When Brian Hugghins is finished with Villa Quantum, a modern-style home being built on a lot overlooking the golf course at 6805 St. Andrews Court in Mira Vista, owner and architect Wail Majeed will be able to control all the systems in the home from his iPad or iPhone from anywhere in the world.
Villa Quantum, a 7,900-square-foot house, takes its name from the single design reference point in the ground just outside the front entrance. This is point quantum - that all the home's interior walls radiate out from.
Hugghins owns H. Custom Audio Video, and he's seen a lot of changes in his industry in the last 10 years. That has made him into what he calls a "custom integrator." "What we used to be was the TV guy," he said. "The builders would give the homeowner our name and number at the very end of the project, and we would just go in there and install the TV and install some speakers if they wanted it."
Now with the growth of smart homes, the TV guy is involved from the time the builders get the blueprints. "When we do these automated homes, we have to know the electricians, the [air conditioning and heating] guys. We have to organize everything among all the contractors so that everything can be automated together," he said.
Walls are walls and wires are wires, but Villa Quantum presented some unique challenges as Hugghins sought to preserve the clean lines and finishes common to modern-style design.
"We're wiring everything in the entire house - all the TVs and the music - down to a central rack in the basement, so there will be nothing visible anywhere in the entire house other than the TV on the wall," he said. And he seems exceptionally pleased with the plans for one room.
"They have a piano room … so what we are doing is called "hidden speakers." The speaker will actually be in the sheetrock," Hugghins said. "Once they sheetrock the walls, we install the speakers flush with the sheetrock and then the paint crew will just mud and paint right over the speakers so you won't even see them. There won't even be a grill."
The house has a flat roof, and the material that is being used up top is "basically the same type of membrane that is on the new Cowboys stadium dome. It's also on the American Airlines Center in Dallas," said Michael Franklin of Ramon Franklin roofing. It also was used extensively at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.
Franklin does primarily commercial construction and says that regular residential roofers can't even buy the product Majeed chose for the roof because installers have to be certified by the manufacturer, Sika Sarnafil. It is a thick, fleece-backed PVC product that goes over DensDeck, a silicone-impregnated fiberglass gypsum board. The seams are heat-welded.
Windows and doors in the house are "very custom," said Kelly Russell of Texas Custom Window & Door. They are Heritage Windows products, manufactured in Arizona.
"We have seen that the architects are leaning toward modern contemporary building, so we've been doing quite a bit of it actually the past year," Russell said.
He's talking about large glass window walls- big tall doors and windows. "The ones out there in the Modern house, some of them are 11 ½ feet tall and 4 feet wide," he said. Also in the house are multi-slide pocketing doors where all panels stack neatly inside a pocket within a wall, "so you have an entire clear opening."
2014 Modern Home Tour Partners
Cantoni
Bezcon General Contractor
H. Custom Audio Video
Morrison Supply Co.
Overhead Garage Door
Ramon Franklin Roofing
Puryear Pools
Texas Custom Window & Door
Wail Majeed
Fort Worth, Texas Modern in Mira Vista Home Tour
6805 St. Andrews Court,Mira Vista
Benefitting TheRonald McDonald House
Admission: $10; Free witha $20 subscription($10 goes to the charity)
Touring begins July 2.
