Homebuilder and realtor couple construct Briargrove dream home
In Briargrove, children play freely in front yards, ride their bikes down sidewalks and neighbors are all on a first-name basis.
That’s why John and Leah Leggett decided to build in the neighborhood west of the Galleria. That, and some good friends who already lived there knew a home had just gone on the market and alerted the couple, who bought it immediately.
The Leggetts tore down the existing 1950s-era ranch and built a twostory, 4,800-square-foot home.
John Leggett is CEO of On Point Custom Homes, a company he launched a few years after moving to Houston from North Carolina for a job in the energy industry. Leah Leggett — his college sweetheart — is a realtor with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Anderson Properties and stages and lists all of On Point’s spec homes.
After building and sell-
ing high-end homes with every amenity you can imagine, they threw all of their best ideas into their own.
They’d traveled to Spain and loved the beam-and-barrel ceilings they saw there. Her parents entertained a lot and had a bar in their great room; the Leggetts wanted one, too, and added a 1,200-bottle wine room with a Herculite commercial glass door. An art niche spotted in a magazine became the focus of their second-floor landing.
Some of their ideas have come from homes On Point has built in the decade or so it’s been in operation. Leggett started the company wanting to build high-end contemporary homes despite friends urging him to take a broader view.
He thought his clientele would be young families, and some are. But many of his customers are empty nesters who want lower-maintenance homes that allow them to age in place. Still others are suburbanites tired of ever-growing commutes.
When the Leggetts lucked into the Briargrove lot, they took a few things into consideration when building their home: the needs of their then 3-year-old daughter McKenzie, their own hobbies and the dream list they’d been compiling.
“My thing was the wine room, and Leah wanted the outside space,” John Leggett said. “We wanted an openconcept floor plan with a living-kitchen all together for entertaining purposes.”
The downstairs living area, with stained and polished concrete floors, is where much of the action happens. When friends are over, a frameless corner opens for seamless indoor-outdoor traffic. The bar is a natural gathering place for adults, and others perch on stools at their roomy quartztopped kitchen island.
Initially, a downstairs guest bedroom was used as a playroom for McKenzie. Now it doubles as an office for Leah Leggett and a TV room for her daughter and friends.
They tried a few other things, just to find out if they were worth recommending to clients. The built-in coffeemaker? You bet.
The bathtub that fills from the ceiling? Not so much; “It’s loud and it splashes,” Leah Leggett said. The rubbery sport-court flooring for an upstairs exercise room? Only if it’s downstairs or has more insulation to deaden the noise.
In the backyard, a covered outdoor seating area with three TVs includes a summer kitchen and a concrete-topped island for dining. The spectacular emerald-green grass is actually artificial turf. And a newer addition, a remote-controlled awning, helps keep the sun out if you’re sitting outdoors in the heat of the day.
Their swimming pool is anchored on one end by a hot tub, and an outdoor fireplace adds a beautiful glow at night.
They even took landscaping into consideration, building a fence with horizontal boards for a shiplap look. Across the yard, jasmine is trained onto a diamond-shaped espalier design.
All of it combines to make a home where the Leggetts’ friends like to congregate — and where McKenzie’s play pack always feels right at home.
“I think we have better snacks,” John Leggett said. “If you want to keep kids at your house, you’ve got to have better snacks.”
He’s not kidding, either. Sometimes, neighborhood kids come over to play only to discover that McKenzie is elsewhere. “Can we come in to get some Skittles?” the kids still ask.
“Yeah, sure,” John Leggett tells them. “We have a big bowl.”