck mondo grass: WinterGreen Synthetic Grass | 817-386-7261 | wintergreengrass.com

Pool table: Fort Worth Billiards |  817-377-1004 | billiardsuperstore.com

Roof: Texas Tile Roofing | 817-838-6100 | texastileroofing.com

Security cameras: Ideal Partners | 866-573-1795 | idealpartners.com

Security system: Universal Systems | 817-589-9966 | uni-sys.com

Sheetrock: Partin Drywall | 940-433-8305

Stone labor: MCD Stucco, LLC | 972-822-3875

Stone, retaining wall: Metro Brick and Stone | 972-991-4488 | metrobrick.com

Tile, fireplace and foyer dry stack walls: Whiz-Q Stone | 817-429-0822 | whiz-q.com

Tile installation: Vintage Floors | 817-877-1564 | vintagefloors.co

Tile materials: Interceramic USA | 817-834-8491 | interceramicusa.com

Windows: Texas Custom Window & Door | 817-909-0179

Wine closet: Vineyard Wine Cellars | 866-973-1100 | vineyardwinecellars.com

Wine closet cooling: J&S Air | 817-695-1840 | jsair.com

Wine closet, steel accent wall: Petro Metal Fabrication | 817-645-9127 | petrometalfab.com