We sent D Magazine intern, Sarah Bennett, to the Lakewood Home Tour this weekend. For those of you who didn’t attend, she recapped the tour (with pictures!) for you. A few of these photos are going in my inspiration folder (especially that colorful, modern nursery in the Coronado home). I wonder where they got that under-the-sea print above the crib? Take it away Sarah.
Last weekend’s 36th annual Home Festival and Tour showcased seven stunning homes plus J. L. Long Middle School, allowing the community to take a peek into some of Lakewood’s finest architectural beauty.
My first stop on Friday night’s Candlelight Tour was 6636 Avalon, a house featured as a bonus on Friday only. This house, built in 1927, underwent major renovations in 2008. The owner’s daughter, Leigh Peden Straughn, acted as my tour guide. The blue and white living room took my breath away with the original cabinetry and stained glass windows and artwork that had been in the family for generations, including a portrait of Straughn’s great-great-great-grandmother that was commissioned in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1862. One light fixture was a rewired kerosene lamp. With the 2008 renovations, the family transformed a screened-in porch into an extensive dark wood bar, inserted windows styled after those in Something’s Gotta Give, and an extension to the kitchen. Not to mention the newly styled deck is perfect for entertaining, complete with a gazebo and palm tree.
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Next, I made my way to 6947 Coronado, a home that owner and architect Eddie Maestri finished in time for New Year’s Eve in 2011.
“We wanted something kid-friendly,” Maestri said of his planning process. “We lived a block away at the time, and kept walking by this place and picturing it.” The house maintains a very streamlined, mid-century modern feel, yet has a family-friendly warmth throughout from the blue painting in the stairwell that depicts Maestri’s grandparents’ New Orleans home, to the dining set that was a wedding present to those same grandparents. The nursery and bedroom upstairs keep the clean, modern lines, but incorporate a calming nautical theme. One of the owners’ favorite features? The front porch, recalling a “typical traditional archetype.”
Finally, I took a look around 6903 Bob O Link, where I talked to owner Kert Platner of Times Ten Cellars. As the house’s third owner, Platner redid the interior in an Austin Stone southwest style, but did not add any extensions to the location’s “footprint.”
“We live in every square inch,” he said. The space feels very open and perfect for guests (or tour invaders) to wander in and out to the cool “oasis” the owners have created. I fell in love with the remodeled sleek and modern kitchen, which flows right in from the living room. The exterior courtyard leads visitors to the guesthouse, but not before passing a handmade fountain.
These Lakewood beauties left me feeling so inspired that now all I need is my own 1930s ranch house to remodel. I know what’s going on my Christmas list.
