Florida couple greets their Sonoma 'Dream Home'

<p>Even after spending an hour being formally introduced to every fixture, closet, appliance and piece of furniture in their new home Friday, Joe and Cheryl Smith were still having a hard time processing the fact that it was all theirs.</p><p>And that Sonoma is now their new address.</p><p>“We have to keep pinching ourselves to know that it’s real,” said Cheryl, a Lakeland, Fla., homemaker who won the new, 3,700-square-foot faux farmhouse in HGTV’s 2009 Dream Home Giveaway.</p><p>“It’s just so much to take in. How do you absorb it all?”</p><p>The couple saw the $2-million-plus property for the first time on Friday, pulling up to the Fifth Street East location in a chauffeured black limousine with a crowd of applauding product sponsors lining the front walkway.</p><p>It was elaborate theater staged for the cable network cameras, which will post the moment on their Web site within the next couple of days. But the Smiths’ repeated words of appreciation were clearly genuine.</p><p>The couple’s grand entrance at the porch had to be shot twice when HGTV personality Monica Peterson left one corporate sponsor off her list of acknowledgments.</p><p>By the time HGTV Dream Home property scout and house planner Jack Thomasson dangled the keys at the grand mahogany front door, the Smiths were ready to claim their castle.</p><p>“Look at all the burners. You can fix up everything at the same time,” Cheryl said, ogling the his and hers islands, dishwashers and refrigerators in their new cook’s kitchen.</p><p>The couple, who have two grown sons and live in a real farmhouse that is less than a third of the size of their Dream House, had entered the annual contest 10 times before hitting the jackpot with the Sonoma sweepstakes. They were selected from among more than 39 million entries.</p><p>Both were careful to compliment the contractors and designers — builder Bruce Lee of Santa Rosa, developer Steve Ledson, HGTV personality Monica Peterson and designer Linda Woodrum, who has created the interior look of 12 of HGTV’s 13 Dream Homes.</p><p>Both remarked several times that the house looked even better in person than online. The entire process, which began with the first grading on the lot exactly one year ago, has been documented on the HGTV Web site, complete with travelogue-style footage of Sonoma and Wine Country. Thomasson said he had been looking a number of years for a Dream Home location in California before hitting upon Sonoma.</p><p>“This is your house. You can sit down wherever you want,” Woodrum offered, leading the Smiths into their new living room, staged for the event with twinkling candles and fresh white roses.</p><p>Cheryl selected a chocolate brown armchair, sank in and declared, like Goldilocks, that it felt just right.</p><p>“You guys did an excellent job picking this out for me," she quipped. Of course, the design crew had no idea what kind of person would win the house.</p><p>Woodrum however, said her goal was to create a house that wasn’t too “precious” and looked not like a museum but like a real home.</p><p>Virtually all of the Dream Home winners have ended up selling the properties after they were faced not only with the income tax on their winnings, but property taxes and upkeep.</p><p>The Smiths said after talking to one federal tax specialist, they still hold out some hope that they can make it work. If so they may move permanently to Sonoma.</p><p>Silver-haired Joe Smith, a retired electrical engineer for Ford Motor Co., sported a Hawaiian shirt, leather jacket and blue jeans. He said there are still a lot of legal and financial details to research, including California tax laws. The couple had never even been to California before this week. But nothing they had seen so far had dissuaded them from at least trying to relocate to their wine-stocked home in Sonoma.</p><p>“If we can move in here,” he declared, “we’ll be in here.”</p><p>Neighbors in the quiet streets surrounding the made-for-TV home have watched as Lee and Ledson quietly and quickly raised the house in five months, complete with mature landscaping, matching doghouse and back-fence vineyard of zinfandel.</p><p>“It’s been really fun to see it come up,” said Katherine Paus, who lives down the street and wandered by on a walk with her dog. “Everyone has accepted it with open arms and thought it was a lovely idea. We welcome them. Sonoma is the ‘it’ place. You can’t get any better.”</p><p>The Smiths, who confess to suffering from a sleep deficit after tossing and turning ever since they were ambushed by an HGTV film crew in March, aren’t actually spending the night in their new canopy bed just yet. Until the legal paperwork transferring the property is signed and the house is covered by the Smiths’ insurance, they can’t move in.</p><p>In the meantime, they’re being treated to a Wine County vacation at the Villagio Resort and Spa in Yountville and plan to take in the sights, including a hot air balloon ride.</p>