HGTV Dream Home sneak peek

<p>In the fairytale of TV-land, a 3,700-square-foot home with scale-model matching doghouse can be built — abracadabra — in four months.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>A mature landscape complete with towering palm tree, mini-vineyard, outdoor kitchen and privacy screen of cypress trees, can materialize around it soon after. And, alacazam, in little more than six weeks, a professional designer with seemingly unlimited access to the Ethan Allen catalog and Sherman Williams color wheel tricks it out from rugs to ceiling fixtures and every indulgence in-between.</p><p>Eight months after Sonoma developer Steve Ledson serendipitously struck up a conversation with HGTV property scout and “Dream Home” planner Jack Thomasson at Ledson’s Sonoma hotel, a new house has been born.</p><p>John and Jane Doe looking to build their own dream house in Wine Country might still be haggling with their architect, working out septic issues, waiting for permits or at least quarreling with one another over tile and fixtures.</p><p>But the Home and Garden network, which celebrates home improvement stripped of the boring details, picked an easy location for its 13th Dream Home Giveaway, which will be raffled off in a nationwide drawing on March 15. Some 40 million entries were submitted for last year’s drawing to win a beachside retreat in the Florida Keys.</p><p>Ledson fought all the sticky development issues 20 years ago with the city of Sonoma when he won approval to develop his 52-lot Armstrong Estates. An upscale subdivision of architectural fantasy homes with the sidewalk-lined spit and polish of “Desperate Housewives’ ” Wisteria Lane, it is still only half built out, giving HGTV a number of spots from which to choose. The network went for a corner lot facing bustling Fifth Street East, with a massive oak tree framing it in front.</p><p>“This is the first time we’ve been in a real neighborhood and we’ve gotten to meet every single neighbor again and again,” said Linda Woodrum, a Hilton Head, N.C.-based designer who has created the interior look of 12 of HGTVs 13 Dream Homes. “There is a sense of community and belonging.”</p><p>Woodrum earlier this week led a first-peek tour of the three-bedroom home, which — unlike a real Victorian — has an airy openness.</p><p>The designer said she was going for a “knock your socks off” reaction when you walk in the door.</p><p>The house on the outside wears a 19th-century face. But inside, it is smartly contemporary. A home office with separate entrance off the porch features a sleek leather desk and glass doored wine closet, the better to show off your collection or admire it as you work.</p><p>Entering from the street, your first view is of a casual entertaining room with facing leather couches, contemporary art and big screen TV.</p><p>“We’re not having it traditional and not having it Victorian and not having it tried and true,” Woodrum said. “We went crazy with color and a very different approach to furniture.”</p><p>Woodrum was inspired by pictures of San Francisco’s famed “painted ladies” to layer related colors within the house. The buttercream exterior belies the bold hues inside. The slightly more traditional living room is periwinkle blue. But across the hall the dining room is deep rust. A boy’s room upstairs is dark red, with whimsical details like chair rail paneling of metal automotive trim and a real pedal car hanging upside down on the wall.</p><p>Dream and designer houses always have to have a few indulgences to make regular folks grumble with envy. The kitchen has twin everything: two refrigerators, two dishwashers, even two prep islands.</p><p>The one challenge Woodrum faced was noise from the street. Most HGTV Dream Homes have been built in view spots, like last year’s giveway in the Florida Keys or 2007’s ski chalet in Winter Park, Colo. This one passes on the vineyard views that abound in the Valley of the Moon and instead faces one of the busier roads on Sonoma’s east side. That created both noise and privacy issues, especially with all those windows.</p><p>Woodrum used wood blinds but also softened the acoustics in the foyer with drapes that can be pulled shut to conceal the kitchen and family room if you want to grab a cup of coffee in the morning without facing your neighbors in a bathrobe.</p><p>“I don’t like drapes to be focal points. But I like the coziness they give,” she said.</p><p>Woodrum does some mixing up of new and old. The dining room table is long, farm-style but the chairs contemporary upholstered.</p><p>The “glammy” master bedroom, as Woodrum describes it, is straight out of Versailles, with daring green walls and eggshell painted furnishings with a French provincial flair.</p><p>But in most of the living area, she aimed for a welcoming, approachable feel.</p><p>“It’s a living structure and not a stage set,” she explained of her design philosophy. “If people feel they can’t touch or can’t walk in a home, you’ve failed.”</p><p>Local landscape architect Linda King was recruited to do the back yard. For Sonoma Valley standards it’s small. A line of fast-growing cypress, densely planted, is already starting to provide a shield from a neighor’s swimming pool just over the property line. The compact space packs in a lot of living, however. There’s an outdoor kitchen with Wolfe grill and even a mini-vineyard already terraced with zinfandel.</p><p>Builder Bruce Lee, who has collaborated on other homes in Armstrong Estates with Ledson, said the site has been equipped with a rainwater recovery system that will catch any run-off from the gutters, channel it to a gravel lined hole and filter it back into the groundwater.</p><p>HGTV puts the value of the giveaway at $2 million, including the furnishings and a GMC Acadia parked in the detached garage. But even in the current deflated housing market, another Ledson-built house just down the street recently sold for $2.3 million.</p>