Historic home with a personality | Cool House

This morning's Cool House takes you to the Willow Historic District in Phoenix, a home with lots of personality. The homeowner, who is also an amazing designer, hopes to take you to a high-end hotel when you walk inside. It's this morning's Cool House. Today's Cool House brings us to the historic neighborhood of the Willow Historic District in central Phoenix. Beautiful place. We have Emily Yates here with us. Emily, it's nice to see you. So nice to see you. Beautiful neighborhood and really picturesque and charming. Yeah, I love the historic neighborhoods downtown. They're so conducive to just like front porch living. People walking down the sidewalk, you get to know one another. And then now inside the home, this is really unique and you have some areas that you've kept original. Yes. I mean, the ceiling is so stunning. I don't know how you could ever cover that up, but also the fireplace, you know, a lot of people will come into a historic home and rip out a lot of the old details, but I thought it was just, it had to stay. Emily, this is your home, but you designed it and you're just a very talented designer. Thank you. A few things that you wanted to point out was the ceiling. Yeah, this ceiling is absolutely incredible. It's original to the home, but like most hundred-year-old homes, they can be in really, really rough shape. So we had an artist come in and just take care of all the old paint splatter and holes and things that you find. And the other thing you did, obviously, as well, is the tile, which brings us right into the kitchen space. Yes. It was modern when you purchased the home and you still kept some of those, you know, characteristics. Yeah. I mean, the kitchen's beautiful as it was, so I just added a lot of things like wallpaper, tile details, Roman clay. Like I'm an avid restaurant goer, so I wanted my house to feel like I just stepped into a restaurant. There's beautiful tile details. There's quartzite, entry slabs, the little things like that you don't typically see in a house. Hi, Mary Sweet. You did make some changes. You said it was fairly masculine when you purchased the home. Yeah. It was just like a ceiling fan and a white ceiling. And so I wanted to make sure everywhere you turned, there was something fun to look at. So very interesting light fixture, the Roman clay border ceiling that I also carried into the walls of the bathroom. And then you also carried it over with the stars that we see in the bathroom as well. Yeah. I wanted the borders to line up with all the door openings because there are a lot in the bathroom. And so to fill up the ceiling, I just did some stars around the top. We finished our tour here in the backyard off that beautiful trellis. Emily, this is like your own secret garden. Yeah. I feel like I'm on vacation back here. We have the little entertainment area off the dining room, and then you'll see my orangery that has been turned into a chicken coop. And as you continue walking back, you'll see a two-story casita. The first floor is my design studio. The second floor is a guest room. And then as we continue on, you'll see more entertaining space. We have the pool, the hot tub, my garden beds, a sunken fire pit with a TV. There's just so much that is fit on this lot. It's just beautiful. It is like a resort right in the middle of the city. Thank you for the tour, Emily. Thanks for coming over. This is one cool house. She used every inch of that lot to make it just a beautiful sanctuary, right? She is an amazing designer to see. Thank you, Emily, for the tour of your beautiful house in the Willow Historic District. To see more Cool House, scan the QR code on your screen. And if you have a cool house we need to see, you can email us at coolhouseatfox.com. And Emily, if you want to come to my house and fix it up, let me know. I'll take the help.