Brooke Moser has always known 1234 Lausanne Ave. wouldn’t be her forever home. She’s a designer and her husband, Jason, works in commercial real estate. They like buying fixer-uppers, renovating, and living in them for a while before they move on. “We just enjoy a project,” she says.
The Mosers bought the 1926 Spanish Revival in 2014. Brooke Moser was pregnant with the couple’s second child, another daughter, and they moved into Jason’s parents’ home while they spent five months renovating the entire property.
They took the house down to its studs, listing agent Jason Saucedo says. It was too dark and rustic. There were lots of orange tones and a “bad porch beige,” Moser says. The layout wasn’t great either, with a huge front yard and tiny back, a small kitchen, and no downstairs primary suite.
Despite its oddities, the property had potential. “Let’s make this property work for us,” the Mosers decided. They fenced in the entire front yard, expanding their outdoor living area, and redid the entryway. Inside, they expanded the kitchen and converted the downstairs guest suite and a sunroom into a massive primary suite. The house had “perfect floorplan for us to tweak those two areas to make it just more of a modern family lifestyle,” she says.
“They really just brought it back to that true Spanish Contemporary feeling versus that that Old World, heavy, rustic Spanish style,” Saucedo says.
Because she was pregnant—they moved into the house just five weeks after their daughter was born—Moser says she was “under the gun” to make decisions quickly. This was a blessing, though, because she didn’t have time to overthink the details, opting for timeless features anyone could love.
She did, however, second guess the house’s original terracotta tile, which is featured throughout the property. Moser considered ripping it all out in the living room. The whole house was that terracotta color, which bothered her. “I was like, ‘get rid of all of this,’” Moser says. “Get rid of all of this orange and beige.”
However, once they started to brighten the space—they installed bright-white level 5, museum finish drywall and painted over the original box beams—she changed her mind. She wanted to keep the home’s Spanish vibe and decided to show off those features. Now the tile is one of her favorite details in the house. “I want to put this in my next house.”
That Spanish architecture was a big draw when the couple were home-shopping back in 2014.
“It just has so much charm that you just can’t really replicate,” Moser says. There aren’t a lot of Spanish-style homes in Dallas either, Saucedo says, especially among the winding “collection of character homes” in Kessler Park. Plus, it has an Old Hollywood glamor, he says, with its terracotta barrel tile roof, stucco façade, big oak trees, and agave plants.
The family has lived in the house for nearly eight years while raising their two daughters, but Moser recently got the bug to move on and transform a new home. It’ll be hard, though, to leave the home they so painstakingly restored, Moser says. “It’s a very happy home.”
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