From drab to dream: Owners bulldoze half their Fairacres home to fulfill their vision

One photo shows a long home with a Pizza Hut roof. The color is drab, the driveway is cracked and the front door is depressed and almost obscured by a front deck. Compared to its million-dollar neighbors in Omaha’s Fairacres area, it’s a misfit.

The other picture shows what appears to be a completely different property. Five white gables poke up toward the trees. The house is a creamy tan stucco with jumbo windows, a valet-style driveway and a grand, direct approach to a front door, creating a focal point where there was none before.

Look again, closely, at both photos and you’ll see the big pin oak tree out front. Note the location of the garage and a few windows on the west side. How about the trees in the background?

Yes, it’s the same house. But, my, has it changed.

Rob Johnson, a co-founder and former CEO of Javlin Capital, and wife Lisa bought the house at 6729 Davenport St. in 2004. In 2013, they decided to reimagine the 8,000-square-foot home.

Their goal was to create an exterior that better fit in the neighborhood and an interior designed to be deliberate, useful and, ultimately, homey.

“It’s got to be easy, it’s got to be convenient. I just wanted it streamlined,” Lisa said. No nonsense. Or, as their architect put it, no “Gobbledygook.”

The Johnsons hired general contractor Don Stein and architect Steven Ginn. At one point, Ginn told them that creating the house they envisioned might be better achieved by completely bulldozing the structure.

“It was a puzzle,” Ginn said. “It’s much easier to start from scratch and tear down and start over. It probably would have been much cheaper in the end. But they liked what they had, and the idea of starting over, cleaning the site and throwing everything in the landfill, didn’t really appeal.”

So they settled for half. Just east of the front door, they cut the house in two. The west half remained. The east half was bulldozed, enabling the Johnsons to create a deeper basement.

The entire project took two years, and by its end, the Johnsons also had extended the facade of the house, pitched the roof, redesigned nearly every room, overhauled the backyard and built a new detached garage with space and utilities overhead to allow for a future loft.

“There’s 60 sheets of drawings to do this house,” Ginn said. “Doing most houses, there’s six or seven sheets of drawings.”

The Johnsons wanted to ensure that the house was functional, not just pretty.

Some changes were relatively conventional, like moving the washing machine closer to the kids’ bedrooms. Others took more ingenuity. In the new master bedroom, bathroom and closet, wall panels conceal shelves and nightstands, hiding phone chargers, toothpaste, beauty products, etc.

Behind the kitchen, the family now has a pantry and a fridge/freezer, just steps from the back door. Outside that entrance, they installed a heated walkway. When Lisa comes back from Costco with groceries in the winter, she takes just a few cozy steps from her car to unload all the loot.

“For me, everything had to be easy,” Lisa said.

But just because the house has purpose doesn’t mean it can’t dazzle. Visitors lucky enough to get a tour will find plenty that pops.

Large windows throughout the home flood the interior with light and frame snapshots of exterior greenery and a picturesque backyard.

Above the dining room table, secured by a thick chain, hangs a modern, bold chandelier with star-burst crystals. Along the wall are quarter-sawn vertical grain walnut cabinets, custom made here in town.

In the master bedroom, a TV is hidden away at the foot of the bed. It’s designed to rise to eye level when it’s time to watch a show, and it can rotate 180 degrees to face a couch placed beneath a window on the opposite side of the room. That window allows a glimpse of the backyard pool and a spill-over hot tub. Wall panels conceal the entrance to a walk-in closet and a spacious master bath, which itself has a clean, simple aesthetic, thanks to another hidden door, this one obscuring the toilet.

In seemingly every room, the Johnsons display the paintings of their oldest son, George, an art student in Minnesota. (George’s room in the basement features a wall painted with chalkboard paint.)

Two stairways, one on each end of the house, lead visitors to the 3,000-plus square foot basement. There, you’ll find heated concrete floors, two seating areas, an arcade basketball hoop, an air hockey table, a glass-encased theater room, a large exercise room, a guest bedroom and bathroom, George’s bedroom and a stunning centerpiece bar.

With four seat-back stools, the bar sits in the middle of the basement, opposite a giant magnetic wall-mounted Scrabble board. The alcohol is stowed behind a wall of glass, just out of reach of kids. A locked glass door secures a well-stocked wine room.

Ginn said the basement was built to withstand a house full of tall, lanky teenagers.

“One of the requirements Lisa had for this basement was for somebody to be able to throw a ball down here and not be able to cause damage,” Ginn said.

In order to make the bigger, better basement possible, a portion of the house had to be dug 24 inches deeper. To do that, the Johnsons cut off and demolished nearly half of their house and rebuilt the east wing, cutting just east of the front door.

Back on the main level, you’ll find a backyard as serene as it is useful. A detached garage sits at the end of the driveway near the west end of the home. A veranda, connected to the garage, hangs over an outdoor kitchen and fireplace, just steps away from the pool.

Up the hill, the kids have a fenced-in basketball court with Creighton University logos painted on the surface. Nearby, there’s a trampoline and twin hammocks.

Inside the garage, the Johnsons mounted another basketball hoop. The game comes in here when it’s too cold to play outside.

The family uses the property to host several fundraisers. Last October, about 60 guests attended a wedding for Rob’s brother and Lisa’s lifelong friend.

The house looks grandiose from the front — and it is. But Lisa said she ultimately wanted to create a place for family and friends to gather and make special memories.

“You just want it to feel like a home,” she said.

That’s just what they’ve done.

chris.peters@owh.com, 402-444-1734, twitter.com/_ChrisPeters