Hockley ‘barndominium’ complex gives big family room to share, grow
The sprawling barndominium complex on Kathy and David Ambrose’s Waller County property started as a simple idea for an open building to gather with friends and family.
One thing led to another and the party/event “barndo” idea evolved into a spacious main house with two guesthouses, a fishing shed, pickleball/basketball courts, a stocked pond, a small-scale zipline for their young grandchildren and more than 2,500 square feet of covered porches.
Before Kathy Ambrose, 57, settled into a comfortable sofa on her back porch, she fiddled with a remote control to lower the screens that would keep bugs and other crawling things out of the two-story space.
“It wasn’t meant to be our primary home. It was going to be one big room for a weekend gathering place,” she said.
“Finally, we said, ‘No, let’s make this nice, and it will be a generational thing. It will stay in the family,’ ” said David, 57 and owner of the real estate appraisal and property tax consulting business the Ambrose Group, which has offices in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio.
As planning progressed with Morning Star Builders and Chairma Design, it became clear that the couple’s energetic grandchildren — they now have 10 younger than 7 — would need a separate play area if the adults were going to enjoy themselves.
Then they came up with the idea for guest houses, and eventually the main barndo became a full-fledged house with two nice bedrooms, a full kitchen with a similarly sized pantry, laundry/dog-kennel room and a dining area large enough for a 180-inch table that stays ready for 12 or more people.
Their primary home in Cypress was just 20 minutes away, and it grew obvious that something needed to give.
COVID-19 hit just as one of the guesthouses was finishing — so they put their six-bedroom, six-bathroom Cypress home on the market, and it sold in 20 days. The main house finished construction in August 2020.
Their four children, sons Daniel, Kyle and Michael Ambrose and daughter Amy Staats, are all married and have kids, and another, Steve Tchiengang — a Cameroonian native who came to live with them as a teen — is also grown and lives Boston, working as a player-development coach with the Celtics, but visits his adopted hometown often. The Ambroses met Tchiengang when they were doing mission work in Africa.
The main house is traditional construction but has a barnlike shape with its wooden beams and classic roofline. Its exterior has a Texas flair with limestone and hardy plank, and there’s a tall carport connected to the house by a breezeway.
Two guesthouses, though, are smaller structures, one completely finished and another about half built out. Each has a nice porch and living area and bedroom suites on each end. Between the main house and guesthouses, there are 13 beds — enough room for everyone to stay over and for friends to stop in for getaways.
Prosecco-and-pickleball parties happen on their backyard courts, and David’s church men’s group meets here often. Their home has hosted a wedding, rehearsal dinners and other small events as their friends need it.
One couple needed a place to stay for four months as their own home was under construction in nearby Houston Oaks, and a group of consecrated women — lay women who devote themselves to Christian apostolic life — stayed here for a brief retreat.
On Sunday mornings, the Ambroses’ house church, Grace at the Gathering, meets in the main house for worship and fellowship. Different members prepare lessons for the group, then they meet in small groups to discuss the topic and Bible verses. They’re all either friends or neighbors, many of whom have built homes in Houston Oaks and arrive in golf carts.
The family’s Cypress home was traditional, with a French country flair, but when it came to filling this very different home in a woodsy, rural setting, the Ambroses didn’t know where to begin.
Interior designers Cindy Aplanalp and Valerie Mikel at Chairma were recommended by their builder, and the two were involved from the beginning.
“If we had to do it ourselves there would be picnic tables in here,” Kathy joked. “We had no idea how to fill a space like this.”
Aplanalp and Mikel’s challenge was to manage the vast open space of the living room as if a family lived here, while keeping it flexible enough to serve as a church, event space or the site of a fabulous party. It has sofas and chairs in different vignettes — in a light neutral palette — plus a pingpong table and shuffleboard table for spontaneous games.
Aplanalp and Mikel used performance fabrics to alleviate their fears of upholstery getting stained early on.
“Cindy was showing me all this fabric and was pouring red wine on it to show how it stays clean,” Kathy said. “I’m like,
‘OK, I got it, stop wasting the wine.’ ”
An enormous custom chandelier with more than 50 lights hangs from a grid of wooden beams built into a skylight in the center of the room.
Kathy and David, married 35 years, are both Baylor University grads and their four children went to Baylor, so there’s a bear theme. Paintings of bears flank the livingroom fireplace, showing bears in a forest and a mama bear with cubs climbing a tree, all against a wallcovering made from bark harvested from trees in Maine.
That bark is found in small quantities elsewhere, in the front entry and a powder bathroom as well as on the exterior of one of the guest houses. It’s all meant to help the home blend into its setting.
In the dining area, Aplanalp and Mikel set up a space with three, 60inch tables that lock together. They’re joined with a mix of side chairs, skirted end chairs and benches for a larger group, all on a scattering of cowhide rugs.
The back wall needed a buffet or cabinet, but it was a challenge to find something big enough to share space with the big table.
Aplanalp and Mikel found an old pharmacy cabinet that’s 200 inches wide, had it refinished and lined with wallpaper. A ceiling lined with wooden planks and reclaimed beams helps define the space in the context of the larger room.
Perhaps the most remarkable part of the dining area, though, is the custom light fixture, made from an upside-down canoe lined with crab baskets that hold small chandeliers.
David Ambrose loves showing off his unusual home, especially that dining room and its oversized furniture. “And to find a chandelier that long … wait, you don’t. You find a boat,” he said to the laughter of his wife, Aplanalp and Mikel.
A breakfast table with a banquette set in front of the kitchen — not in a corner as most would be — backs up to a counter with barstools that can be another dining area.
“I didn’t understand the placement and utility of it,” David said of the breakfast-table arrangement. “I thought it was too close to the kitchen. Now, we use that more than anything.”
The couple’s 10 grandchildren visit often and were factored into the home, with play spaces with artificial turf outside and their own play room with teepees, bean bags and a sleeper sofa. They each have a cot for sleepovers, but they’d really rather sleep with Grandma and Grandpa instead of in their playroom.
They’re frequent visitors as there’s plenty to do, good snacks and very few rules.
They all take ownership of the room, since artist Sarita Ackerman was hired to create a full-wall mural with bear cubs — each representing one of the grandkids. Just outside this room, a powder bath features a stepstool built into the base of the sink cabinet.
The primary bedroom grew a bit, as what was supposed to be a screened-in porch on the back side was absorbed into a small seating area and a home office was added to the front. The primary suite’s bathroom is spacious, with a wet room that includes both the tub and shower.
A window seat and a curvy ottoman are both taken over by the grandkids when they visit, though they’re intended for Kathy and David’s comfort.