Contemporary in the country
Design and style of second home fits its Washington County surroundings
Two Texas Longhorns and a 5-week-old calf wandered into the front yard of Brad Nagar and Reid Sutton to rest in a patch of shade near the edge of a cool pond.
The homeowners didn’t flinch. The sight of roaming animals doesn’t surprise the two Houston men who’ve spent weekends in their Ledbetter getaway for the past year.
Deer often roam their 48-plus acres, and it’s not unusual to see egrets, blue herons, owls or hawks. The Longhorns — Miss Mona and Miss Kitty — belong to Nagar and Sutton, as do 11 Myotonic goats, two donkeys and a fluffy white Great Pyrenees whose job it is to protect the herd.
The couple are known in Houston for their artful home in Montrose, a colorful place with big orange columns out front and a William Cannings sculpture that looks like three inflated cubes teetering on top of one another.
Sutton picked out all 22 paint colors that appear somewhere inside or outside that home; its palette is a stark contrast to their place just a couple of hours away in Washington County.
Five years ago, Nagar started thinking about land outside the city. His husband, a physician and research geneticist for Baylor University at Texas Children’s Hospital who grew up on a Kentucky farm, had no interest in returning to country life.
But Nagar kept looking, spurred by childhood memories of camping at Canyon Lake and elsewhere in Central Texas.
“Some of it is just a part of growing older and remembering how much I enjoyed Central Texas, Austin, the parks and the lakes. I didn’t have that experience in my life anymore,” said Nagar, a Houston native and software consultant. “Some days out here I can smell the Hill Country. The cedar picks it up and passes it on.”
He perused websites and talked to a Realtor. Finally a friend urged him to consider Washington County.
A search for at least 25 acres with water, trees and terrain, enough to explore and play on, landed him in this spot on a gravel road just a short jog off U.S. 290 past Brenham.
Sutton was sold on his first visit. It had rained, so the pond was full and lily pads were blooming. The grass was lush and green. It was picture-perfect. They made an offer.
For a year, they spent weekends working on the land, clearing brush for the start of a driveway. When they finally hired someone with a bulldozer, he accomplished in one day what the men had taken a year to do.
They knew they wanted something modest but special and hired Mark Schatz and his wife, Anne Eamon, at m+a architecture studio, awardwinning architects known for creating small-scale gems.
Nagar and Sutton knew how they wanted their home to function, leaving the form to Schatz.
“We knew what we wanted it to feel like,” Sutton said. “We trusted him to figure out what that looked like. We had no preconceived notions of what it would look like.”
Schatz and Eamon spent a day wandering the 48 acres, taking note of its trees — post oak, black oak, elm, cedar and yaupon holly. Prickly pear cactus pops up here and there throughout the trails that Nagar and Sutton groomed before mapping them on a hiking app.
Inspired by its setting, the home consists of few materials: sheets of Corten steel, birch plywood, concrete and cedar planks repeated throughout its three buildings. Big sliding doors and a dog-runlike patio add to its indoor-outdoor intentions.
The beauty of each component is in leaving them exactly as they are. Concrete floors form the foundation and flooring and repeat in the kitchen and bathroom counters for a masculine and modern effect.
Those sheets of Corten look as if a skilled artisan created an otherworldly marbled effect on their dark, shiny surface. In reality, it’s simply an effect of how the steel comes off the heat press it’s rolled on and how it’s handled before it gets shipped out for use.
Steel dominates every fireplace wall and repeats on other walls throughout each building. Thin strips of it serve as baseboards.
Screws that hold it in place have their own artistic touch — and their own how-it-happened story. Schatz had recommended standard, off-the-shelf screws lined up in a pattern near the edge of each sheet to attach them to walls.
As they were, the screws were too bright and shiny for the steel’s darkened surface. So Schatz’s crew epoxy-painted them black. All 3,000 of them.
They call it a “Brad Special,” but they all agree now that there’s no other way it should have been done.
A clever ceiling treatment came from standard sheets of birch plywood attached up high.
“It’s about as inexpensive a plywood as you can get, applied in a running-bond pattern because it’s really hard to get things to line up,” Schatz said. “I like to think we did a huge design effect for a reasonable amount of money. How it’s installed is what adds to the beauty of it.”
Dark-green paint covers what little drywall space is found here, just a little bit in each room — all meant to reflect the greenspace that sits just beyond every window.
As busy as their Houston home can be, Nagar and Sutton wanted the opposite for this home. Its main house is about 1,800 square feet and is divided in two parts: the public area with a living room, dining room, kitchen and half bathroom, then across the patio is the masterbedroom suite, set apart for privacy.
A short walk down an elevated wooden walkway is the guest house, another 900 square feet with two guest rooms and bathrooms and a living room with a wet bar. Nagar and Sutton wanted the guest house separate so that guests would feel more independent and have extra privacy.
The men have adapted to this second home; when they visit, they leave the rat race behind.
They’ve planted trees that will someday produce pecans, peaches, figs, pears, pomegranates and plums. Their herb garden comes in handy when Sutton prepares meals, and their vast vegetable garden has kept them from visiting a farmers market for a while.
Bleating goats — they’re the Tennessee fainting goats featured in hilarious YouTube videos — hang out in their pen and barn, kids bouncing with seemingly endless energy. They’ve named the herd Joseph’s Goats of Many Colors.
Nagar was on hand recently when a few of the moms gave birth, not realizing he’d need farm midwife skills until he was almost fully in it. He’s proud of his New Holland tractor, which he uses to mow the lawn, push dirt and regrade roads after a big rain, and he grins at the idea of getting a new forklift attachment for it.
None of this is possible on their 50-by-100-foot lot in Houston.
Inside their country home, contemporary furnishings are intentionally simple and unfussy: a large brown leather sofa, brown leather-upholstered chairs around a steel-and-glass table.
So far, their art collection here is small, but they have plans to grow it. There’s a painting in the living room by their friend Darren Waterston. Two Amy Blakemore pieces reside on a bedroom wall, and a Helen Altman piece — a box of papier mâché eggs — almost begs to be touched.
Schatz looks satisfied as he surveys the home’s profile. Wrapped in cedar, with glints of steel, all under a corrugated roof, he jokes that in some ways, it isn’t even a house.
“It’s an agricultural structure,” he said. “A very refined agricultural structure.”