When a city’s name is Watercolor, and it’s about the both tantalizingly called Emerald Coast in the Florida panhandle, you have a hunch it’s going to become a nod to stunning design. And, dare I say, kudos to city’s homeowner’s association, whose building ordinances and architectural limitations have produced a harmonious town with a like-minded style that is rife with what architect Geoff Chick and others predict Florida cracker style.
The appearance takes its cues from older fisherman’s shacks along with barns that once populated the region, also has evolved to emphasize metal roofs, big porches, double-hung windows, clapboard siding, pitched roofs, exposed rafters and picket railings and fences. It’s a design that took hold in neighboring Seaside, Florida (the Jim Carrey movie The Truman Show was shot there), also has taken on a new life by integrating sustainable, locally sourced materials for the outside structures and more sophisticated, pricier insides.
For Houston few Brad and Denise Williams, the city became the ideal place where Denise could eventually use her two decades of notes and magazine clippings to make her dream holiday home. After Chick completed his construction, Denise built the space in a very simple and clean design with blues, greens and beiges that look plucked directly from the shore.
at a Glance
Who lives here: This is a holiday home for Brad and Denise Williams.
Location: Watercolor, Florida
Size: 4,731 square feet; 4 beds (and midsize area), 4 1/2 bathrooms, plus a 1-bedroom, 1-bathroom flat
Geoff Chick & Associates
The awe-inspiring exterior has a touch galvanized roof and HardiePlank lap siding with red cedar shingles, all painted a custom soft blue color made to harmonize with all the substances. Gas lanterns, transom windows, exposed rafters on the upper tower structure and a thorough railing with a recurring X layout punctuate Watercolor’s architectural design.
The home faces a neighborhood park and backs up into the Point Washington State Forest, a massive natural preserve. The homeowners wanted the structure to connect to a above-garage apartment via an enclosed walkway so they can walk from the front of the house to the trunk without needing to go indoors.
Geoff Chick & Associates
“I wanted something clean and easy,” Denise says of this living and kitchen spaces, which she wanted to become just one giant room so everyone would feel connected.
Chairs, table: Z Gallerie; ceiling and wall paint: Iceberg, Benjamin Moore; posts and cabinet paint: White Dove, Benjamin Moore; floors: Brazilian walnut
Geoff Chick & Associates
She incorporated a beach-friendly palette with a blue glass subway tile backsplash and a coffered ceiling painted a soft blue.
Pendant lights: nickel, Circa
Geoff Chick & Associates
Denise fell in love with all the detailing of this foyer mirror, but its black and gold color didn’t fit with her theme. She added a brushed-platinum finish and picked a very simple table from Ethan Allen that would not take attention from the mirror’s detailing.
Geoff Chick & Associates
This landing area connects the main house into the garage apartment. With a door, a farmhouse sink, classic wood furniture and also a color palette of red, black and white, the design is a light departure from the rest of the home.
Geoff Chick & Associates
“The way in which the home was built, it’s contemporary but feels authentic,” Chick says. This is encouraged in the master bath, in which Carrara marble countertops, a classic chair, classic medicine bottles and silver finishes bridge new and old.
Tile: Walker Zenger; mirrors: Restoration Hardware; paint: Woodlawn Blue (cut 50 percent), Benjamin Moore; bathtub: Victoria + Albert
Geoff Chick & Associates
This view is from the third floor — that has a home theater and an office space — looking back on the second, which has a bunk room, a master suite and two guest rooms.
Footprints in Watercolor homes are tight, therefore Chick was challenged with finding a way to produce private areas. He did this by building up, making perpendicular, alternative living spaces, like a workspace near the staircase. “It’s very striking to have a vaulted, two-story space on the second floor,” notes Chick. It’s more striking to have a large, wooden, beaded chandelier.
Chandelier: Europa, Currey & Company
Geoff Chick & Associates
A display case contains bottles of sand Denise has collected from beaches all over the world for the last 30 decades.
Geoff Chick & Associates
The second-floor bunk room is meant to accommodate future grandkids. The bunks were custom made. The green door is a hundred years old and from Romania.
Geoff Chick & Associates
A sliding, distressed doorway on the next floor closes off the house into the fourth-floor tower to stop heat loss.
Geoff Chick & Associates
Brad eagerly wanted a sea view, which their lot didn’t have; Chick had to build as high up as permitted by the homeowner’s association. Now the few can see all the way down the shore and watch sunsets and fireworks on the Fourth of July.
The honey-colored ceiling is made from pecky cypress.
Geoff Chick & Associates
Exposed rafter tails borrow from cracker cabin style. With extreme sunshine the norm here, the extended eaves help cut back on solar gain in the tower, and since hurricane winds pose a danger to ripping off the roof, a beam along with a corbel detail have been inserted.