Showing posts with label Fort Worth builder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fort Worth builder. Show all posts

Homes We've Built In Fort Worth

11:56 AM home desaint

Since starting my blog last month, I have had several emails asking for pictures of some of the houses we've built in Fort Worth.  My company does both remodeling of Period Revival style homes and we build new homes based on historical designs.  Here are some pictures of a few of the projects we've done over the years.  I apologize that some of these photos were taken recently so the landscape isn't as pretty as it will be in a few months.  Once the good weather returns and everything is more colorful I'll replace the pictures with the new ones.  Hope you enjoy.

This house you've probably already seen in earlier posts.  This house was originally built as a one story and previous owners found plans hidden in the walls dated 1929 before the stock market crash.  Today's owners hired us to carry out the plans very similar to what was to be done 75 years earlier.
The above French eclectic house started out as a 1940s vernacular.  My client desired a French style home, so I designed it to face what was previously the side street but one of Fort Worth's most prominent streets.  We added the entire front side and almost doubled the size of the original  house.  Using many antique building products like the clay tile roof, the front door surround and the antique french iron doors that the owner found, the house now fits in with the rest of the neighborhood of homes built in the 1920's and 30's.  Most people think that this is one of the street's original houses.

This limestone-clad French style house is in a small new development tucked in the middle of old Fort Worth.

This Spanish colonial house was one of the first new homes we built and is based on a Santa Barbara design.

Another complete remodel and facade alteration, this home was originally a 1940's ranch style home that we doubled in size and turned into a Spanish Colonial hacienda style.

This historic eclectic English tudor is set in a beautiful setting in one of Fort Worth's oldest neighborhoods.  The entire left side of the house is an addition that we did several years ago.  At the time, the city would not allow additions on the front of any of the "Historically Significant Homes" of Fort Worth, but after working with the city and showing them the quality of the addition and attention to details they allowed it.

Another complete remodel and addition to match the original 1920's design, this home sits prominently looking over Rivercrest Country Club golf course.


This English Cotswold designed house also sits right across from the country club.  Clad in a stone to mimic the Cotswold stone and a door surround taken from the great English designs of the Philadelphia area, this home is admired by many for the close attention to English details.

I'll continue to add more pictures of homes we've done and their interiors as well in future posts.

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The Interior of an Italian Renaissance House

7:06 AM home desaint

While designing a house in the Italian Renaissance style is not an easy task, with all of the proper details and scale, furnishing one can be difficult as well.  With a little research, hard work and attention to appropriate styles of mantels, lighting and architectural details you can accomplish the look.  In addition, finding the appropriate furniture is important as well.  Today I am focusing on the mantels and some mirrors/artwork that are appropriate (along with a couple of chandeliers) to help you.

With the arrangement of rooms for today's living, I like to classify certain architectural details (like mantels) for certain areas of the house. In original Italian houses, most every room used by the owners were formal. Today’s home is much different, as we all use every room in the house.  Today, formal areas should have more formal mantels, etc.  For a living room, dining room or any formal area here are some styles that are great depending on the formality of your house.















These are two reproduction mantels that, with their heavy carving, would be appropriate for your formal areas.

The two below are antique mantels that would be appropriate for either formal or informal (say a family room). However, I would use both of them in either place.


















The mirrors below, and the portrait, are perfect examples of pieces that would be great for an Italian Renaissance house.  Of course, I am not opposed to using French Trumeau’s such as the one mentioned in my French Interiors post to go above the mantels shown above as well.

 






















Here are two more pieces that are great to incorporate.  The commode can be used in many places.  In my previous post on Italian Renaissance houses I showed a picture of a house we built/remodeled in Fort Worth.  My clients found a piece similar to this commode that I had built and an artist finished the work for their daughter's bathroom vanity.  They also found a fountain similar to the one below that we converted into a pedestal sink for their powder bathroom by carefully drilling  holes in the back and mounting a wall mount faucet.  More pictures of both the commode and the fountain pedestal can be found in Betty Lou Phillips book, Inspirations from France & Italy.






















These chandeliers are great examples of what would be appropriate for an Italian Renaissance house.  While I love all of them, I particularly love the last one which is a 17th Century reproduction that I can get for you for about $1,700.  I have actually ordered one for my own house.






















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French Village: An Inspiration for Development

4:28 AM home desaint

In the 1920's a developer by the name George Woodward was a busy man building and developing in the area of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia.  Woodward began developing very modest homes years earlier, but after travels to England and France (and working with the famed architect Wilson Eyre) he developed Cotswold Village.  The houses were created from Woodward's love of the Cotswold country side.  They were all built around 1915-18 and were built with chiseled local cut stone and steep roofs.  


In the 1920's, Woodward decided to create a development that mimicked his love of the old stone farmhouses he had seen while traveling in the Normandy region of France.  These houses are beautiful examples of French Normandy architecture in the United States.  It is examples like this that inspired me to do what I do.  If it could have been built in the 1920's, it can certainly be done today in my city of Fort Worth or anywhere.  Woodward obviously had a very keen eye for details and a true understanding of scale.  The houses posted here are located on Gate Lane and the pictures come from the George Woodward Co. which is still in existence today as a real estate company in Philadelphia.  I will cover more of the Philadelphia area in other posts as there are great examples of period revival architecture from architects like Mellor, Meigs and Howe.  I hope you enjoy these photographs.



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