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Houzz Tour: Midcentury Modern Home With a Treehouse Vibe
A design-build team makes a Texas home more functional while embracing its midcentury design roots
This unique 1960 home in a suburb of San Antonio, Texas, was designed by architect Robert Harris for Bernard Lifshutz, a prominent San Antonio real estate developer, civil rights activist and historic preservationist. The home changed hands several times over the years, and with each renovation, the original midcentury modern features were stripped away a bit more.
The current owners, who are big fans of midcentury design, contacted Jana Valdez of Haven Design and Construction after seeing one of the company’s projects online. They wanted to improve the home’s layout, including making changes to the kitchen and primary suite, and resurrect the home’s midcentury features. “They called us pretty quickly after purchasing the house because they knew immediately that they needed a solution for the primary closets being in the main hallway of the house, and they really wanted a walk-in pantry in the kitchen,” Valdez says.
The current owners, who are big fans of midcentury design, contacted Jana Valdez of Haven Design and Construction after seeing one of the company’s projects online. They wanted to improve the home’s layout, including making changes to the kitchen and primary suite, and resurrect the home’s midcentury features. “They called us pretty quickly after purchasing the house because they knew immediately that they needed a solution for the primary closets being in the main hallway of the house, and they really wanted a walk-in pantry in the kitchen,” Valdez says.
Before: The home’s living room had the original wood paneling, floor-level built-in bookcases, stone floor and large picture windows, all of which the Haven Design team opted to keep because of their midcentury feel.
After: The team left the living room mostly intact and embellished the original limestone flooring and wood paneling and built-in bookcases with new midcentury furnishings, art and yellow accents. They kept the ceiling beams painted white for a bright contrast to the wood features. The steel beams at one point were wrapped in a wood veneer; a later owner removed the veneer and painted them white, Valdez says.
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Views from the large living room windows make the cantilevered space feel like a treehouse. Valdez used Sherwin-Williams’ Shoji White paint throughout the house.
Before: Valdez says rejiggering the home’s layout to make it more functional for the current owners was one of the biggest challenges. Much of the team’s focus was on the primary suite and adjacent kitchen, which had a large breakfast area that backed up to the primary bath and adjoined the main hallway. The primary suite, the second rectangle from the left in this “before” floor plan, was ultimately reconfigured, along with the hallway and kitchen. A detached guesthouse is at the lower right.
After: Reworking the large breakfast area freed up space for a new walk-in pantry and created a more space-efficient breakfast room with a built-in walnut banquette. Redesigning this area also gave the team the space to create a new main hallway to the new primary suite and a walk-in closet with skylights. The former guesthouse was attached to the main house to provide an additional bedroom and bathroom, which added about 80 square feet to the original floor plan.
This is the new banquette in the kitchen’s breakfast area, created when the old large breakfast area was divided up. The cozy spot is highlighted by a geometric wood wall and a walnut bench with storage and a comfy cushion, tied together with midcentury colors and furnishings.
Here’s a view through the kitchen toward the new breakfast area. The new pantry is through the open doorway on the right, just before the banquette. The kitchen had been remodeled by previous owners fairly recently, so the team decided to keep most of the existing elements. They did install new quartz countertops and new plumbing and lighting fixtures, along with unique cabinet hardware to boost the midcentury modern vibe.
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Before: Previously, the kitchen had gray countertops and there was an island in the middle. The former homeowner had a fondness for French decor, Valdez says, including the ornate chandelier seen here. “We removed the French-style light fixtures and replaced them with midcentury-modern-style fixtures,” she says.
After: Standing at the kitchen sink amid dramatic architecture provides views overlooking the home’s former atrium and the outdoors, with ample natural light from numerous windows and glass doors. An enclosed glass atrium with plants and a tree was removed during a previous remodel. A stairwell is located there now; you can catch a glimpse of the stairway rail just beyond the sink.
Before: The area beyond the kitchen has always benefited from ample natural light, thanks to numerous windows that look onto the tree canopy outside.
After: This is the stairway that replaced the atrium during a previous remodel. The stairs lead to a walkout basement, which is adjacent to a small cave under the home that can be entered through a door in the mechanical room. “It’s a natural cave that existed when the house was constructed. It’s fairly common to have these underground stone cavities in this area of San Antonio called Terrell Hills,” Valdez says.
Before: Previous remodelers gave the kitchen gray countertops and a hexagonal-tile backsplash on the range wall.
After: The team kept the range hood and installed new quartz counters and new walnut cabinetry, including a panelized refrigerator — a warm balance to the rest of the kitchen’s white tones. They replaced the gray hex-tile backsplash with midcentury-appropriate geometric tiles, which coordinate better with the limestone floor and tie in with the geometric wood wall in the breakfast area, as well as a new bar in the dining room.
Here’s the new bar with cabinetry, a gold toekick and diamond-shaped gold hardware that ties in with some of the kitchen’s hardware. The designers added a marble geometric-shaped tile backsplash that matches the backsplash in the kitchen.
The dining area benefits from ample light in the open, airy layout. The previous homeowner installed the pewter limestone flooring throughout the home, which the designers decided to keep because they found it warm and welcoming.
Before: The old dining room had cabinets that had been whitewashed. There were numerous small drawers and drawer glides that were no longer functional.
After: The Haven team removed the old cabinets and built a tall walnut cabinet that looks like it could be original to the house.
The owners’ reproduction of a Frank Lloyd Wright floor lamp is an eye-catching feature, along with midcentury furnishings, in a seating area in this nook of the dining room. This used to be an exterior porch and was enclosed to enlarge the room.
Before: The old louvered-door primary closet was inconveniently lined up along the home’s main hallway, outside the primary suite, with skylights above. This hallway space became the new walk-in primary closet.
After: Valdez and her team relocated the home’s main hallway and transformed the skylighted space into a dream walk-in closet, with plenty of space for hanging and custom built-in storage.
Before: The primary bedroom had the same limestone flooring that runs through the house, as well as a built-in walnut dresser along the window wall.
After: The team kept the flooring and dresser and added walnut nightstands and a long upholstered wall bed, a linear feature that reflects the room’s steel ceiling beams and horizontal window.
Here’s a closer look at the new bed and the modern geometric wall art the designers chose for the primary bedroom.
Before: The primary bathroom had a dropped soffit over the shower for air conditioning ductwork, which covered up the original sloped ceiling.
An ornate screen separated the toilet from the shower.
Here’s a closer look at how the toilet was hidden behind a screen.
After: The team made the primary bathroom more functional and attractive while bringing back its historic features by removing the ducting in the soffit. “We ran the ducting through the floor to expose the midcentury modern sloped line of the bathroom ceiling. We also expanded the width of the bathroom so we could have an enclosed toilet room,” Valdez says.
Widening the space by 2 feet was challenging. It required the construction team to relocate a vertical steel column that interfered with the new layout. A new 14-foot-tall steel column that supported part of the roof trusses had to be extended through the bathroom floor into the cave below, secured by a concrete pier.
Widening the space by 2 feet was challenging. It required the construction team to relocate a vertical steel column that interfered with the new layout. A new 14-foot-tall steel column that supported part of the roof trusses had to be extended through the bathroom floor into the cave below, secured by a concrete pier.
The primary bath’s new design includes geometric wall tile, standout light fixtures and hardware and handsome cabinetry that ties in with the rest of the home. “We replaced the painted bathroom cabinets with walnut stained cabinets and tile that was more in keeping with the midcentury modern style,” Valdez says.
Before: The kids bathroom had a 4-foot bathtub and a toilet in a tight space with little room for knees.
A white vanity and large mirror sat under trapezoidal windows.
After: Valdez’s team kept the trapezoidal windows and installed an attractive new vanity in the space. It incorporated modern touches including geometric tile and mirror and wood and chrome sink fixtures. Reconfiguring the space by turning the bathtub 90 degrees allowed it to install a standard 5-foot bathtub and create more space for the toilet. The colors and fun design exemplify the home’s new look.
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House at a Glance
Who lives here: A young couple with two children
Location: Terrell Hills, a suburb of San Antonio, Texas
Size: Five bedrooms, five bathrooms
Design-build firm: Haven Design and Construction
Valdez and her husband, Armando, faced numerous challenges during the remodel. These included preserving the original radiant floor heating when moving interior walls, relocating a larger vertical steel column — which involved a cave beneath the house — and rerouting some of the home’s ductwork. “Despite the unconventional challenges, it was a great honor and a great responsibility to make sure to honor this San Antonio midcentury modern home’s original character and architecture and to restore as much of that original character as we possibly could during the renovation and redesign,” Valdez says.
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