HOME & GARDEN - Jim Johnson Group

1 2011 home & GARDEN JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2011 and Guhaina Sharaf and their four children, Mohamad, Dena, Salma and Jude, are not strangers to the Ellis County area. For the past 17 years, they ve lived in Ovilla. But on the fi rst day of fall 2010, they moved into a new Tuscan-style house off of Ovilla Road. We wanted to stay in Ovilla. We really like the city it s qui-et, nice and safe and we really like the neighbors, Guhaina said. Jim Johnson built the fi rst home we lived in 17 years ago, Ali said. We enjoyed that house and felt he did a great job. Since they enjoyed his work so much, they hired him to build their new home . The Sharafs feel there s a lot of tal-ent in Ellis County and wanted to stick with local builders and sub-contractors. Once Jim Johnson started working on the home , it took two years to build, including all of the out-side amenities.

2 He said that considering all of the extras the house has, like a lake, pa-vilion, water well and resort-like landscaping, the process would usually take much lon-ger. The Sharafs made quick decisions and we all worked very well together as a team, Jim said. This helped in keep-ing the construction process moving. Though the process moved quickly, it was not without a few mi-nor diffi culties here and there. For Jim, one of the biggest challenges was coordinating more than 50 workers on site during some days. They also imported a lot of limestone from Syria that was installed in the courtyard, on the exterior and inside the home . Designing, measuring, ordering, waiting for months on this lime-stone and then adapt-ing the pieces that did not fi t exactly right was a bit of a challenge, Jim said.

3 They built the house on the land the Sharafs have owned for 12 years, which used to be the old Ovilla campground from 1904 to 1958. A few years ago, a neighbor brought by a plate with a picture of what the campground looked like. They ve kept many of the trees on the property, most of which have been growing for more than 100 the Sharafs, one of the main challenges was deciding exactly where on the land to build the home . Their previ-ous house sat on the prop-erty right where the Sharafs wanted to build. They had to decide whether to keep the old house and use it as a guest house or tear it down and build the new challenge the Sharafs faced was deciding on a style of the house. We wanted a Tuscan style; we were in Italy two years before we built the house and drove through Tuscany and saw a lot of houses there, Ali said.

4 We liked the style but at the same time, our background is from Syria and we liked the old Da-mascus style of houses. We wondered, how can we mar-ry the two to where they can hug each other in harmony? home OF THE YEAR 2011 GUHAINA & ALI SALMA, JUDE, MOHAMAD, DENA BY KATE MCCLENDONPHOTOS BY KEVIN HAISLIP 2011 And then we came up with the Mediter-ranean style. Since the Mediterranean style encom-passes a few other styles, including Ro-man, they used that to infl uence the rest of the decisions throughout the house by mixing old and new pieces and styles to make something unique and they worked to design the layout of the house, the Sharafs had a few things in mind. Since they have four children rang-ing in ages from 4 months to 16 years, they wanted each child to have their own bedroom. Guhaina s mother also stays with the family for four to fi ve months each year, so they wanted to have a space for her where she would be comfortable.

5 Ali also wanted a game room that was separated from the house, but Guhaina came up with the idea to attach the game room to the house rather than have a sep-arate building. This created a courtyard in the middle of the house that Guhaina fi lled with a Damascus look by importing stone from a city near coordinated a team of architects, de-sign fi rms, landscaping architects and en-gineers and made sure everything came together perfectly for the layout of the house is ideal for en-tertaining, as it is open throughout most of the fi rst fl oor, with a courtyard in the front and large, motorized sliding doors along the back leading out to a huge pa-tio, pool area and luscious backyard. The family hosted an event for Governor Rick Perry two weeks before the November elections, which marked Perry s fi rst trip to Ovilla. He commented that the back-yard reminded him of the south of France, which was a great compliment to kitchen, breakfast area and living area are where family and guests tend to gather, and it s no surprise considering Guhaina s excellent cooking skills.

6 She cooks three meals a day, every day, mix-ing American, Mediterranean and Syrian styles together. Guhaina is a great cook; she s phenom-enal, Ali said. But Ali is not without his own specialty. I added the pizza oven, he said. That s my part of the cooking. Us-ing a recipe from an Italian friend s grand-mother, Ali makes Napoli-style pizza from scratch in the built-in brick pizza oven. The family has a GARDEN outside the home where they grow organic herbs, cucum-bers, zucchini, lettuce, tomato, eggplant, cabbage and more. Often, if they make salad for dinner, they ll go into the GARDEN to collect the fresh feature in the dream kitchen is the commercial-grade vent-a-hood. home & GARDEN JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2011 the house is open and the kitchen is in the center, the smell of what s cooking tends to go throughout the entire house.

7 With the vent-a-hood, no one can smell what s going on in the kitchen. To tie the interior of the house to the exte-rior and the property, Ali wanted to bring the inside out and the outside in. I m a civil engineer and builder and I do a lot of commercial building, Ali said. I like to build outside-of-the-box stores and I enjoy the different materials that can cre-ate a look. I do it in an artistic way so it all works in harmony between brick, stone, marble and stucco. They continued the theme of mixing styles into the furniture and artwork inside the house. Some pieces are local and some are foreign. The breakfast area table was designed by Guhaina and custom made locally. It s made up of three different ta-bles that fi t together and can seat three to four people at each one. So for larger par-ties, you can put two tables together for 12 people or all three tables together for 16.

8 We planned to have a breakfast area that was warmer since we use it more than the formal dining room, Guhaina they may use the breakfast area more often, both Guhaina and Ali said the dining table was their favorite piece of furniture in the house. Ali has a friend in Venice who owns a furniture company, which is where they found the table. It is one solid piece that measures 20 feet by fi ve and a half feet and can seat 24 peo-ple. Guhaina was happy when they fi nally found it since she had been looking for a dining table in Dallas for almost a year and hadn t found anything that was favorite piece of artwork in the home came from their landscape archi-tect, David Baldwin, who is also an artist. He surprised the family with a painting of a fl ower and, if you look really closely, you can see the family s names incorporated into the the family had help with some of the interior design and decorating aspects, Guhaina contributed a lot to the look and feel of the house.

9 With her artistic eye, she picked out most of the colors and the marble in the house. She was also able to blend modern furniture with some pieces from Damascus. She is very artistic, Ali said. I trust her taste; she knows how to pick colors. Guhaina loved choosing the colors and wanted everything to look just right. They had to change the color in the dining room fi ve times to achieve the perfect col-or. They also wanted to keep all the colors throughout the house soft and warm to 2011create a homey and comfortable family s travels have had the most infl uence on their de-sign style they ve visited more than 40 countries. As they visit different places, Guhaina says they collect ideas along the way. They ll see a window somewhere and think, we want that one day in our home . In the two years it took to build and the three months the family has lived in the home , they ve been very appreciative of the local team that put the house together, the neighbors and the beauty of the area.

10 Ellis County, and Ovilla in particular, present an opportunity for those who would like to discover living in this beautiful county, Ali said. When people come to visit me from dif-ferent parts of the country, they are amazed because of how beautiful it is. Because there is a special magic in this quiet, beautiful city and the people are above and beyond. They re friendly, good neighbors. BUILDING INNOVATIONSJim and the Sharafs wanted to incorporate many of the latest innovations available for residential construction. They made the house a smart home by installing touch screens through-out the house that can control music, cameras, gate opera-tion, lights, the intercom system and more. A smart phone or an iPad can be used to control the home systems from anywhere in the world, Jim said, which can keep the house safe and protected even when the family is a certifi ed green professional and a graduate master builder, Jim wanted to keep the house as green as possible and the Sharafs were on board.