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Street of Dreams 2012: Exteriors and Family/Living Rooms

By Dawn Sailors In House Crashers, Inspiration

Last weekend, my friend Hilary (maybe you remember her as the beautiful bride?) and I finally got to go to Omaha’s Street of Dreams designer home tour on the last day before it closed. And it was amazing!! The hub (surprise surprise) wasn’t excited about it at all, so luckily Hilary was just as amped as I was to go tour some professionally designed mansions for three hours. :) You could say we got our workout in. Whew!

There was a total of eight homes this year, and they were all huge (that’s what she said?), plus I took 278 iPhone pictures before my phone died, so I decided to break the tour down for you into a few posts all this week. This one (as the title suggests) will be all about the home exteriors and family rooms. Prepare to be underwhelmed by my phone photography, but amazed by these homes. Too keep this post from being too image-heavy, and hopefully to help it load faster, I’ll just post my favorite in each category and then a gallery of the rest. You can click on any thumbnails throughout this post to see larger images of the photos.

I’ll start with the exteriors, and I have to admit, that I didn’t get photos of them all. I was completely on top of photographing the interiors, but it was only about half way through that it occurred to me (duh) to get outdoor shots too. This may hint at why the outside of my house is in such need of attention despite my claims every year that I’m going to get to it this summer. Anyway… here was my favorite exterior:

I loved how clean and sleek it was. The font of the house numbers alone would have made it my favorite, but the architecture reminded me of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater home, and that pushed it right up into first place in my heart. Click on any of the thumbnails here to see the rest of the exterior shots I got. My second favorite was the Tudor-looking home that reminded me (inside and out) of Beauty and the Beast.

I had fully intended to post these by house, but once we got there, some homes had ‘No photography’ signs up so I had to be sneaky and only got a few shots- whereas some homes I left with a ton. And then once I got home and started sorting photos, a lot of the houses/rooms ran together in my memory and it became overwhelming. So I decided to post by room instead, and unfortunately I can’t tell you exactly which homes go together here (although some, like the Wright house and the Beauty house, as I call them, are fairly easy to pick out. Anyway, here are some of the backyards/patios/landscaping shots I got on the tour.

And now to the (in my mind) more fun part. Let’s move inside and start with a couple of the entryways. I know, I said exteriors and family rooms. Consider this a bonus!

I noticed throughout the tour that quite a few of the homes had seeded or leaded glass in the front doors and/or in the kitchen cabinets. I loved the look! Also, almost all of the had mud rooms or entryways that I would kill for. I’ll save the separate mud rooms for another post (the one shown here was actually in the entryway, instead of near the garage entrance), but here are a few more entries.

And now for the family rooms! The one here is from the Tudor style house that had that beauty and the beast vibe to it. You can see what I mean! This house was totally not my personal style, but I loved it none the less. (I could totally see Dania living here though.) Some of my favorite details in the family room were the hugely grand stone fireplace and the decor surrounding it. This photo was taken from the second story landing, and I still couldn’t get the whole fireplace in one shot. As for the smaller details, I was a little in love with how all the books were page-out in the book cases. For some reason, it gave it such a homey touch, and kept that rustic feel and neutral color palette. Well played room designer! Loved it. (And yes, I’ve already informed Dania that she needs to turn all books in her new house page-out on the shelves!)

Yeah there were a lot of living spaces. All of the homes had at least two, so I got quite a few shots. Hey did you notice that arco lamp in the Wright house living room? It makes me feel pretty ritzy to have it’s twin in my reading room. Haha!

So that’s it for tonight. What’s your favorite room so far? I’ll be back Thursday with more from our tour and believe me it just gets better. I hope you had a wonderful Monday. :)