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Homes

A home with lots of ideas

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published January 21, 2005

I want to live in the Idea House.

I'm not kidding.

I want to wake up every morning in the guest cottage wrapped in scenic water views and Yves Delorme linens from Paris.

I want to hear the jingle of rain on the tin roof, walk barefoot on the micro-jute rugs, pull my wine glasses from butter-cream louvered kitchen cabinets and read books on the screened porch.

I'm not alone in my admiration. On a late Thursday afternoon, a constant flow of visitors wandered through Coastal Living magazine's Idea House at MiraBay, admiring features such as the rolled bamboo ceilings, weathered-looking Trex porch floors, vintage-style carriage-house fixtures and paint colors with poetic, beach-house names like "onionskin tan" and "Burma Road."

One man asked if he could take pictures.

Another woman lingered outside her car before leaving as if committing one last mental snapshot to memory.

An earnest volunteer said he would like to live in the guesthouse.

The effect it has on visitors isn't surprising: The home's design - from the coastal-style architecture to the interior decorating to the landscaping - is thoroughly suited to Tampa, a tribute to a city where the tropics end and the South begins.

"We wanted it to have a real sense of place," says Lacey Howard, assistant homes editor of Coastal Living magazine, which sponsored the home and devoted a 60-page section to it in the November/December 2004 issue.

The 7,200-square-foot house in Apollo Beach was designed by Don Cooper of Cooper Johnson Smith Architects in the Channel District and built by Bayfair Homes. It's for sale for $2.79-million.

That will get you all the furniture, window treatments, flooring and fabulous decorating. Everything except the original artwork.

The two-story home features upstairs and downstairs porches big enough for sleeping on Florida winter nights, an appropriately scaled pool, an outdoor kitchen, a dreamy little guesthouse and a charming front courtyard.

How to best describe?

Earthy but not glitzy, traditional yet so casual, it's tempting to put your feet up on the myriad ottomans that double as cocktail tables.

It's a place where the public can examine up close the "latest, greatest trends in furniture lines and building products and how to use them," Howard explains.

The house reverberates a water theme, from the shells and starfish that accent shelving throughout to the beautiful original artwork of palm trees and cool abstractions by artists Jim Draper and Lisa Landsman.

"It's a remarkable accomplishment," says John Heagney, a Tampa Bay area publicist who represents builders and first approached the magazine with the idea three years ago.

"We could see from plans and drawings that MiraBay was going to be something unique. We knew that through Coastal Living we could put MiraBay on the national map."

After further wooing, the magazine's publisher and director of advertising traveled to Tampa to see the site, Heagney says.

"They said, "This is it. We need to put a house here.' "

Southern Living magazine was among the first shelter magazines to launch an idea home years ago. Coastal Living, a publication in the same family of magazines, has sponsored more than a dozen such homes, including the one in MiraBay.

"I am so happy with how it turned out," Howard says. "Our designer (Lovelace Interiors in Destin) did a fabulous job. It really, truly is an idea house."

In fact, touring the Coastal Living Idea House is much like walking through the glossy editorial pages of the real magazine, only in 3-D. You can peer inside cabinets, walk on the second-story verandah, admire the walk through the master closet first hand.

The painterly water views, of course, add the real music, the rhythm, a sense of movement to the place.

"This house echoes the water," Howard says. "It is very Southern, very coastal, very Tampa."

In fact, it's so suited to Tampa, Howard says, that it wouldn't fit in at all "in Camden, Maine."

The Coastal Living Idea House remains open to the public through March.

Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $10 per person or $15 for two. Proceeds go to the Florida Aquarium.

[Last modified January 20, 2005, 08:52:11]