See You in the Cocktail Room: If You Have One Open House to See This Weekend, This is It

17412 Pauma Valley open today from 12 to 4 pm! $1,899,900.

This is such a Mad Men-style house that I almost cannot believe it was built as recently as 1982. Maybe it was an early 80’s prototype of a very groovy, sixties-type house. It has everything – formals, great gourmet kitchen, more storage than Fort Knox, five fireplaces, sauna, security and a panic room, covered porches, his and her offices and master baths. Mad Men would have eaten this house up like an olive in their martini, especially the “Cocktail room”

But tell me, who the heck has a COCKTAIL room? That is so 1965!

17412 Pauma Valley has a “cocktail room” and a whole lot more stuffed into 8363 square feet. Built on a large, sprawling creek-side lot at the end of a cul de sac in Brent Tree, the location is primo Bent Tree North where these ’80’s homes are rich, lovely and selling. In the early 1980’s, when this area was being developed, creative architects and builders were looking north to the raw land available where they could spread their wings and house girth, much the way we look at Frisco and beyond.

Do you recall a restaurant named Cathy’s Wok? Well, Catherine Liu is the owner of this house. The former author and restaurateur and her late husband, Charles Liu, bought Pauma Valley from another name you will recall, Sherwood Blount. In fact, this was the home Blount built precisely with the purpose of entertaining folks and enjoying those SMU football games. By the way, Sherwood’s daughter is now an agent with Dave Perry-Miller, Shannon Blount.

Charles Liu, Catherine’s late husband, also founded the non profit New Hope of China, which is dedicated to helping improve the educational and social-economical well being of impoverished children in his native country.

Locally renown architect Ed Rawls designed a Hill Country style with five bedrooms, seven and a half baths, completely ahead of its time with softest contemporary overlays and enough stone to deplete a quarry on the exterior and interior walls. The home is nestled in charming woods and perched on a Rock Bluff overlooking a shared private pond stocked with Bass, Catfish, Perch… and beautiful large Koi fish!

The builder was Dale Clark, of Dale Clark Homes, Inc., who built more than 400 high end meticulously custom homes in Dallas. His father was the legendary developer Warren Clark. Dale is now the president of Warren Clark Development. If you lived in Dallas in the 1980’s, you knew of Dale Clark homes. His signature was huge, elegant homes built close to greenbelts.

The landscape Architect was Howard Garrett, and the landscape design of this lot was once praised by Stanley Marcus in the book, Landscaping Design-Texas Style. Listed by Jacqui Bloomquist, who seems to be selling everything on the Bent Tree block these days.