Head to The Hollywood Heights Home Tour This Weekend!

The Hollywood Heights Home Tour takes place this Friday evening and Saturday afternoon, and it’s one you don’t want to miss. I thought you’d like a sneak peek and some insight into one of the gorgeous houses on this year’s tour.

I’ve walked my many generations of dogs by this 1927 Hollywood Heights Tudor almost every day for more years than I can count. I’d never been inside it, however, so when Carol Gantt called me a few years ago and told me she was working on a new project at the corner of Cordova and Sevilla, I raced down the street to see it. I knew immediately, amid the construction chaos, that it would be magical.

Gantt is the absolute go-to construction consultant and designer in Dallas for historic homes. She knows how to successfully navigate the often onerous conservation district rules and bring these beautiful old homes into this century with appropriate updates, clever solutions to daunting obstacles, and, most importantly, consummate grace.

It is not an easy task, and the challenges are 10-fold when working in a conservation district. But the owners, Chuck and Sandy Hintze, were the perfect clients. They wanted a home that had not yet been remodeled because they had their own ideas and were not afraid of a gut and redo.

“All it needed was love,” Sandy said.

“Working in a conservation district is more of a puzzle,” Gantt said. This house was especially challenging because it’s on a corner, and there is another set of codes for corner homes.”

The corner is counted as a front facade, so it cannot change. This means Gantt could not change the front, the side facing the street, or the first 25 feet on the opposite side. And she had to turn an attic into a second floor with two bedrooms, an office, and a bathroom!

“There was only one place I could raise the roof on the far back of the neighbors’ side, Gantt said. “Figuring out how to get it cooled and heated up there was also challenging.
The city regulates ceiling height and how much a ceiling can be vaulted. It was very much a math problem. There is a certain percentage of area that has to be 7 feet tall. We had to figure out percentages, and it is super complicated.”

The kitchen was another challenge because the windows are on the street-facing side, allowing for no changes. The sink is in front of the window.

“We made it look like a piece of furniture, so you did not see the back of a cabinet from the street,” Gantt said.

Chuck salvaged part of the tree from the front yard that had to be removed and had live-edge shelves created above the wet bar tucked under the staircase on one side of the kitchen.

Gantt worked with interior designer Gillian Blair of Tête-à-tête in Austin.

“This concept was for the house to look custom, collected, and unique to Chuck and Sandy,” Blair said. “We spent a lot of time talking to them to understand their style. Everything had a little something to it, unique detailing, and things that don’t match on purpose.”

Take the island pendants, for instance. Sandy liked all the selections. So they leaned into it and used them all instead of making the lighting uniform.

Sandy and Chuck were keen to have a house that looked like it did not come together all at once but rather over many years of collecting. Sandy especially did not want the second floor to look like a finished-out second story. “It’s an attic,” she said. “It’s meant to look pieced together over time.”

The attic bathroom is one you’ll be posting on Instagram. The original kitchen farmhouse sink was repurposed here, and the flooring was tied into the tilework in an eclectic, charming, and inspiring manner.

“We were not rigorous about rules,” Blair said. “We all had fun with it. It is a truly personalized home.”

The Hollywood Heights Home Tour has always been a source of design inspiration and insight into how to live beautifully in historic homes. I’ve attended all the tours and can safely say this year’s tour is one of the best.

Purchase tickets for the 29th Annual Hollywood Heights Home Tour here.