- Franklin is, it's a small town.
It's not numbers-wise anymore.
But the quaint nature of the downtown area
has been preserved.
It's peaceful.
(upbeat music)
Dorinda and I have lived all our lives in the south.
- My father bought this property in 1946
when he came back from serving in World War II.
- This was her dad's farm.
Early on after we met, Dorinda said,
hey Brant, let's go out walk on the farm for a bit.
And she pointed down and said,
I'm gonna build my dream home here.
- I built this house in my head for 40 years.
Decorated it, planned it.
I wanted it to be a home where we would have
a lot of cousins, and relatives,
and friends coming in and out of the house.
- At our age most people are thinking about downsizing.
Well, we upsized.
We had already downsized when the kids moved out
and went on to their careers, but this was the dream.
That place where we could entertain,
and kinda ramble around,
and look at the beautiful sunset to the west.
- Houzz was invaluable to us, with ideas.
So I thought, I bet I can find an architect on Houzz.
Really great to have the reviews.
Figure out that it was somebody we could work with
and who would be a good communicator.
- Bill and Christian listened to our vision.
- Every client that we have we tell them,
if you're not on Houzz get on Houzz, create an ideabook.
- She would share images, and I was like, got it,
I know exactly how she wants it to feel,
I know how she wants it to look.
- The thing that was the most important to me
was this great room.
I wanted it to have a good flow
and be good for entertaining.
It was important that the kitchen be part of that
so that I would always be included
with whatever was going on.
I also wanted a lot of light and I wanted good circulation.
- So there's not a lot of walls
when you have these big wide open spaces
with all this natural light and these doors
you don't have a ton of wall space.
So you don't really have a place to hang artwork
like in a traditional home.
Our solution to that was to provide dimension
with the trim work and on the coffered ceiling
as much as we could.
- I didn't even know what a coffered ceiling was
when this whole process started.
- It's beautiful work, and it's consistent
with all of the different trim in the room.
I want people to come here and be comfortable.
(calm music)
- Dorinda wanted this space to entertain 12
at any day of the week.
And space planning for 12 is a tall order.
It really is.
When you think about the scale and still being able
to kind of walk around these pieces of furniture.
- The sofas and the chairs are very cushy.
They're the kinds that you curl up in.
The chairs that are by the fireplace rock
and you kinda sink into them.
And just feel like a big hug.
- With Dorinda's ideabook I could definitely
tell that she had a transitional style.
She preferred grays and transitional kind of patterns.
Different elements like metals and woods.
- The great room fireplace, we looked at
a couple options with the mantel.
It could've been stone, or it could've been
a heavy timber piece that's non-combustible.
But Dorinda really wanted a stained wood mantel.
So if you have a wood mantel and it's combustible
it has to be a certain distance
from the top of the fire opening.
So the mantel had to move up, the bigger the fireplace got.
That was obviously a big focal point,
book ended by the tile backsplash in the kitchen.
We wanted those two elements to really pop.
She didn't want a separate formal dining room,
she wanted the built-in banquet for all of her guests.
So having that area tied to the kitchen
was really important to her.
- [Dorinda] I found a table on Houzz as part of my ideabook.
- A walnut live edge, walnut wood table.
- [Dorinda] I wanted to have a table that was
large enough to at least sit 12.
I can actually get probably 14 people around that table.
- It's the biggest table I think I've ever
installed at a client's house.
It's I think 10 feet tall, 10 feet long.
- We provided deep drawers on either end of the banquet
for cookbooks and other miscellaneous things
that you may not need every day.
It was really important to Dorinda to have a baking center,
she's a big baker.
And it has a few cool features.
The toe kick of the cabinets can be pulled out
to give her a little step to kind of elevate her
while she's using the rolling pin or mixer.
The mixer's on a lift, so you don't have to
physically lift the mixer onto the counter
or have it sitting out all the time.
It can be hidden or put away when you don't wanna see it.
- All of my baking sheets are right there,
all of my baking tools are right there.
So I'm pretty delighted with that baking center.
We put in a lot of drawers.
We don't have a ton of cabinets
'cause drawers work much better
than trying to fish for things
in the back of the cabinet.
- [Jennifer] Dorinda liked
the marble look of countertops but...
- I don't like the upkeep with marble,
I don't like the expense of marble,
- [Jennifer] So we went with the quartz product
that has that marble look,
so you still get that veining and that striation,
but you don't have to deal with some of the upkeep issues.
- We've used that pretty much all over the house,
and love it.
- [Jennifer] One of our most popular pictures
on Houzz is the keeping room.
- [Brant] Which is the small sitting room off the kitchen.
- It's lovely to sit in that space
in front of the fire in the winter.
Or in the evening sometimes we'll sit
and have a drink looking outside through the big doors.
It's just lovely.
- We did a tile surround on the fireplace below
and then shiplap above, so it has a little bit
of a farmhouse feel and kind of
a nod to the adjacent countryside.
- So the space that Brant and Dorinda live in
on a daily basis is a smaller portion
of the overall size of the house.
- We don't have to go upstairs
for anything in our daily lives.
- We kept the master suite and the master bathroom
on the lower level, so they don't have to
go up and down the steps.
When you go into the bedroom
you can turn to the bathroom.
And they have his and hers sinks,
and then they have a curbless shower.
Should they ever be in a wheelchair
they can have ease of access there
without having to go over a threshold or a curb.
- In terms of creating that separation
between the public and the private spaces
that aren't used all the time, like the extra bedrooms
for family and friends, Dorinda had one of her
wishlist items was to create a hidden stairwell.
The stairwell is literally hidden behind a door
that's hidden in the trim.
We tucked that up nice and neatly behind the fireplace.
And designed the trim so you really can't tell
unless you've been told that there's a door behind the wall
and that you can go up behind the fireplace.
- Upstairs we've got two bedrooms with two bathrooms.
As well as a gallery.
So it's kind of a living area up in the upstairs,
so that when our daughters come and stay,
or friends come to stay, if they want to stay up
later than what we wanna stay up
they can watch TV, or read a book, or whatever.
We were looking to do the exterior with stone,
but the cost of stone is pretty expensive.
So we decided to go with another option
that the builder recommended,
which was to put a wash over brick.
And on Houzz I kept looking for that option
and then I found the picture of what I wanted.
The color of the brick, the color of the wash,
how much wash to put on it.
And I gave that picture to the builder,
and I said, this is exactly what I want.
- Knowing Dorinda's backstory and that
this has always been her dream,
to actually see it come to life for one thing.
But then to also have it be what she expected
and hoped for is just unbelievable.
- So much better than what I ever thought it could be.
- We're gonna be here for the rest of our lives.
And it's the kind of place where Dorinda says,
I'll leave this house feet-first.
(upbeat music)