Colorado has a very distinctive style to its home architecture, especially as you head into the mountains—rugged, even rough, yet refined, a combination of Old West wooden construction, Craftsman aesthetics and Southwest interior influence, usually with lots of windows to take advantage of panoramic views. With the aspens and pines of the Rockies as your setting, those choices take advantage of the best of everything the mountain surroundings offer.
That said, it’s not the sort of architectural design you expect to find in Nashville. But if you have a chance to visit the Sells’ home in Brentwood, you’ll discover that a Colorado-esque hillside bungalow can work successfully, even brilliantly, with the local landscape.
The house wouldn’t exist without the original thinking of Pat and Terri Sells. Several years ago, they were living in the Belmont-Hillsboro neighborhood, expecting their third child, and planning on expanding the home they had. Terri Sells, who works for a homebuilder, had specific thoughts about what she wanted to do with their house. Unfortunately, the historic overlay didn’t work with the Sells’ plans. They realized they’d need to build a house themselves to get exactly what they wanted.
Two years later, in a moment of pure kismet, Terri saw a handwritten sign on a Brentwood road along her route to work in Franklin announcing lots for sale. On a hunch, she stopped on the then-gravel side road, uprooted the sign and called the number it listed for details. As she made the call on her cell phone, she intrepidly navigated her way up the steep hillside. Upon reaching the summit, she knew she had a find. She called work, cancelled her meeting, then called Pat. This was it.
The couple had a vision for the house they would build—Pat Sells jokes his wife had carried around the magazine for years with the house plans in it. As soon as the hilltop property was theirs, they ordered the plans and began work. Their needs, however, had changed—the lot they were building on wasn’t flat—so they made distinct alterations to the layout of the home. Happily, not only did builder John Guidry know the site could work, he even made use of the stone blasted out of the space used for the foundation of the house. (The boulders resting on the hillside also stayed, becoming part of the landscape’s water feature.)
The end result is extraordinary. The atmosphere is perhaps in the Colorado-Southwestern vein, but the views are pure Tennessee. Looking out from the multiple porches and deck, or from the windows that grace every wall in every room, you have exceptional views of the landscape. The house rests at one of the highest points in the area, not far from the Brentwood Arboretum, and on a clear fall day, it’s easy to see into the downtown area to the east. To the south, you can see almost to Cool Springs, while the northern and western panoramas look onto the wooded property.
The interiors possess a spacious and open quality greatly aided by the expanse of windows. Upon entering the house, to the left of the door is a long, open great room. Immediately visible is a splendid table with built-in benches created by Brad Sells. Pat’s artist brother. The maple benches are constructed from a storm-felled tree from the Hermitage, reputedly planted by Andrew Jackson’s wife, Rachel. Brad Sells also built the gorgeous dining room table and living room coffee table, both of cherry wood from a tree that once stood near their childhood home in Murfreesboro.
The distinct, different woods used unstintingly in the construction up the level of visual interest and complexity in the house. Indeed, the design is all about form and texture—“It’s not rustic, it’s Craftsman,” says Pat Sells. The cabinets and woodwork in the adjacent kitchen and great room are all wormy maple, naturally full of character and pattern, and some American cherry, all from a sawmill in Baxter, Tenn. The gray-brown, wonderfully coarse and irregular diamond-cut granite countertop in the kitchen also adds to the textural qualities of the room...
Sources
Builder: John Guidry, Quality First Construction
Furniture Construction: Brad Sells, Bark Studios, Cookeville, Tenn. www.bradsells.com.
Materials: Winell Lee Lumber Co., Baxter, Tenn. (supplied the wormy maple and American cherry used throughout the house).
Cabinetry: Carlisle Cabinet Co., Cookeville, Tenn. (bathroom vanities).
Artwork: Jack Stoddart Fine Art Photography, www.jackstoddart.com/index.html.
Stained Glass: Gray Gill, Cookeville, Tenn.