White Rock Home Tour Stop Features an Updated Ranch Fit For a Creative Lifestyle
Share News:
Even though they’re both creative types, Christine and Steven Visneau had but one vision for their Dallas home.
“This is our aesthetic,” said Steven, a professional photographer. His wife, Christine, a Fashion Institute of Technology graduate, now works as a retail curator. With two such creative types, a joint project easily could have gone in multiple directions.
“Surprisingly, my wife and I have the same aesthetic,” he added. “Minimalism is absolutely something we embrace.”
So, when it was time to renovate, remodel, and add to their 1951-built house, the couple knew the look they were going for. The white walls, the sparse design, the steel accents, and the natural wood tones of their house on Hambrick Road all add up to a Southern California style.
“We say it’s a modern, boho, California bungalow,” he said.
A Key Stop on The April 20-21 White Rock Home Tour
Anyone wanting to explore their modern/boho/California look will have the opportunity to do so very soon. The Visneau home will be one of six homes presented on the annual White Rock Home Tour.
Planned for noon to 5 p.m. on April 20 and 21, the tour will showcase homes within the White Rock Lake area. The tour serves as a fundraiser for the nearby Hexter Elementary School.
Tickets are on sale for $25 now on the website. The six selected homes, all located around the White Rock Lake area, will benefit special projects at nearby Hexter Elementary School.
Deciding to Stay
The Visneau home will shine as an example of updating a home built decades earlier. After ruling out buying a larger home, the Visneaus decided staying in the house they purchased for $163,500 in 2007 was the right choice. Adding on, though, was what was going to make their 1,092-square-foot home work for two parents, two teenagers, one cat, and one dog.
The couple worked on plans for a year before starting construction in 2019 with Wiley Gilliam of Modern Craft. The Visneau home is one of two homes Gilliam built that will be featured on the 2024 home tour.
What was to be a nine-month project became a two-year endeavor. Steven thinks it was worth the wait.
“He couldn’t have built us a better home,” he said. “He builds beautiful homes.”
Their house, once a two-bedroom, one-bath, is now a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home. With the addition, the home became a square with spaces connecting easily. For example, Steven often skips the normal hallway, and darts from the new owners’ suite across the patio through the kitchen’s back door to fetch his morning coffee.
The kitchen and original bathroom retain the house’s footprint but received major updates. The home’s garage was transformed into a sunken dining room that connects to the homeowners’ office, which is flooded with natural light. The office is just one way to get to the sunny patio area designed with concrete pavers that match those in the front.
In fact, similar design elements are repeated thoughtfully throughout the home. The same steel that wraps the front entrance is repeated for the bedroom addition and bolted to the cantilevered overhang shading the patio.
Decorating With Intention
The same intention was exercised in the home’s décor. A single piece of a triptych awaits just beyond the home’s massive, custom steel front door. It was a gift from the artist that Steven has hung in other homes. But most everything within the house was selected for a specific place.
Christine and Steven chose all the furniture together, using Christine’s design and sourcing expertise to get exactly the pieces they wanted. The art, hung with Steven’s photographic eye for line of sight, is mostly “minimalist abstract art,” he said. Some of it is even his photography, and that includes his own coffee table book, “La Flaneur.”
The Visneaus’ work defines everything in their lives,” Steven said. From their daughters to their furnishings to their walls to their landscaping.
“Everything revolves around the creative life,” he said. “Zero separates us between our work and our home life. And I will say this forever. I love my house.”
