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Team Sturgeon reviews its home development results:
BUILDER
Dan Thomas, a residential builder for more than 23 years, the Fort Worth-based full-service
contractor for “high-custom” projects under the Dan Thomas Homes Inc. banner and the manager
of all facets of the Sturgeons’ project:
“No one feature makes this home unique. But when you consider the whole package, the
highest quality materials in the house, the highest caliber construction and how it was created by the
owners working closely with the team I put together, you have to say the Sturgeons’ home is the first
of its kind.
“It’s a showplace, not just a home.
“The total living area is about 10,000 square feet. With the two air-conditioned garages, the
square footage grows to about 14,000. That’s before you add the porte-cochere with its extended
roof-covered parking leading into the cobblestone motor court in front, and the loggia out back tying
in with the flagstones to the swimming pool.
“It was a very difficult architectural design to build, to frame. One big reason was the
curves: the curved stairs, the round turret tower room built to fit the stained glass ceiling, the curved
landing (balcony) and railings, the dome in the grand entry, the barrel-vaulted hallway ceiling
leading to the master bath, the arches, the multiple glass and conventional walls with up to seven or
more facings in several rooms, the eight fireplaces with seven chimneys, one twisting, one round and
none standard.
“We built in place the two curving stairways. We custom-fit the house to incorporate the
antique doors and the antique armoires and buffets in closets and pantries.
“The two-story grand library is the most unusual room of the house with oak beams, 24-foot
heavily paneled walls and ornate crown moldings. It’s some of the finest woodwork that you can
have.
“It was the most expensive room of the house to finish. Using a crew of two-three workers
for the trim work, the finish-out took six months on the library alone. They were still working when
the other two construction crews on the project were completing their jobs and leaving.
“But the finish-out also created a unique kitchen, breakfast room and family room. The
butt-jointed glass walls and windows span the family room, formal living room and master bedroom.
“The sizes and shapes of the rooms, curved, angled and tall – nothing was traditional – the
wide spans and special framing of the house required structural steel throughout the house.
“The home has nine air-conditioning zones, the highest (18 Seer) rating for energy-use
efficiency, 6-inch wall insulation of sprayed polyurethane foam, and multiple exterior finishes of
brick, stone, stucco and cast-stone (fancy concrete).
“The concrete tile roof is steeply pitched, up to a 16-inch rise per foot of width.”
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*Thomas’ handiwork can be seen in many upscale residential developments across Southwest Fort
Worth, the Parker County area and the Metroplex’s Mid-Cities. Pho.: 817-294-3834.
ARCHITECT
Ken Schaumburg, head of Fort Worth-based Schaumburg Architects P.C.
(SchaumburgArchitects.com), winner of both National Home Builders Association and National
Apartment Builders Association awards:
“My role in the project was an adrenaline rush, thanks to Ron and Kathi. In three months,
twice as fast as would have been typical for a project like this, we had the plans ready for
construction to begin.
“The Sturgeons brought in a lot of criteria, 70 pages of photographs of ideas and details,
plus the general spatial parameters. They did a lot of homework. They were very decisive, wonderful
clients. Ron was very confident of his decisions, very fast, very methodical.
“It was quite an exercise to incorporate all their ideas, but they also gave me wide flexibility
to develop the final plans, achieve their goals, and we got ’em all in there, hanging together,
cohesively: the large grand entry hall with the wide curved stairway leading up to the S-curve theater
balcony, with grand balustrade. The whimsical turret room just off the two-story library. An Old
World feeling. Medieval. French, the steep-pitched roofs, with English influences.
“For the exteriors, mostly it’s a traditional French country house with modern glass and
some Texas influences. The native stone, the cast stone, cobblestone, brick, stucco, mixing them,
columns and arches. I tried to talk them out of the stucco, but I’m glad I didn’t. It works.
“Inside, the large showplace kitchen opens wide into the family room that’s visually wide
open through the butt-jointed glass walls to the outside pool landscaped into the home.
“I designed the seven chimneys, mostly European style. English and French, brick, stone,
cast stone, spiral, round, traditional, combinations. Chimneys should be fun; so I made all seven of
them different.”
*Schaumburg portfolio examples can be seen in Dallas/Fort Worth Home Book, Street of Dreams and
the Kaleidoscope of Homes. Among his clientele: current and former major league baseball players
plus corporate executives of Duracell, Alcon Laboratories, Monster.com, the former Union Pacific
Resources and many others. Among his projects: a 20,000-square-foot Lake Arlington, Texas
limestone version of the White House for Indian oilman Maresh Vashesh and a 10,000-square-foot
French chateau plus 60-stable equestrian center for former Gillette chief executive Bruce Travis’
Red Gate Farm in Connecticut. Pho.: 817-336-7077. E-mail: schaum@flash.net
ARCHITECTURAL INTERIOR DESIGNER
Carol Martyr, proprietor of The Inside Story and 25-year veteran designer who served as project
design/theme/décor coordinator; designed interior moldings, cabinetry and seven fireplaces; chose
kitchen appliances and other fixtures; and ensured interiors and exteriors fit harmoniously:
“The Sturgeons traveled around the world to buy the architectural and decorative antiques
and other furnishings, and they hired a team to design and fit their eclectic collections into a house.
The result is a large but comfortable home with past and present, new and old blending in a
surprising harmony.
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“Dan Thomas, the builder, fitted and re-fitted those antique doors, the antique Irish bar,
antique buffets and armoires, the stained glass window as a ceiling and the other architectural
remnants until the installation was solid. His team built the classic large fireplace in the library and
installed the new and unique cast-stone fireplace with its big hounds guarding the hearth in the
master bedroom.
“Using lots of photos from the Sturgeons, I designed and drew to scale all the cabinetry,
moldings and many other features in the kitchen, family room, library and master bath and
bedroom, the interior columns and beams, and all but one of the fireplaces, including the copper
vent-a-hood for the family room fireplace. The hand-crafted, all-wood moldings came from
Raymond Enkeboll of California and Decorators Supply of Chicago.
“We designed the gourmet kitchen to meet Kathi’s ideas. It has the name-brand appliances,
the range for display cooking and the combination microwave, halogen and conventional oven for
convenience and the still unusual built-in cappuccino/espresso machine, copper sinks and fixtures,
and two drawer-type dishwashers.
“The multiple freezer and refrigerator compartments are all hidden behind the pull-out
wooden cabinets. An open cabinet provides a rear view through a glass wall out onto the motor court,
to see when the guests arrive.
“Another unusual cabinet serves as an ‘appliance garage’ with raise-up door from its
kitchen counter and easy access from both kitchen and butler’s pantry.”
*Martyr, who has crafted home interiors for Dallas Cowboys and Mavericks players and numerous
business owners and executives, has work displayed on a variety of home tours in Dallas, Fort Worth
and Houston. Recent handiwork can be seen in several mansions in Tour 18, a Flower Mound
development; a new Kaleidoscope of Homes in Southlake; and the Spring Tour of Homes in
Granbury. Pho.: 214-796-8471.
INTERIOR DESIGNER
Kay Crinkelmeyer, TAID member, ASID affiliate, 20-year veteran designer with Colleyville-based
J.H. Interiors and the project team member responsible for interior/exterior colors and color
schemes, furniture selections and arrangements, window treatments, antique and art arrangements,
floral designs and accessories, flooring and wallpaper selections, and thus, each room’s décor:
“Ron and Kathi said, basically, ‘Here are our collections, our ideas from magazines and
other homes, our general preferences. You make it look good.’
“My challenge was to make this house incorporate their collections into a unified whole.
Their collections were to be the focal point of the home, which meant neutral colors for backgrounds
that were charming and beautiful but not distracting from the main attractions, the dog art, the toy
cars, the real cars, the antiques, the Marilyn Monroe collection, the Sturgeons’ very eclectic tastes.
“I wanted to bring aspects of all the exterior treatments – the brick, rock, copper and cast
stone – inside, and we did. The kitchen fireplace features cast stone identical to that in the tall 18inch-square columns linking the black wrought-iron fencing outside. The sweeping breakfast bar is
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real stone with a granite top. The same earth tones prevail throughout the home.
“The showplace kitchen: its wood cabinetry in antiqued gold tones, the hidden Sub-Zero
appliances, the black granite counter tops and slate floors, the ‘garden window’ behind the seethrough shelving, the copper sinks and faucets, the kitchen fireplace with two copper gas lanterns
over the cast-stone mantel.
“The red and the blue garages, which house a portion of Ron’s real car collection, were
designed like showrooms, one with a chandelier.
“The family room: its faux-painted walls resembling aging stucco with grapevines invading
the cracks, as in an Italian country home, its fireplace with the copper Vent-a-Hood evoking an
image of a mountain ski chalet, the entertainment center and leather furniture, with a faux tree
‘growing’ into the ceiling.
“The toy-showcase library: its antique (circa 1905) gold-over-bronze French chandelier, the
antique Irish bar, and the four green faux-marble Corinthian columns where the library opens into
the turret tower with the stained glass skylight and the baby grand piano.
“The grand-entry foyer and formal living area: iron doors at the entrance, then two silverplated torcheres (copies of the 1950 World’s Fair torcheres in the George V Hotel in Paris), two
matching silver urns with a floral creation and a silk tree, and the butt-glass walls that bring the
outdoors inside.”
*Crinkelmeyer was cited by the February 2002 issue of Architectural Digest as “one of the most
outstanding interior designers in Texas.” Her work graces the homes of many celebrities and other
clientele using high-end D/FW Metroplex builders. Pho.: 817-428-7088. E-mail: kayasid@aol.com
ARTIST/DECORATIVE DESIGNER
Tim G. Morris, owner-operator of Conway, Ark.-based Classique Expressions for 14 years, an art
teacher at the University of Central Arkansas, and the painter creating the faux-aging, seasoned and
antique looks and Renaissance-style murals:
“I call it the look of natural aging, seasoned antiquity. In the kitchen and family rooms, I
gave the walls a skim coating of texture, a light application of plaster with a trowel to create the look
of Old World plaster that has aged and weathered, with a few nooks and crannies that look cracked,
peeling away to reveal what appears to be a stone wall plastered over. It could be native Texas stone.
“It’s called the Tuscany look. . . . It’s got the charm of age.
“I painted the vines a muddied-green for the appearance of aging, a modest presence,
meandering as if they had sneaked through the wall’s faux cracks in the plaster. The painted vines tie
in with the faux tree growing into the ceiling and the real trees viewed through the adjacent glass
wall.
“The textured walls received a base color, and then I glazed over it with two additional
colors, wiped on and wiped off, muted for the aging character. The idea was to make the coloring of
the plaster harmonious with the pigments in the rock and granite of the kitchen bar and the flagstone
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flooring – the rust, sand and umber hues and the mellow gold, white, yellow ochre and muted umber.
“The mottling effect was orchestrated to unify the darker, big expansive ceiling with the
lighter color values of the walls. The intended look was no smooth surface, with the faux crevices
getting the darker colors of dust, mold and age.
“The aging idea merged harmoniously with the mellow yellow, gold, yellow ochre and muted
umber colors for the all-wood cabinetry and moldings in the kitchen.
“The idea was to set the background, but not make it stronger than the action. Like a set in a
play, it’s not the most important thing. You want to create the look of reality, fooling the eye, but you
don’t want the guests thinking about the technique, the tools, used.”
For painting the faux-marbling on the four 12-foot columns bordering the toy-showcase
library and the 20-foot turret tower room, he relied on a lighter shade of the green of the master
bath’s real marble flooring. He added the light marble “veining” and topped the columns with fauxgilded Corinthian capitals.
In the master bedroom, he glazed over the cast-stone (fancy concrete) fireplace mantel, with
its woolly-looking hounds on guard, to give it a seasoned darker hue to replace the look of freshly
cast concrete.
Turning to the heavily paneled library’s darker wood colors for painting the adjacent turret
tower, Morris used his sponging and ragging techniques to create a mottled, Old World leather look
for the walls to enhance and give more “movement” to the lighting effects from the turret’s stainedglass skylight.
On the brighter side, he painted the European-style clouds, blue skies, cherubs and birds
that variously grace the dome of the grand entry and the barrel vaulted ceiling fringing the master
bedroom and leading into the master bath.
“At first the 8-foot-diameter dome looked small in that 24-foot ceiling; so I painted the
effects of a faux ballustrade along an extended molding around the dome, giving it more curves and
corners, echoing the balcony and actual spiral staircase in the room.
“It has the European look, the style of the entire house.”
*Morris’ portfolio includes guilded and polychromed plaster work, stage and film set designs, handpainted furniture, murals such as the 100-by-7-foot rotunda panorama of Mobile, Alabama images in
the that city’s country club, and a variety of ceiling, wall and column treatments for churches, hotels,
restaurants, other custom homes and country clubs. Pho.: 501-450-0261. E-mail: artist@tcworks.net
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