Canyon Vista

The first time I walked through this Bay Park home, I stopped talking mid-sentence. The house sits right above a canyon, and the view just takes over… all that wild green tumbling away below the windows. I remember thinking, whatever we do inside this house, it cannot compete with THAT.

So it didn't. That's the whole thesis, and it's right there in the name. Canyon Vista is a home edited on purpose, clean and calm and quiet inside, so the canyon gets to be the star. The interior steps back.

Nature does the showing off.

The family who lives here made the job even better. A social, blended family with teenage kids, the kind of people whose house is always full. Friends, big dinners, an annual Derby party that is genuinely legendary. This home doesn't get to be precious. It has to WORK.

The remodel touched almost everything on the main floor, and all of it had to speak the same language. We renovated the kitchen. We updated the adjacent living room with a fireplace built into a wall that never had one, refreshed materials, and new lighting. New lighting at the entry, too, so the house welcomes you properly before it hands you off to the view. Everything connected, everything coordinated… when rooms flow into each other like this, one wrong note carries.

The "before" had a LOT of red Brazilian cherry in it, and the instinct might have been to rip it all out. I didn't. I kept it in the ceiling beams and the floors, exactly as I found it. Not refinished, not restained. Just enough deep warm wood to ground the space without letting it take over, and everything else quieted down around it. Sometimes keeping the existing wood is harder than starting from scratch, but so worth it.

Upstairs, the primary bath was the time capsule of the house. Dated finishes and a jet tub the owners could not wait to lose. The best view in the house was already pointed straight at it. The window was always there. We gutted the room, took out the soffit, rebuilt the shower, redid the lighting, and set a freestanding tub right back into the same footprint the jet tub had been wasting. Soaking in it now, you're basically in the treetops. It might be my favorite exhale in the whole house.

Honestly, the palette is the quiet hero here. It's what ties the whole home together and lets it breathe.

But the show-stealer is the guest bath off the living room.

This is a family that loves sports, and he especially, and he has been collecting for years. So we gave all of it one small room to live in, wall to wall, floor to ceiling. Guests wander in mid-party and never see it coming, and they always, always comment. I love giving a small space permission to go all the way up like that, especially for people who entertain this much. The rest of the house whispers so the canyon can sing. This room gets to be the punchline!!!

That's the story of this one. A hardworking home for a family that gathers, curated calm inside so the canyon stays the star, warm old wood kept where it earns its place, and one unforgettable little bathroom that proves restraint is a choice, not a personality.