Peek inside the homes of this year's contest winners!
by Eric Van Meter
photography by Tim Fuller
There are houses, and there are homes, and the difference is simple: A home bears the mark of the love that lives there.
Last fall, we asked you to share your do-it-yourself designs to show us how you transformed the ordinary rooms and yards of your houses into extraordinary spaces. What you showed us was how your love--for each other, for your families, for life--has created some of the most beautiful homes we've ever seen.
Looking through the stacks of submissions to Tucson Home's first DIY Design contest, one thing soon became clear: We'd given our judges no easy task to winnow the entries down to just a few winners. After many hours of consideration and home visits, they finally singled out the five homes featured here, all brimming with originality, personality, and style.
The Judges
Michael Albers
Design for the restored and newly reopened Fox Tucson Theatre has kept Michael Albers
busy for the past year. Albers is president of the Arizona South chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers. He
moved to Tucson six years ago to work with Dorado Designs and for the past three years has worked independently in both
commercial and residential design.
CJ Volk
Imagine color that shifts, winks, and breathes, color that's never muddy. This was the vision that inspired designer and color consultant CJ Volk to create Citron Paint, a private label brand of premium paint colors created with eight to fifteen pigments each and never a drop of black. CJ is a member of Color Marketing Group and the International Association of
Color Consultants.
Sheri Bootman
Sheri Bootman has done commercial and residential design for many years, specializing in feng shui consultation for the past year and a half. Whether working with her "design eyes or feng shui eyes," she approaches projects with a sense of energy
and the feeling of a space. Currently president elect, Sheri will assume leadership of the Arizona South chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers in October.
The Sponsors
Special thanks to the sponsors of our 1st Annual DIY Design Awards
Grand prize donated by Contents Interiors. Other generous sponsors include Copenhagen Imports, Craftsman Court Ceramics, Magellan Trading, Old Brazil, Old Pueblo Fountains & Garden Art/Fountain Center
Grand Prize
Ethnic Influences
World travels mean exotic flourishes abound
A unique vision, endless hours of work, a penchant for candles, wood, leather, stone, and luxurious fabrics, as well as an unceasing passion for each other--Chet and Heather Douglas combine these elements and an uncanny design sense to create a private world they describe as "both a visual feast for the eyes and a sanctuary for the soul."
Chet and Heather were introduced at a party, but they didn't actually go on their first date until years later. That date spun out for three weeks before finally ending with their getting married on a beach in Mexico. For a long time, they found themselves traveling constantly, slipping away to private escapes with fireplaces and candelabras and palatial bedrooms. When they bought their home two years ago, they decided that they would make it everything they'd found in their getaways...and more. Today their home reflects the adventure and romance of their first encounter and in their marriage ever since.
Design highlights
From the outside, Chet and Heather's home looks ordinary, another semi-custom house in a suburban subdivision. But walk inside and you fall into another world. Every wall bears a unique home-designed finish. Statues and objets d'art from
around the world nestle and tuck in corners and shelves. Over the sofa hangs an enormous (again, custom-designed) metal shelf glowing with dozens of lit candles that flicker in chorus with hundreds of other candles throughout the house.
From day one, Chet and Heather have shared a vision so unique that they've had to design most of their furnishings themselves, from shelves and tables down to the pillows on their bed. The interior is a sensuous meandering of intimate spaces, warm lighting, and inviting aromas that transition into a beautifully landscaped backyard by way of the living room extending onto a screened patio. The effect blends indoor and outdoor in the same kind of harmony that flows from Chet and Heather's relationship and forms the foundation of their distinctive design.
But there's more to their home than the way they've smartly filled spaces with curiosities, color, and a menagerie of texture and light. "It's this energy our house has that we've just created from having this warm, loving, wonderful, incredible, adventurous relationship," Heather says. "You walk in and you just feel this energy. I swear you can touch it."
That may sound over the top, except that our judges said the same thing. It's not just the lovingly arranged old leather books and rhythmic rows of Buddha heads (which entrance the couple's cat for hours on end). It's not just the bedroom walls painted to look like huge leather panels with colors and glazes the two created themselves. These elements are a feast for the eyes, but it's Chet and Heather's energy that creates a sanctuary for the soul.
Winner
Garden of Earthly Delights
Sowing the seeds of joy
Tucson Home editor Kathy McMahon may have put it best when she took in the gala of color surrounding Bill and Joan Usry's house: "Wow--you could see this place from an airplane." Bill created a backyard oasis as unexpected and wonderful as his love-after-loss marriage, digging through stone-filled dirt in the process. "I've busted more rocks than they have on the Georgia chain gang," he says, but his wife's appreciation makes it all worthwhile.
Bill and Joan met at a loss support group after both lost spouses of more than 40 years. They married three years ago and moved into Joan's house, rich with family heirlooms in an atmosphere that's at once comfortable and elegant. However, the yard left something to be desired, or as Bill puts it, "really left you more or less feeling like you were behind prison walls." Bill set out to create a more beautiful space for Joan to enjoy. "She's my inspiration," he explains. "I tell you the honest to goodness truth: She goes out in the garden several times a day, and there's never a day goes by--not one--that she doesn't tell me a minimum of three times how beautiful it is."
Design higlights
Bill has left the natural desert vegetation almost undisturbed, blending it with a multitude of colorful plants and flowers,
most started from seed. He estimates he dug out some 15 tons of rock before amending the soil, bedding flowers, and installing irrigation. Despite the beauty of his work, he calls himself a novice, someone who "likes piddling" and just has "a natural affinity to seeing things grow." Joan, however, calls him her master gardener, "constantly arranging, coddling, admiring his handiwork...a garden of color and beauty that is God's reward for patience."
Winner
Pieces of the Past
A market turned "museum"
Husband and wife Gary Afseth and Pat Homan found in each other an uncommonly in-common passion for saving things that others would destroy or throw away (they were on a mission to rescue seven feral cats when we contacted them about their entry). They haven't just filled their home in the spirit of preservation, the home itself--a neighborhood market abandoned after nearly a century of operation--embodies their zeal.
It took Gary and Pat more than a year to gut the market building that would become their home, pulling out termite-ridden wood, the caved-in ceiling, and rain-damaged walls and floors. When rebuilt, Gary and Pat used salvaged materials whenever possible: floors from an old bowling alley, a bookcase that once held canned goods, bricks from an old home in the neighborhood. Pat explains their choice simply: "We like to preserve things from Tucson. We hope that what we've created will stay here for people to enjoy."
Design highlights
"The Market," as Gary and Pat call their home, was exactly that, a neighborhood store dating back to at least 1910 (that's where the paper trail ends, anyway). Its last incarnation, the H & W Market, closed in 1981 when proprietress Julie Wong was killed there. Gary and Pat bought the building--sans electricity, water, or proper sewage--as "an awesome opportunity to
turn something negative into a positive." A trip through their home is a trip through Arizona's and America's past, with such treasures as a support beam from a mine in Tombstone, a 1957 Brunswick billiards table, and an amazing collection of authentic signs. The ceiling of one room is covered with them, as are the kitchen walls where Pat has hung a hand-painted Sunset Dairy Farms sign from the H & W Market itself. Last February, when Tucson's Hidden Valley Inn closed its doors, Gary and Pat were there to pick up two more signs, along with a penny scale, a poster, and other historic treasures.
Winner
A Family Affair
All gather 'round in this kitchen's comfortable charm
A plaque hangs in the Dwans' entryway: "Home is where your story begins." The simple sentiment captures the essence of Thom and Jeanne Dwan's objectives when planning their custom home. "I want my home to be aesthetically pleasing, but it's important that it work for our family and not just be like a model home," Jeanne explains. With that vision in mind, the couple created the floor plan for a home that would be a refuge for family--a place with spaces that embrace each room's use--and then designed the interior and exterior spaces down to the last detail to balance polish and practicality.
Keeping their focus on family, the Dwans designed their kitchen, family room, and breakfast nook as one large open space. "I had a house before where the kitchen was completely separate--I didn't like that feeling of being isolated from my family," Jeanne says. The great room, in turn, opens onto a patio stretching the width of the house, creating easy access to outside relaxing and dining, with inspiring views of the Santa Catalinas.
Design highlights
The heart of the Dwans' home beats steadily in its kitchen. "It's the room where we spend most of our time together, so it was important for it to be laid out well for the way we live," Jeanne explains. For example, the Dwans also love to entertain. "I didn't want my guests to see the mess I usually make in the kitchen," Jeanne laughs. A butler's pantry presented the perfect solution, creating an easy flow from the formal dining and living rooms into the kitchen
while providing a space where Jeanne can display the dishes and trays collected for more than 20 years (a habit she says
is either a fetish or an illness). In addition to these passive functions, the butler's pantry makes for a perfect serving station when mixing drinks or pouring wine for guests.
Winner
Art Everywhere You Look
Who says paint belongs on canvas?
Judy O'Toole-Freel and her husband Mirle Freel Jr. are both artists, but while Mirle mostly keeps his paint to conventional canvas, Judy does not. Instead, she's made her home a canvas, bringing it to life with bold color, whimsical designs, and irrepressible spontaneity.
Judy's creations generally aren't planned out in any detail, so her goal in design is simply to express each idea authentically as it arrives. "I'll go into a room maybe three, four, five times over a couple of months," she says, "then I'll wait for inspiration. When it comes together, it comes together with one idea. Then that combination of color and shape and form start talkingto me, and that verse, that communication, lets me flow from one wall to another. I never really know what to expect. There's always an element of surprise."
Design highlights
The most stunning element of Judy's design is her love of color, which can be traced, in
part, to her Fuch's dystrophy, a disease that degenerates and destroys the cornea. "I really sense the need for color as things get a little dimmer," she explains. "I search for it. It inspires me."
Like her palette, Judy's designs evolve spontaneously. Bright pinks and oranges refuse to stay on the walls and snake onto the ceilings. Geometric checkerboards and overlapping triangles and circles morph into Picasso-like figures and flowers. Organic forms--swirls and puddles and undulating waves--form the backdrop for pinwheel daisies and untamable tulips.
"You have to be fearless," Judy says. "When you look at wildflowers, you see every mixture of color, and it's partly the spontaneity that makes it fun, that feeling when things work out that you never expect possibly could. For me, when line, shape, and color come together in my mind in a way that makes me exuberant, it's like a conversation of beauty."