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Article Excerpt
For most of us Texans, home is the best place on Earth, It is where we hang our hat, it is where our heart is, it is where we go to escape the stresses of life.
It doesn't take much to make a house a home, whether you live in a posh mansion in Highland Park, a historic cottage on a quaint brick street in Tyler, a new custom home next to a scenic golf course in The Woodlands, a sophisticated loft condo in Austin, a tidy tract house in Mesquite, or a log and stone cabin on a Hill Country bluff.
Over the past few years, our society has become much more focused on home. "We are seeing people staying closer to home, making a refuge out of their house, more than ever," said Richard Masling, president of Mann Custom Homes in San Antonio. "We are seeing people relocatin9 and coming back home to Texas. This is where they want to end up."
People are spending more for and on their houses, as well, because they want to live in a place they love to be in and because it makes good economic sense. "People are finding real value in their homes," Masling explained, "in light of what the stock market has done and the realization that if they had put money into a hard asset, they would have a lot more to show for it."
In last fall's Parade of Homes at Cimarron Hills, sponsored by the Texas Capitol Area Builders Association, the home-focus thought process was on display All five of the gorgeous homes on the tour expertly showcased the latest trends in home building, home design, and decor.
Stalwart Custom Homes of Austin was one of the builders in this forty-ninth Parade of Homes tour. The company builds estate homes throughout Central Texas, and president Jeff Swindall has noticed that his customers are pickier than ever. "We're seeing people spend much more time thinking and shopping and deciding on exactly what they want in a home," Swindall said. "They are willing and wanting to get everything just right to get the house they want that suits their lifestyle." Customers are approaching the design of their new homes, Swindall said, with the resolution that "we're going to stay home more." The result is more attention given to real living rooms inside the house as well as expansive outdoor living areas. With our great Texas weather, that is to be expected.
"Outdoor living areas seem to be more important than they were before," Swindall said. "Some houses will have as much as a thousand square feet dedicated to porches and outdoor living areas. The porches will be located off several areas-off the family room, off the kitchen, off the master bedroom. We are putting in a lot of outdoor fire pits and fireplaces, outdoor kitchens, and for the golf course homes, practice facilities for golf."
Masling concurs. "We're also finding that people are wanting to bring the outside indoors," he said. "We build homes in many areas that have tremendous views or vistas, and our homeowners want their home's design to take advantage of these views. This brings an added dimension to the overall enjoyment of your home. Instead of looking out the back door at a fence and into the back door of another home's living room, you are looking at a beautifully landscaped yard and pool. Or you may be looking out over a canyon vista. If you are building your home on a lot that offers a thirty-mile view, you will want to incorporate that on the inside of the house."
In many cases, folks are cutting corners in bedrooms to add space to family rooms, kitchens, and home offices, "We're seeing master bedrooms being cut down by four or five square feet and using that extra footage in the family room," Masling said, "Why waste space that will probably not be used nearly as much as a family room?"
While bedrooms are being pared down, the kitchen and great room combinations are getting bigger and bigger, with many designs that incorporate a huge kitchen with an island or bar area and a great room that opens out onto a covered porch, which is often as carefully designed and decorated as the interior home space, These giant spaces are designed for entertaining, for having folks over to visit, to eat, to chat, and simply for enjoying time at home.
New homes large and small are being designed to have plenty of usable space where family members can watch television and work at their computers, Masling noted. His company has built houses that have two or even three home offices.
Computerized monitoring has also become a standard amenity, with systems that allow homeowners to turn on lights and program air-conditioning and heating, security, and other systems from a telephone dial pad. One of the systems Masling installs is called FloodStopper, "a sensing device that is attached to all faucets in a home. If you have a leak, say behind an upstairs toilet, the leak will only spread about an eighth of an inch before it shorts off the sensor and...
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