[dog barks]

I think that the physical space affects us more than we think it does.

People come home, and they’ve been at work all day, and you come home, and you want your home to be an escape from all that.

All righty.

[emergency brake clicks]

[wind gusting faintly]

I like to go to the beach to draw, one, because you’re away from everything that’s electronic.

[chuckles]

I’m more one with doing what I like to do, and that’s just creating the spaces, and feeling in the rooms.

You have an ocean breeze, the sound of the water. It’s nice and quiet, actually.

The skylight, the breeze, the ocean. Kind of all – kind of goes together there.

[cheerful music]

So I’m trying to, maybe in a sense, trying to re-create that experience I get at the beach by putting a skylight in, feeling the air flow through the house.

The design that I chose for the Palm Street house was a modern farmhouse.

So I decided that I would use lots of dark colors and lots of white and very simple lines.

When we demolished the Palm house, I managed to find and save all the roof rafters and lots of little things inside the house, and those I reincorporated into the house itself – the ceiling in the kitchen.

We made barn doors, we made out of metal and the reclaimed wood, 100% from that house and brought it back.

We reuse a lot of of things we find in the houses. It’s a European thing that we do.

My family is from France, Champagne region in France, and I have a very large, huge connection to France.

I’m very, very French yet very, very, American.

I go to France at least once a year to get inspired. It’s a very beautiful place to be. It’s unexplainable. It’s just a feeling I get.

So, when I go out to find a project, a house… I have to find the house that, one, is in the right location.

And then there’s just, you know, how I feel in the house.

Some houses have good vibes, and some houses don’t have any vibes.

The Palm Street house was a very ugly house when I started, and I knew I could bring something so beautiful to that street.

When I go to create the new space for the new house, I usually draw it out on paper – much easier, old school.

And then I’ll walk through the house in my head, and it just flows right. It’s like a dream, really.

And I’ll just walk, and then if I don’t like where I hit a wall, then I know I have to go back and draw it up again in the morning, when I usually get most of the design done in my head at night. It’s kind of fun, actually.

I love to use VELUX skylights in my homes. They add an amazing amount of light and fabulous ventilation.

Putting the skylight at the top of the stairs helps draw air from the lower parts, all the way up, so you feel air circulating through the house.

Light and sound and air play a big role in these spaces.

We don’t realize it, but they do. How you feel, it’s all part of it.

[music continues]