Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Lawyer's beach house stars on HGTV

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published July 6, 2007

Stacy Frank at her home on Angeles St. in Tampa. Her beach house on Anna Maria Island was recently featured on HGTV's National Open House.
	[Times photo: Ken Helle]

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Ken Helle] Stacy Frank is a Tampa lawyer and the daughter of Pat Frank, Hillsborough County clerk of the Circuit Court. She loves to decorate, and is quite good at it.

Stacy Frank always had a knack for decorating. Friends and family couldn't help but remark on what she'd done with her 2, 100-square-foot house nestled on a sleepy street in South Tampa.

It's a great example of how Frank, a lawyer specializing in real estate and telecommunications, turned a plain-Jane block house into a little gem of a retreat where she can entertain or unwind at the end of a long day.

The two-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath house beckons first from the outside, its khaki-colored exterior accented with black, hurricane-proof Bahamian shutters and a large folk-art snook over the door - a tribute to her love of fishing she just redid a 17-foot mako shark.

Inside, she created a feeling of airiness and space by enclosing part of the carport, adding a skylight and opening up the kitchen so that it sits in the middle of a TV room and dining area.

"I didn't want to be isolated in the kitchen when I was working, " she explains of her decision to make the small, elegant kitchen the center of the home's main social hub. "When people came over, I wanted us all to be cooking together."

She filled the house with a mixture of family heirlooms, antiques, traditional furnishings as well as offbeat pieces acquired in unusual places like the two traditionally designed cowhide- covered chairs she picked up once at Neiman Marcus.

"It's a hodgepodge of antiques mixed with new pieces, " she explains of her decorating style.

Stacy credits her mom, Pat Frank, Hillsborough County clerk of the Circuit Court, for giving her a lot of good decorating advice over the years.

"I really do enjoy it here - it's comfortable and people like coming over. I've had parties with at least 120 people, and it doesn't feel crowded, " Stacy says.

The house also showcases her collection of work by Florida artists as well as the paintings of Cuban artists acquired while traveling in Cuba a few years ago.

She built an addition that houses a billiard room and opens up to an outdoor-living space designed for entertaining. It's a brick patio with an island, built-in Jenn-Air grill and plenty of seating where Stacy likes to hang out with friends and family during Florida's cooler months.

But it wasn't her amazing makeover of her South Tampa house that caught the attention of the folks at HGTV, but rather the small, Old Florida beach house she bought on Anna Maria Island in 2000.

The three-bedroom, two-bath house, now painted shades of mango and banana, sits one lot away from the island's famous beaches and features a lovely view.

It was featured last month on the HGTV show National Open House.

She agreed to appear on the segment because "I thought it would be fun" and, she says, she was "just a little curious, " as well.

The show's producers heard about Stacy's beach house through a mutual friend and called her last fall to see about shooting the house as part of an episode that included the Bradenton area.

"I was initially attracted to Anna Maria because it still has that village feel, and it hasn't been destroyed by condos, " she says. "In fact, they still can't build condos there."

It's not the kind of fancy beachfront house you'd expect to see on a glamorous real estate show. In fact, it's another one of Stacy's small decorating miracles.

Over the years, Stacy has slowly fixed up the little house, painting the walls beach white and accenting them with woodwork in a light, driftwood-colored trim.

She decorated the interior with lots of original Florida artwork and other eclectic finds including a pair of stingray sconces she purchased on a recent trip to Martha's Vineyard.

She paid $285, 000 for the house and believes it has increased significantly in value.

The segment was filmed in November. The host interviewed Stacy on the beach. The whole shoot took little more than two hours.

The night the show aired, Stacy had friends to dinner.

While they all cooked in the kitchen, Stacy stepped into the billiard room to grab a bottle of wine from the wine cooler.

At that moment, a 60-pound sign from the Florida Senate jarred loose and fell on her head, opening a gash and requiring a trip to the emergency room.

Within a few hours, she was back on the sofa, 14 stitches in her head, happily eating steak and sipping wine, just in time for the show.

In the end, it was all sort of worth it, she says with a laugh, because the value the show's hosts placed on her little beach house was $1-million.

"It's a fun weekend house, always filled with guests, " she says. "It's only an hour away and easy to get to. The fact that it was on the show adds some flavor if I ever sell the house. But I'd really like to hang on to it."

Elizabeth Bettendorf can be reached at ebettendorf@hotmail.com.

Fast Facts:

Some tips

Stacy Frank's home-makeover decorating suggestions include:

1 When redoing a small house, try to eliminate hallways because they are wasted space.

2 Front foyers add a touch of elegance and eliminate having the front door in the middle of the living room.

3 Styles come and go, so keep light fixtures and other permanent accessories traditional so they will always look good.

4 Oriental rugs add warmth, color and beauty.

5 Skylights provide natural light, especially when there's an absence of windows.

6 Blend in family heirlooms. Her unusual, four-legged dining room table surrounded by Williamsburg-style chairs sat in the family dining room during her childhood. Many famous Floridians dined at that table, prompting Frank to joke, "If only that table could talk!"

[Last modified July 5, 2007, 08:18:41]