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Dee Dee Gomez loves to decorate her home for holidays. ‘It’s the teacher in me,’ she said. Festive pumpkins and orange lights brighten the maple mantel in the home’s living room.

By Diane S. Morales, Caller-Times

November 06, 2005

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Before entering the Gomezes’ home, guests stroll through the courtyard. A bedroom balcony overlooks the space to the sound of a trickling fountain.

Building a new home sort of just happened for Dee Dee and Victor Gomez.

“Victor came to my classroom one day and said ‘I just bought a lot.’ I think he just needed another project to work on,” said Dee Dee, a second grade teacher at Mireles Elementary School.

The project turned into eight months of collaborative design work between Victor, a city building inspector, and Joe Garcia from Professional Design Services.

Dee Dee said her husband also had designed plans to expand their former home, which grew from 1,500 to about 2,200 square feet.

Victor pieced together favorite parts of homes he inspected to design the couple’s 3,800-square-foot hacienda in the 5300 block of Blue Sage in the Botanical Gardens subdivision.

“He didn’t design it for entertaining because we don’t entertain much,” Dee Dee said. “But the engagement party we had for our daughter held people well. People milled around everywhere and the flow was nice.”

Worry free

In true hacienda fashion, arched custom-made, double doors from Mexico grace the entrance to the beige stucco home’s courtyard. Worries melt away with the sound of a trickling fountain in the courtyard pond where koi and pond fish glide between the rocks and lily pads.

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In the master bath, floating glass on travertine tile shower divide the granite top vanities. Designer Debbie Stanford formulated the open layout of the bath design.

Archways and cantera columns lead the covered walkway into the three bedroom, three and a half bath home.

“Everyday without fail we sit out here,” Dee Dee said, “(even) if it’s just for 15 minutes. It’s calm, relaxing.”

The same calmness and warmth transfers into the home with travertine floors, rich warm wall colors and dark wood furnishings.

A collection of crosses each with its own history adorns an arched niche painted a burnt orange color. Twenty foot ceilings in the foyer add to the airy and open feel of the downstairs area where a maple staircase with black wrought iron rails draws the eyes up to a massive iron chandelier.

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Arches repeat in the downstairs dining room, shaping the transom, the room’s entry, an accent above the cabinets and the entryway to the kitchen. ‘The troweled walls give that rough-smooth play of textures between the cantera columns and the floors,’ Stanford said.

In the details

Past the staircase opens the living area with the kitchen nearby. Maple shelving units created by Tony Lamb surround the granite fireplace, the focal point of the living room.

The Gomez’s sought designer Debbie Stanford to help them decide where to position the fireplace.

“Initially we just wanted an hour of her time, but she’s still helping us,” Dee Dee said.

Dee Dee credits Stanford for the kitchen’s open design, allowing two access points into the kitchen around the granite island. Stanford also designed the kitchen’s tile back-splash, the master suite tile and glass shower, furniture placement, the dining room’s trowel wall texture and a barreled ceiling accent in the hallway leading to the master suite.

“Bringing the outdoors in was important to them,” Stanford said. “The home has a hacienda feel with lots of stone, a Mediterranean openness. It’s very warm, inviting, not formal.”

Arches and cantera columns — details Dee Dee saw in a magazine — repeat in the entries of the kitchen and dining rooms, adding another layer of texture to the rooms’ earth tones.

Eddie Seal/Caller-Times

Inside the home entrance, a wall of decorative crosses fills a niche accented with hand-painted details inside the curve of the arch.

Lamb’s craftsmanship blankets the kitchen with wall-to-wall maple cabinets, a theme repeated in the cabinetry throughout the house.

The neutral stained cabinets capture the swirling neutral tones of the granite kitchen counters and the tumbled marble tile back-splash from San Antonio.

An arched doorway in the kitchen leads to the dining room with windows overlooking the courtyard. A wrought iron chandelier dangles from a boxed ceiling pattern of four separate boxes above a wood dining table.

Empty nest

The couple’s children, Victoria and Robert, left the nest before their parents moved in about three months ago. Dee Dee keeps their rooms ready when they visit, but a custom-built home with their own balconies and an upstairs game-room equipped with a big screen TV somehow isn’t enough to entice them to move back home.

“They’re excited about the house, but they like their independence,” Dee Dee said. “Now if I can get some grandkids it would be fun for them. Can you imagine playing hide-and-seek in this house?”

It took a long time for the Gomezes to get to where they are now. But it was time well spent where now the stars seem brighter living in a country-like setting, and their children can learn a lesson in the process.

“We wanted to teach the kids to think outside the box,” Dee Dee said. “That if you set goals you’ll eventually get there.”