Shaking It Up on Shook: a Home for Those Who Hate Contemporary

Like some trees around your rock? Then you’ll want to check out this one of a kind contemporary home on one of our favorite East Dallas streets: Shook. We usually get all shook up over anything on the street because we love the topography, but once we saw inside this beauty with all of her custom finishes, we were hooked. We call it the contemporary home for those who are anti-contemporary.

Or love at first shake.

From the inception, 7119 Shook was designed to be a contemporary house for people who don’t like contemporary, according to the builder, David Morr.

“The idea was to soften the cold feeling that a lot of contemporary houses present,” he said via email. “This was achieved by utilizing some angled walls and linear detailing, along with an imaginative floor plan.  Most fans of contemporary design also like modern art, so I designed large spaces for oversized art, including walls for 2-story tall pieces.”

No kidding: even the master bath has a place for large art: the window at the tub was raised to allow for this.  Speaking of art, the entire house was created to be an artistic statement, from the unusual exterior window treatment and hand-cut stonework to the upstairs catwalk leading to the game room.  And Morr is king of dual-use spaces, something I just love to see in new homes.

“I also designed an open pantry in the kitchen area with cabinets for food storage, but the area can also be used as a small office with a knee space for computer use.”

And while listed houses almost always carry the descriptor “great for entertaining”, this house actually is. It can handle a large group of people with open common areas and circular flow patterns. The raised entry and sunken master bedroom take advantage of the slope of the lot to give the house a dramatic look, mimicking the lot’s topography.

“To make sure the house isn’t an energy hog, I limited the use of windows on the west side, used a reflective roof material, and installed LED lighting.  Four A/C units allow selective cooling,” says Morr.

David tells me he started out in 1990 buying and remodeling houses on the M-Streets, along with a couple of larger projects in Lakewood.  He then went to work for the largest custom home builder in Preston Hollow, and just finished a 12-year stint with them.  The Shook project was the birth of David Morr Custom Homes, but another builder made David an offer he could not refuse, so Shook is a sturdy stand-alone project.

“Someday, I’m sure I’ll be on my own again,” he says.

The home squeezes five bedrooms into just under 5000 square feet (4481), with five full baths. There is no powder. The lot is .20 of an acre, less than a quarter acre heavily treed. The open kitchen has rift-cut oak cabinets, quartz counters, Thermador appliances and that open concept kitchen pantry with desk area. The family room has Isokern fireplace & built-ins. The master suite has a eye-popping 20 by 9 foot walk-in closet with built-ins and washer dryer connections just in case you’d like a set in there. (Anyone out there have this set up? Do you like?) Also there is an upstairs balcony. There are Pella aluminum-clad all wood windows, TPO reflective roof, an upstairs utility room and a fifth bedroom upstairs can also be used as a game room.

David sounds a lot like the folks at Inwood National Bank and Inwood Mortgage. A local financial institution since 1964, Inwood makes customer service job one with every single client, and makes borrowing money to obtain your dream house, well, almost a dream.

But it’s very real. As real as that hand-cut rock and the diamond mica sparkling within. Listed with Donald Wright at The Gilchrist Company, asking price is $1,349,000.