New Montrose house adds offices, playroom for growing family’s needs
When Chris Wood and Debbie Yee bought a Montrose spec home from On Point Custom Homes, it was perfect.
They were both corporate attorneys and not planning to have children. Their friends were all single or married without kids, and a life of work and play was what they wanted.
When Debbie turned 35, though, she knew that if they were ever going to have kids, it should be soon. So they had a daughter, Harper, an easy-going baby who made Wood and Yee feel like they were the best parents ever. When they decided to have a second child, though, they realized that their perfect house no longer fit their needs.
Their daughters’ playroom was on the third floor, which meant that they either had to bring toys down to the first floor — creating the kind of clutter they swore they’d never have — or either Wood or Yee needed to be with them on the third floor.
Plus, Wood, 47, and Yee, 42, often came home from work only to need to get more work done at night, and there wasn’t a place for that or for making work-related phone calls without all kinds of noise in the background.
Yee is now a partner at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis; Wood left the legal field to start a business with his brother-in-law, Joe Villa. Two years ago they launched Moonshot Compost, a company that gathers food waste from commercial and residential clients and turns it into compost for their clients and others. Since its launch, they’ve diverted 2.1 million pounds of food waste from landfills.
The couple looked around for a new house but didn’t want to leave Montrose and couldn’t find anything that fulfilled their checklist. Plus, Yee’s sister lived nearby, and they liked being close to her, since Yee’s parents, who live in Midland, visit often.
One day they were talking to their builder, Earl Correll, president and CEO of On Point, and he pointed out that they owned a lot a couple of doors down from Yee’s sister and construction had not yet begun on a house there.
They pounced. Design work began in May 2019, with construction starting in August 2020. They moved into their new 6,161-square-foot house in January 2022.
They wanted a sizeable main living area with a large kitchen and dining room for frequent, extended-family dinners, plus a first-floor playroom that can change as their daughters age. The house’s five bedrooms — all of which are upstairs — didn’t need to be too big, but each has its own bathroom, since a couple of them would be guest bedrooms for out-of-town family and friends.
The third floor has one of the guest bedroom suites, a home gym and one of Wood’s requests: tall, walk-in attic space for storing things such as Christmas decorations. They also wanted a pool and patio and a small yard where the girls can play.
It was a long list of wants for a 2,600-square-foot lot.
“When we’re designing for someone like Chris and Debbie, it’s getting the must-haves and the wants, and it’s a process of trial and error. It can be tricky to use every inch of a small lot,” Correll said.
One trick was to create a small hall at the front of the house with a powder bath at the end. Instead of sheetrocking the walls, they used big sliding glass doors, so anyone in the front courtyard space can see through the hall to the patio and pool area and on into the house. Likewise, adults in the house can keep track of kids playing or swimming.
The overall look is contemporary, with help from interior designer Paloma Contreras of Paloma Contreras Interior Design.
In the kitchen, flat-front walnut cabinets with slim finger pulls instead of bulkier hardware pair with marble counters and a marble-covered, waterfall-style island. Contreras said the Moroccan backsplash tile adds an organic, handmade effect that keeps the room from being too cold or sterile.
White oak flooring on the main floor is laid herringbone-style, adding texture and pattern, another touch that adds warmth to the rooms, Contreras said.
This kitchen has a large pantry and a bar in a pass-through area between the kitchen and dining area, but Wood and Yee will tell you that their favorite thing in this kitchen is their Galley Workstation sink, so wide that they installed two faucets for it. A variety of pieces can add on to create prep boards or cutting boards, a colander, drying station, even an ice tub for chilling wine or liquor.
Contreras created a color compromise in the living room, using the white and light neutrals that Wood wanted in a sectional sofa and a Womb chair then adding the color that Yee asked for in pillows, art and draperies. The space’s showstopper is a gorgeous chandelier.
The main-floor room that really pops is the playroom, separated from the living room by glass doors. Schumacher’s colorful Birds and Butterflies wallpaper is joined by a chandelier covered in gold butterflies.
A Roche Bobois Mah Jong sofa — a sectional with pieces covered in Missoni fabrics, solids, stripes and its iconic chevron pattern — beckons kids to jump or play on it. Toys go into built-in cabinets so the room can be filled with stuff, but look tidy, too.
This playroom means they can be near their daughters, 6-year-old Harper and 3-yearold Sawyer, when they’re playing and when the girls’ cousins visit, everyone knows where to find them.
Because family gatherings are so frequent, the long, Scandinavian-style dining room table is always set up to accommodate 14 for dinner, with cane-back side chairs and upholstered end chairs. A visit to art studios at Sawyer Yards helped them find pieces for this room and elsewhere in the house.
With little kids, Wood and Yee don’t have time sit and lounge in their bedroom, so they didn’t see a need for a sitting area with a fireplace or a coffee bar. Instead, they used the extra square footage for a large closet, a nice-size bathroom and a galley-style office, where she works from home a couple of days a week.
Yee was certain that she wanted a high-contrast blackand-white primary bathroom, but Contreras noted that she might not like that look in 10 years, but she’d always love the classic look of gray and white marble.
The girls’ bedrooms represent their personalities, with Harper in a girly pink-and-purple room with bunk beds and Sawyer wanting the complete opposite, with Marvel Avengers-themed bedding. Since they won’t be little girls forever, Yee wanted to make sure they had good-size closets and that each has her own bathroom.
The family’s home gym on the third floor has plenty of equipment, but both Wood and Yee acknowledge it doesn’t always get a lot of use.
“We told ourselves the lie that Americans tell themselves: ‘We’re going to use our home gym. Actually, between injuries, we use it pretty regularly,” Wood said.