Making room for fun
New home ups the design ante and creates a ‘sports bar’ for hosting parties
The Pruitt family was already living in a 3,400-square-foot home in Katy’s Cinco Ranch neighborhood, so when they decided it was time to build a new home, it wasn’t really about having more bedrooms or a bigger living room or even better closets.
It was about having more room for fun.
Joe Pruitt was serious about wanting a home with more automation, and his wife, Jamie, wanted a neighborhood with a better sense of community and more children for their now 7and 9-year-old daughters to play with.
But the heart of their plan for a new home is what’s at the back of the place, behind a door with a frosted pane that reads: JP’s Sports Bar. It isn’t a public bar, of course, but the place where the couple hosts family, friends and neighbors for all kinds of happenings: watch parties for sports events, poker games or the occasional karaoke night.
There are regular block parties, Fourth of July festivities and progressive dinners at Christmas. At Halloween, the entire Pruitt house is transformed into a haunted house that the whole neighborhood enjoys — all decked out in costumes.
“Joe had a dream of the house he wanted, especially one with an entertaining space,” said Jamie Pruitt, 35, who was a kindergarten teacher before her kids were born and she became a stay-home mom. Joe is 38 and a consultant in the energy industry.
Their in-home sports bar is a large back room that looks into the backyard and has its own, large loft and upstairs balcony. On the first floor, there’s a fully stocked bar with two TVs behind it — and another large TV on an opposite wall.
Up the open stairs to the bar’s loft, you can see a long shuffleboard waiting for players and a red-felt-covered poker table near the double doors — painted a high-gloss red — that lead to the theater, where you can lounge on an oversized custom-made sectional sofa to watch TV or ham it up on the stage during karaoke parties.
Their energetic Labrador retriever, Jack, has his own space here, too, a doghouse built into space under the stairs. It has its own faux-house front and a
“Joe had a dream of the house he wanted, especially one with an entertaining space.”
Jamie Pruit
swinging door so he can come and go as he pleases.
From starter to special
Joe and Jamie met when they were both students at Texas
State University in San Marcos, and they just celebrated their
11th wedding anniversary. They both grew up in the Cy-Fair area, so their post-college return to Houston meant coming back to family.
After the couple built their first Cinco Ranch home — a builder-grade production home — their families moved there, too, so it was easy for their daughters, 9-year-old Jordan and 7-year-old Jayden, to spend time with their extended family.
Joe and Jamie filled that home with what they “thought adults ought to have.”
When Joe wanted to adapt that home with more automation — starting with sound and security systems — cost estimates to retrofit the home made him realize it was smarter to just build a new one.
Plus, the Pruitts wanted nicer finishes, better flooring and more contemporary lighting, so when they were planning their new home, they hired Cassie Hanson, an interior designer at Charbonneau Interiors. A mutual friend who had hired Hanson for her own home gave the Pruitts the referral.
Though many of the finishes were chosen through their builder, Partners in Building, Hanson helped them change out some of the lighting and add new finishes, such as a brick veneer to a wine-tasting room at the front of the house as well as to walls in the sports bar and its loft.
Even if they didn’t really know how to pull together furnishings for a more than 5,300-squarefoot house, they knew what they liked, and they trusted Hanson because they saw what she did for their friends.
Hanson had them work through the home in phases, starting with big pieces then adding in rugs and lighting, then paint and accessories. Custom draperies were added, too.
Going contemporary
From Hanson’s perspective, every room had a starting point. Joe saw a mirrored chandelier at Z Gallery that he loved, launching the rest of the dining room that includes a large round table with eight upholstered chairs sitting on a big round rug. They bought a new piece of art and installed sconces that drip with amethyst beads. An étagère against one wall holds photos and accessories.
A big piece of art with lots of blue in it meant pops of deep blue would be added to the living room, filled with light neutrals in a sofa and a pair of armchairs and blue velvet stools around a metal-and-marble coffee table. The room once had a gray and white rug — but the family took it to their vacation home on South Carolina’s popular Lake Hartwell after it had a close encounter with a container of slime. (That’s life with kids.)
An oversized island provides extra storage in the kitchen, where the Pruitts added a trio of contemporary pendants. Big stone pieces create visual interest around what otherwise might be a simple range hood on an interior wall.
The Pruitts waited to finish their master bedroom, but when they did, it got a complete makeover. A pair of large pendants hangs over mirrored nightstands, another element that caught Joe’s eye. He first spotted large framed mirrors that he liked, and Hanson urged them to set them on the floor behind the nightstands, propped against the wall — instead of hanging them in a more traditional fashion.
A bed with a tall, tufted headboard and frame upholstered in gray velvet is centered with a deep, dark charcoal rug and a pair of creamy white armchairs. White wood shutters cover the windows to keep the hot sun out, but they’re framed with long luxurious draperies in a matching shade of gray.
Hanson said it was important to keep the master suite light and not too full of furniture. She said master bedrooms in Texas homes tend to be on the larger side, and too much furniture — or pieces that are too large or too heavy — can overwhelm the room.
Jordan and Jayden got a special playroom, with one wall turned into a climbing wall that leads to their own reading loft.
With all of the fun stuff the Pruitts worked into their new home, it’s hard to imagine what they missed. A swimming pool, Jamie will tell you.
But that left room in the backyard for what will probably come next: a trampoline.