棲居美學9 房屋參觀 | 聖巴巴拉葡萄酒之鄉的多彩家庭農場

Hi, Homeworthy, I'm Maggie Clancy. Welcome to my home in Santa Anaz. Come take a look around. We're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. Hi, I'm Maggie Clancy, and I'm an interior designer. And welcome to my home in Santa Anaz, California. This house was formerly an art gallery in the middle of wine country in Santa Anaz, California. And when we walked in, all of the art was still in the gallery. And it was just a big open space with gross old carpet and some pretty funky cool art. But we had to kind of see the vision of, hey, we're looking for a home, for a house. How are we going to put up walls? What are we going to do? And we saw the vision. So we jumped at the chance to buy this house and go through a year's long renovation to make this gorgeous getaway for our family. This house sits on 10 acres in a lovely gated community in Santa Anaz. And there's a ranch hand's house here. Our ranch hand is incredible. And he and his family live here full time and take care of the animals when we're not here. Well, since we were renovating for so many years, we decided we need a reason to be coming up here other than just checking on tile and wood flooring and everything else. So we started building out the farm. We started with two goats and then we got two donkeys as their protector animals. And as soon as we introduced a boy goat, we immediately started having lots of baby goats. And we're now up to 27 goats. So we've got 27 goats, 11 chickens, two donkeys, a couple of ducks and a few hives full of bees. Welcome to our living room. This is designed for maximum comfort. You can fit a million people on this couch, snuggle up multiple people in each of these big chairs and really just get cozy. This is the place where we like to hang out, watch TV, have our morning coffee and just chill because it kind of gives us the perfect view to outside in the garden. From here, you can see what the weather is looking like, what animals are awake, what's happening with the day before you're ready to go outside and start it. So I'm big into nooks and benches. The word nook came up probably a thousand times when we were renovating this house. And it was really just about places to grab a book and be able to sit or just sit and stare out the window. So a lot of these built in benches are everywhere throughout the house. This one's one of my favorites because it was the first piece of millwork I got to design with our incredible team that was working on the house. I really wanted bookshelves to frame out this gorgeous window looking outside. When we bought this place and it was a gallery, this was like a weird offshoot room that wasn't part of the gallery. And what we didn't know, we probably should have asked more questions, was that it wasn't completely finished. So we ended up having to tear everything out. The walls were insulated with hay. It's the country. So we put in real insulation, poured a foundation and turned it into the living room. And it gave us this great open space from the kitchen all the way in. But I really needed a space to showcase all the knickknacks and all the tchotchkes and all the collectibles I was kind of picking up along the way. So these shelves were the perfect way to do that. We've got vases. All this stuff gets grabbed and moved as we need it. So if we're going outside for dinner and we want to do it by candlelight, everyone runs around and grabs all my candlesticks. And we'll grab the candles and fill them in. If the thermoses are less functional, you could use them if you want to. But somewhere on the way, I decided collecting thermoses was an interesting idea. So there you have it. Again, sometimes it's just about finding those things that are colorful, that speak to you, that make you smile. And that kind of gave me the camping vibe that I wanted in here. Nothing's too precious. Nothing is breakable. You know, vintage marbles and the old checker game and a ton of books. And again, more thermoses. But really just sitting in here and throwing these windows open and reading a book and having your morning coffee or tea is the happiest way to start the day. As we were finding art pieces in and around the property, we also had to go through the barn. And at one point, this was a show pony barn. I don't know what was going on here. They tried a lot of things. I get it. It's fun. You've got the space for it. Why not? But we found all this horse tack stuff within the barn. And most of it was old and couldn't be used. But I found these incredible horse hooks. And I thought, what a great way. I'm never going to have real horses on this barn. But what a great way to bring in, again, a bit of a history. I love the patina on them. It kind of speaks to the fact that we also picked brass with an unlacquered finish to kind of age over time for the rest of the fixtures in the house. So this really tied it in. And it's a great spot to hang all these cozy blankets. So it wasn't until a couple months before we moved in that I realized this room was the least colorful room. And I started to panic. Here I was kind of saying, I want Little House on the Prairie, but on acid. I want to kind of funk it up a little bit. And I was like, oh, I definitely bought a white couch and beige chairs. So in came the fun stuff. Obviously the accessories and the blankets. But we had these cushions custom made to kind of bring in a little bit of the color. And I found this incredible rug that will last a million years because it's an indoor-outdoor rug. Which is my favorite tip for anyone with donkeys or kids or both. Is get something that's going to stand up. Rugs are not fun to clean. So if you have a rug that's built in, ready to go and handle the wear and tear, you're already ahead of the game. So this rug really makes me happy and brings in my favorite of the signature colors of the house, the yellow. Which we also see over here with our fireplace. This guy was a fun addition. I scoured forever for the vintage version. But we needed a piece of kind of California design history. And mom fireplaces have been around forever. And they do such amazing work. So we were able to pick out the custom color we wanted for this one for them to send it to us and fabricate it from scratch. And I love her. As soon as the weather gets a little bit chilly. She's on all day. I think one of our favorite things about being here is when you throw everybody outside to see what they come back with. So sometimes it's a handful of tomatoes off the vine. Sometimes it's pea pods. Lately it's been artichokes. We're deep into artichoke season. And we eat as many artichokes as we can. But you can only eat so many artichokes. And so I usually wait until they bloom and I'll pop them in here. I love them when they actually flower. It's the most gorgeous, bright, incredible purple color. And the bees really, really, really love the artichokes. So every once in a while I'll steal one from the bees and bring it inside. But for the most part we kind of let everything go wild. So everyone can enjoy what they need. Welcome to the kitchen. Dining table. All the things. We wanted a table that was going to fit all the people that we were going to have stay with us here. And so another bench. I love a bench in the nook. We built this huge long bench all along this back beautiful window. This is actually the only original window we kept in the house. I just loved it. I didn't know why it was here. Every other window was kind of garbage. But this one gives us such a great view. You'll be sitting here having breakfast or lunch or dinner and turn around. And there will be wild cows outside just mooing and roaming and following their way. We have a neighbor who walks his dog on his golf cart. We've got a bunch of people on horses and horse trails throughout the neighborhood. So it's a great kind of huge viewing window to see what's happening in the neighborhood every day. These chairs were a classic Craigslist find. Sometimes you've got to search high and low. And sometimes you've got to go high and low. I'm a big fan of mixing new and vintage. And sort of fancier pieces with really rustic things. I've had a few people walk in and be like, I think my parents had those chairs in the 80s. And I'm like, cool, love it. The 80s are not necessarily known for great design. But again, little house on acid. Let's play with it. So we mixed these in. When we talked about the millwork in the living room, it kind of brings out the striped feeling of the slats, the stripe on the rug, everything else. So I love something with some bars coming in and out. And we did it again with the more modern barstools as well. I really just wanted kind of themes and textures and patterns to be repeated throughout the space to make it more cohesive. But you can take a super modern dining table and put those funky old Craigslist chairs to work. And really, it's a comfortable chair. That should be your number one priority for a dining room that you want people to stay and play at. I'll have my Mahjong friends up here and we'll play all day at this table. And no one's like, oh, it's not comfy. Everyone's chill and happy and drinking wine. This light fixture is vintage. I wanted to bring in some wicker and some woven and some basket weaves throughout the house. And this one really, really spoke to me. I am not a fan of can lights. And sort of looked at the electrician who was in shock and said minimum, minimum, minimum possible for can lights. Everything else I wanted to be soft, glowy. So also in a kitchen, obviously you need task lighting to do the job and everything else. But I love a lamp and I love art in the kitchen. This piece is incredible because it shows a bunch of cows in a beautiful field. Again, right next to the window where we usually can see some cows walking by. Her name is Han Chow. She lives in Texas, which is where I'm from originally. And it's old photographs and postcards. It's all hand-embroidered, which is incredible. And over there I've got another one by the same artist. And I think it really captures the whimsy and the fun of this house. Let's move into the kitchen. Welcome to the kitchen. This is where all the work happens. I love a huge island. And I wanted a slab, again, to bring in that old and new. You know, you see a lot of really bright white kitchens, especially these days. And so I went the other direction. I really wanted something that was gonna tell a story and have some fun veining and bring in some of the nature from outside inside. We went with a cabinet color called Relentless Olive. And it's not just because of all the olive trees we have growing around the property. It's also because that's my oldest daughter's name. And she is relentless. So we thought it was a perfect fit. I love that it's bright and cheery and that it kind of, again, brings a pop of color, pulls a bit from the slab and really makes the kitchen a warm, welcoming space. We do a ton, a ton, a ton of cooking here. And I've made it really possible for people to be sitting at the island, sitting at the dining room table, helping in and around here and have 10, 12, 15 people cooking at once. And it works. These lights were a fun find. Again, you need to have some kind of task lighting as you're doing your hard work. And I really liked the reeded glass, that classic kind of polythene glass look. And the brass really made me happy. So these were a good hunt and find. Again, if you start your hunt early, you can be really, really specific with your search terms. You start to hone in pretty quickly. I adore our house in L.A., but it is 120 years old and probably due for renovation there. Maybe that's our next one. But for everything that we don't get to have in Los Angeles, I made a list that I wanted to have here. We had all this space, all this room, so I got my entire wish list pretty much, including the pot-to-pot filler. Not just great for, you know, when you're boiling water, but really great for when you're making jam and it needs a quick hit of something. You can't take a hot, spattering pot of jam off of the oven, take it over there off the stove top. You need to quickly just give it a little cool down. It works wonders. I love art in the kitchen, and I love a cowgirl, and this one just made me smile. She's got kind of a Liz Taylor vibe going on. This artist is incredible, and I think we have found the perfect frame for it that's a bit vintage, a bit rustic to bring some balance to this pop of new art in the space. I wanted all the entertaining essentials to be easy to grab, so we've got extra candles and flashlights and things all in here. Again, another great shelf with these slats, so everything is movable from what we have. But I wanted to display these cookbooks because we cook so much in this house, and we do have guests come sometimes. I want people to be inspired to use what we've got growing in the garden once they bring it inside. So we keep all these here, a lot of really great veggie-forward chef-farmer kind of vibe, but a little bit of everything here just to make sure people are making the most of their time in the house. And now one of my favorite rooms in the house. Let's go see the pantry. I have an affinity for yellow, always have. It was my grandmother's favorite color, and growing up, her house was always washed in yellow, usually black-and-white checkered floor, and just fabulous, floor-to-ceiling yellow matching carpet. Very vintage, very fabulous. And I kind of wanted this to be an homage to her. She's the reason I love cooking. She's the reason I love entertaining. And she's really a huge part of the reason why we wanted to do the house like this. Life's short. You want to live it up, have fun, make the most of your time here, and paint your pantry yellow. That was it. So we went floor-to-ceiling yellow out of this pegboard, which is a nice homage to Julia Child, who spent a lot of her years in the area in Santa Barbara. If you've ever seen her kitchen set up in the Smithsonian in D.C., this was it for me. I wanted everything again to be visible so you're not digging through drawers and cabinets. You can just come in here and grab. You're going outside. Here's the bottle filler. Take the bottle with you and go hide. You're going to the store. We've got your grocery bags. You need to sift or strain or go grab eggs. Pop in here, grab it off the wall and bring it back when you're done. But I also wanted these great open shelves in addition to this pegboard to still be that same idea of making everything visible and accessible to people. This is a working pantry, so you know you can come in, grab all your glassware, make a huge pot of coffee and go, and everything's out for you. The girls have been busy in the coop, so lots of eggs to go. But yeah, I think it just brings in some warmth. We'll come in and make limeade in here with a big squeezer once the lime trees are exploding or I'll have honey straining on this countertop often. It's really, really a nice kind of addition to the kitchen space to kind of give us an extra spot to work and to bring meals together. I love this oil painting. I searched high and low for her in every vintage shop around town. It's really hard to find an old oil painting where people don't look severely depressed. She seemed equal parts like 50s housewife, a little mischievous, doesn't put up with a lot of nonsense, and I liked her whole vibe. So she came home with me, and she's our patron of the pantry. Pantry patron? It's not easy to say, but there she is. You know, in addition to all the super functional things like the cast iron that can go in or out, we also have a bunch of serving platters in and around the house. There's a few in the living room that hang out. There's this gorgeous copper guy that I found in Pasadena at one of the fleas. And these old vintage guys that I picked up in Palm Springs. When we're having picnics outside, they keep all the bugs and the critters away from whatever dish is underneath. So my husband and I, we've got two little girls. We have been coming up to this valley for years and years since we lived in L.A. But we do still live in L.A. And this was always just a weekend away or a wedding or wine tasting with friends. When we decided we wanted to do this, we said, oh,that's exactly where we want to be. So we looked around for a place where we knew that our kids could kind of run wild and free. They don't bring iPads up here. We have TVs, and we have a theater, so we do watch some screens. But they don't even think about doing anything else. They come here, and we're either chilling inside, cooking, making art, running around outside or playing with the animals. And everyone else who comes to visit says the same thing. It's just that kind of away-from-the-city feeling. So we accomplished that for sure. But at the time, I don't think I totally realized how much work it was going to be. I was working another job. I was working in entertainment my entire career in Los Angeles. And it wasn't until I finished doing this house, making every single decision from the placement of the light switches all the way down that I realized this was the most creative thing I'd done in years, and I missed it. And so as soon as I finished, and I kind of looked around and realized, oh,hey, this is a functional house that's also kind of amazing, I quit that job and started studying interior design, and now I'm a full-time interior designer. And now I'll show you the primary bedroom. Welcome to the primary bedroom, home of another one of my famous nook benches. I wanted a space where once the kids are awake and all the families awake, everyone can pile on, smuggle in the morning, talk about our day, what we're going to get up to. It's nice and deep, more custom cushions. I love picking out fabric for cushions like this because you can really have fun. A little pop of purple velvet because why not? But also, again, it brings in those colors from outside. So when I talked about this artichoke's blooming, this is the exact color of what that looks like once they fully bloom and flower, and there's nothing happier. So we brought a piece of that in here along with some more of that green throughout the house. You know, sometimes budget becomes an issue when you're taking on a huge, huge project like this, and you get to the end of it and you realize, oh,I don't have stuff to hang on the walls. I thought for a while I was going to wallpaper in here, just this back wall to give it a little pop, and no one would come out to install wallpaper. We're apparently too far in the country and no one here thinks wallpaper is chic. So instead, I checked to the Internet for inspiration. I pulled the colors from in and around the house. I grabbed all the extra paint cans from our painters, and I came up with this. Just a fun little grid, piece of art to kind of hang in here. It's not precious, definitely not perfect, but it makes me smile, and it fills up the wall. So in crafting a cozy bed, I really wanted, again, to layer those linens, and this bed is another great example of mixing new with old. The bed is brand new, obviously, and this floral situation is anthropology, but I found this quilt, which was vintage, and just absolutely fell in love with it and really wanted something with a story, something that felt, again, a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll blended in. But this bed is just so incredibly comfortable and makes me happy to wake up, open up these curtains and see outside every morning. I knew I wanted this room to be kind of soft, sexy, light, glowy pink, so the walls are the palest, palest, palest pink, and that gives you room to kind of treat that as your neutral, and everything else can pop from there. I love a polka dot. Can't take it out of me. It's just in there, deep, deep inside. So again, the second I found this polka dot quilt, I was like, she's coming with me, absolutely. We have enough stripes in and around, including, you know, throw blankets and things like that. I went solid velvet on the curtains, but I thought, why not throw in some floral? These flowers really reminded me of a few things that we've got blooming around the farm, and again, it was anthropology on sale. We've got a secret tux little yoga room in our closet, but really, it's the bathroom that makes me so incredibly happy. Our very first spring in this house, we were kind of feeling overwhelmed with the renovation, and we were walking the property one day, and I just was sort of spinning, and my husband was making plans to build a tree house so that we could do something in the inner room that could be finished, and I was losing my mind, I'm going to be honest, and I heard this tiny little cheep, cheep, cheep, and I opened up this tiny little house that we had next to one of the trees by the entrance of the farm, and there was a bird inside, and all of our little babies had just hatched probably that day, and the color of the eggs was this exact robin's egg blue, so we grabbed a piece of that, it was all inspiration, and I thought I can make something like that, so mixing this gorgeous colorful floor and these beautiful mat tiles, all the floors in the bathrooms are heated with radiant heating, so you're never uncomfortable getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, it always feels warm and welcoming, but it gave us sort of permission to play again with some more vintage features. Obviously the tile was brand new, but I wanted a slab in here that would tell a cool story, and this viola marble was my absolute favorite find, mixing it with a back splash that's also a bit new and reflective. I didn't want a huge mirror, this isn't a place to be vain, you sort of come as you are in the country, but this sort of reflective surface gives you the hint of where a mirror should and could be. On the vanity over here, we made sure to make the back splash extra special. One of my most afforded days was deciding to template with our slab guide, so I grabbed the fabricator, I told him what I wanted to do, and I started measuring out the template, and we did this gorgeous wave going all the way through, and we extended it all the way to the end of the wall, which I think just adds a little touch of something, and again, no material wasted, no piece of slab left behind. Bathrooms are a place to have a lot of fun. I'll go show you the one that's my favorite. Let's go see the powder room. I mentioned I couldn't find anybody to come wallpaper, and it was real. I had purchased all the wallpaper. I had measured everything. I was ready to go. When I mentioned people didn't like to wallpaper here for some reason, I meant it. I had purchased all the wallpaper for this powder room and had it all in my head how I wanted it to be, and three different people showed up to remove wallpaper but not to install. Well, we don't install, so I did some Googling and some YouTubing, and I learned to install wallpaper because that's what you do when you're designing on a budget and you just want to get it done. My favorite thing about this wallpaper is it really does look hand-painted. I'm obsessed with the idea of that, but also it pulled in all these colors. You can see the yellow sort of has a floral motif without being flowers and bits of that green, and I really, really love taking the wallpaper up onto the ceiling. That was always in the plan. Wallpapering the ceiling in actuality was a bit more difficult than I thought it would be, but I figured it out. Sometimes you just got to get an extra hand and a mop handle and something else and make it work. So, yeah, I'm proud of this one as a DIY success story. This green, we decided to bring in here, too. Again, sometimes you just have buckets of paint hanging around. As soon as I saw the wallpaper in this space, I thought, okay, the Wayne Scotting can be that same green. We went with a glossier finish because I really wanted it to feel kind of saturated and fun and glossy. When it works, it works. We used it on the porch too.My little yellow sink. I mean, I don't know that I'd recommend designing a powder room around a sink, but I did, and it worked out. So whatever makes you happy. This yellow color, I thought was so cool. It was the perfect size for this room because we didn't want it to be huge, but we knew we needed a powder room in the house. So as we were kind of carving up this huge cavernous gallery space, I thought, okay, if I can make this work with a tiny little sink, let's do it. Another little touch that I love throughout the house is we play a lot of music. We always have music playing in the house. And last minute, we decided to add a speaker in the powder room. But when you walk in here to use the restroom and there's a party going on right out there in the kitchen, soft music coming in here from whatever we're playing is like the best way to just be like, oh, I'm still in the mix. This is so nice. So put speakers in your bathroom. My design style is very color forward, which you'll see throughout the house. And it kind of started slowly. You know, we were looking around and for years and years, I couldn't buy the big furniture pieces because we were still building walls and putting in plumbing and laying foundation. So I focused on knickknacks and I started collecting things from in and around the area or places we would visit, you know, treasure trove and vintage places and estate sales, just looking for things with history and with story. And the common theme in all of them was that they each had some kind of color that drew my eye. So I used that as a benchmark and as a sign post for every other decision in the house. And we also took a lot of inspiration from the colors that were growing around us. When we bought the house, it was the end of December 2020, and everything was kind of brown and dead and, you know, a little fallow. And within a month, spring greens were popping up, these gorgeous pink flowers were everywhere. All along the hillside, the poppies started popping and we thought, OK, we can play with this. So I would bring in a huge handful of stuff with my girls and we'd lay it out on the table in the casita and we'd say, ooh, that'd be a cool bathroom or that would make a fun floor. And we started pulling colors that way and I realized this is what makes me happy. I love living in a lot of color. I think no matter what your design style is or what your home style is, you should lead with things that make you happy. So if you see a color and you find yourself gravitating toward it, drench the whole place in it. Go crazy. So we extended the sort of existing house into the gallery space by quite a bit and pushed in here. The only existing staircase to get up to what was kind of a sad room situation up there was a metal spiral staircase. And we thought we could do one better. So we made a plan for these stairs and realized this is a pretty large stairwell space. We could probably make it even wider. But why do we need wide stairs? And then my genius husband said, I think we should put a slide next to the stairs. And then we did. So the really crowning joy for every child or child at heart coming into this home is that there is a slide. It's not just great for sliding. It's a really great laundry chute. When I'm doing all the sheets, I can throw them right down. Sometimes it goes super fast. I don't recommend yoga pants on the slide, but most of the time it's pretty manageable. And if it goes too fast, we've got a little cushion at the end just to catch your fall. I fell in love with this color, Southfield Green. And you're coming in from the space of the living room and the entryway and the dining room and the kitchen where the walls are a really gorgeous shade of white, but they're white. We kind of relied on the accessories and the cabinets to add the color. But the second you crossed that threshold, I wanted it to be completely color drenched. So I fell in love with Southfield Green, did it floor to ceiling knowing we've got this double-height room in here and could not be happier with how it turned out. It really helps these other pieces that we kind of collected over time. This was a find from Round Top, Texas, and one day I'll learn how to play backgammon, but it makes for a great game table. And it really just helps all the other colors pop. You know, sometimes when you find a color, even if it's a bold color, if you use it smartly, it acts like a great backdrop and it acts like a neutral, and I think that's what's happening here. And it also helps to kind of hide some things. So when you're going floor to ceiling and it's on the doors and it's on the trim and it's everywhere, including just a bookshelf. It's a normal bookshelf, right? Once you find a book that doesn't look like the others, secret door, baby. This is the office. Not a ton of work happening in here, but just enough to make a soundproof office worthwhile. You know, when you have a huge open space that you're trying to carve up, it doesn't happen often, but sometimes you have a little bit too much space. I knew I didn't need another bedroom or another bathroom or another game room, but I'd like an office every once in a while if we have to get some work done. So those kind of moments where it's a super functional room and it's not very sexy or exciting, those things you can do to make it exciting, lean into them and do them. A secret bookshelf door is the perfect way to forget about work when you're not working and to kind of surprise and delight people when they have no idea what's happening. Now let's head upstairs. This is the kids' room. You're greeted by Dave the donkey, one of my favorite, favorite little stuffed animals. The donkeys are truly the loves of my life, and I wish they could come inside the house. Unfortunately, they can't, so this guy is. But it's a great reading nook for the kids. Whoever wakes up first usually comes and hangs out out here. This is another color that we found around the property in so many saturated ways from mustard green to grass growing in spring, and I just fell in love with it, and it's super bright. It's really intense, but somehow when it's washed in this room with these gorgeous high ceilings, it's really, really calming. Catches great light in the day, feels like a warm hug at night, and all the kids sleep really soundly up here. We did two double bunk beds plus little secret beds that slide out from the trundles down below. We can squeeze a bunch of kids in here, or adults, whoever's coming to stay. They somehow got the best view in the house. I don't know why I gave that up of myself, but it's theirs. We just wanted to have fun. I found quilts that looked vintage but weren't because I needed so many of them, but I think they add a great pop of color and, again, balance to this room. My absolute favorite feature is these little sconces at each of the bunks. Whoever wants to go to bed can go to bed as late as they want to. Everyone has their own little reading light, and it's got a little switch on the side. I thought that was the perfect touch to let, hey, if one kid wants to stay up a little later and read one more chapter, they absolutely can without disturbing everybody else. So in a lot of places in the house, it looks like a normal house. These beams are a reminder of what was here first. It was super industrial. It was sort of just a barn-style gallery space, and we wanted to keep them in here just for a little touch. You know, we had a few people saying, drive all over them. Make a ceiling. But I actually like, especially with those tall bunks, that it's lofted. It helps it feel airy and cozy, and it just gives it that camp vibe that this really does kind of feel like a summer camp when it's packed with people. Come take a look at the bathroom. This bathroom was a sad white bathroom up here, and we decided to have a little pop of fun. I talked about not wasting any slab. You'll recognize this one from the primary bathroom again. We had a tiny bit left, and I didn't have a countertop in here for this vanity, so she made a return. And she works really, really well with this black and white checkered floor. This is probably the cheapest material I bought in the entire renovation, so I can't believe it's what I'm spotlighting. But again, it's not about the price. It's about the memory, the reason you're picking it, how it makes you feel. I love that it's nice and clean, gives you vintage vibes even though it's new. And we decided to run it all the way up the side of the bathtub to continue that line. The renovation process was wild. We knew we had a lot of work ahead of us because it was an art gallery, so step one was getting all the art out of this house. They were sort of like, do you want to keep any? And we let them take it and donate it to another museum. But we did start finding little bits and pieces of art all around the property. So as we were walking through to sort of see where do we need gates or fences for these animals, we found a typewriter from 1902, just carved into the side of one of the hills. We found this huge weather vane at the top of the hill that was rusted and cool and kind of chipping and all these gorgeous colors on it, and it was a piece of art apparently. And we thought, OK, they didn't take this stuff, and they said you can keep it, so we've placed it in and around the house. We've got the typewriter and the porch. The weather vane arrow is actually pointing everybody into the main house from the game room. And we just wanted bits and pieces of what it was, but it was crazy, the stuff we didn't know we were going to find. The second we cracked into a faux wall in the gallery to tear it down and build real walls for bedrooms, we found all of these letters from the former owner that he would write to these artists basically saying I love your work. I want to help you. I can be your benefactor. Let me support you. Send me pieces. What do you need? And he just really, really loved creating community of artists and of friends. And so that was sort of our guidepost for building out this house was how can we make this a place where people come and they're comfortable. So we really, really tried to keep that spirit alive of art and fun and play and you'll see a bit of that in the playroom. Sometimes you just have too much space. We knew we didn't want to demo any part of the original gallery, but I also didn't need 6,000 square feet of living space. So in came the game room. You can see we carried this Southfield green all the way into this floor. Because this gallery actually featured a lot of electronic art originally, there were probably 65 plugs in the floor of this room hiding in this disgusting old carpet. We ripped it up. We filled the holes and we decided to epoxy over the floors with that same color to kind of tie these two spaces together. So this gives us a ton of space to play, to change it as we grow, to figure out what we want to do in here. Ski ball was a must. So was pop a shot. So was pinball. This incredible machine is called a Bubble Chicks, and it's like the best version of hockey you've ever played. We really started with a couple fun finds, though. I mentioned we'd gone to Round Top in Texas, which is where my husband and I are both from originally. And it's this huge vintage fair, and you're trudging through everything. And I found the backgammon table, and then I found just the top of a pinball machine. It was completely torn to shreds, totally crumbling, and I was like, I have to have her. And everyone looked at me like I was nuts, and I was like, no, no, she's just trash, really. She's garbage. We're probably throwing her away. And I said, she's coming home with me. And then I had to figure out how to get her home. So we hired somebody to drive all of our stuff from Texas to California. She arrived in even worse shape, and I got to rehab her. So I matched all the paints. I gave her a new face frame. We put our address up here on the score. Obviously not functional, but a cool art piece that kind of ties in the rest of the game vibe. The movie theater in town closed in the pandemic. Unfortunately. And we're big movie people. So we made our own movie theater. This room is a happy, dark artichoke color. That is the name of the color in here, pulling from what we've got outside. But super cozy to come in, kick your feet up. The kids will come in in the morning and watch cartoons sometimes to let us sleep in. But it gets really, really cozy and comfy at night when it's all full of people. And it's just a nice space to be able to entertain family. And last but not least is the art space. You know, I talked about bringing stuff in from outside. As we were pulling various mustard leaves and all these other things to try to get inspiration, my kids wanted to make things with them. We were making kaleidoscopes and crafts. So we knew we had to dedicate one of the original gallery stalls to an arts and crafts room. We carried in that pegboard that we did in the pantry into here to make it feel a bit more like a living space and to tie them together. And this gallery wall has kind of grown with us over time. Every time someone comes to stay, they get to add a piece to the wall. And hopefully soon it'll go all the way to the ceiling and we can keep going. But this is awesome to have all their materials out. We'll do tie-dye. They'll do watercoloring. We do fun sun prints outside with everything we find in and around the garden. And it's just a great place to kind of take a breather from all the hard work and be creative. I think if you're designing or renovating, I mean, the biggest tip feels obvious, but so many people fall into the trap. Take your time and build what you're putting into the space over time. If you go and make all your decisions in one day, it's gonna look like you walked into a store and said, I'll take that living room. Looks good. But if you're able to kind of collect pieces over time or lean into something that you've had forever and maybe give it a shine and a wax and a new coat of paint, leaning on things you already own, searching for treasures that are vintage that have a great story to tell and then peppering in the new to me is the best formula for an incredible design. You want something that feels layered and lived in and again, not like you just walked into a store and said, that's my living room. So don't be afraid to take your time. Even if you're in the throes of a terrible construction project that feels like it's never gonna end, start picking out pieces that speak to you because in the end, it's those pieces that'll help anchor the space. The thing that gives a home a soul and really makes it come alive is the personal stuff that you bring to that home, whether it's a mirror that your grandmother had in her home years and years ago or a rug you found traveling on a trip far, far away and you had to bring back and carry on. Whatever the thing is that you love that sparked something wherever you were in the world, bring it into the home, make it work in the space and build around those things. It automatically gives a sense of purpose, a sense of place, a sense of whimsy and a sense that this isn't, again, a home that just popped up overnight. It's been collected. It's been thoughtfully put together. So, yeah, I think as much as you can bring of yourself into a space, of course, looking at Instagram or Pinterest or TikTok, you can get inspiration anywhere. I'll still flip through magazines or old design books all the time because you have to kind of look and see what it is that draws you, but trust your gut and go with things that make you happy. This is the screen porch. It's where shoes go to stay. Once you've stepped outside and in the pasture, you really don't want to bring all that inside. So we found a bunch of fun things in and around town at old flea markets and depots for shoes and everything else. This was the old mail sorter at the post office in town. So we got it, brought it home with us and now she stores all of our shoes and gardening shears and everything else. This is the last of our benches because when you take your shoes off and on, you need a place to sit. But I wanted to bring in a hint of that kind of black and white classic tile, but in a more rustic, functional way into this porch. So instead of black and white, we went with these black bricks and sort of a dark gray and off cream. Gray happens to be my husband's favorite color and you may notice there is not a single stitch of gray inside the house. So the entire exterior of the house is gray. He won. These tiles, they're gray. He won. Once you get inside, it's my zone. Sorry. Bright, happy, no gray. But it had a good moment here and it gives you a spot to kind of, again, sit out here, hang out for a bit, have a drink, do happy hour if the weather's too crazy hot outside, throw on the fan. I love morning tea out here on the porch. And again, it brings out that relentless olive that we love so much. We did a lighter wash, like a 40% wash of the color and all the way up to the beams. My favorite part about this home is the way we use it. I mean, I say it every single day. I could sit in that kitchen all day long. I could putz around on the pantry and bake things and make funny concoctions and grab things from the garden and start pickling and jamming and, you know, making my honey and getting all the comb out and doing candles. There's a million things you can do, but my favorite thing about the home is that we're happy doing none of it. We're happy just being here and being in it. And again, that feeling we get when everybody's here, whether it's just my family or a house full of people and we're overflowing, the fact that everyone feels so cozy here is really the ultimate sign that we did a pretty good job. All right, let's go see the animals. You can see that there were some bored artists and residents here. And when the owner was away, the artists played, they mosaicked almost 90% of the walls around here. We've slowly chipped away at the ones that are crumbling, but it's kind of fun to save bits and pieces just as memories. All right, we've got five chickens right now in the big coop, and they're the ones who give us all of our eggs. We've got six more in the barn that are about three weeks away from moving in. So these girls are about to get some new roommates. Hi, buddy. Close this so nobody escapes. Yeah, I thought you were. Thank you, girls. You did good work. All right, we got our eggs. We got a bucket full of snacks. Let's go see those goats and those donkeys. These are the goats, and here's our donkey Guapo, just so he's not forgotten. Hey, buddy. Hi, how are you doing? How's my handsome boy? Do you want to say hi? This is Nina Simone. Goats will eat anything that's not tied down. Shirt sleeve, hat. But once you get a snack out, they'll start behaving. So as soon as we got goats, we knew we needed protector animals, and everybody recommended donkeys. We didn't know how to get donkeys, where to find donkeys, so we got on Craigslist, and lo and behold, we found a man who had two beautiful, very handsome boys on his property. He said he hadn't fed them ever. They'd never seen a doctor, and he said, I think they might want to change the scenery. If you can get them in the back of your trailer, you can have them. So we showed up. Only one of them would get in the trailer, this guy, and we brought him home, and we went back the next day, and Hefei came running. He's a little stubborn, but he figured it out eventually. We don't know if they're brothers, if they're lovers, we have no idea, but they're very, very happy here. To me, the word home means cozy. It means family. It means friends. It means partying. It means relaxing. And really, it just means being together. So to me, home is the place that you get to hang your hat at the end of the day, and leave all the troubles outside, and come in, and just be. And I'm happy and proud that this is a home where you can be. OK, home worthy. It was so nice to meet you. It was great having you here. But now you gotta go. See you next time. Thanks for watching. Be sure to go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content, shopping guides, and so much more.