Next Level

DESIGNER LISA HENDERSON SAVES A 1950S RANCH FROM TEARDOWN AND REIMAGINES IT INTO A HAPPY HAVEN

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WITH THEIR PREVIOUS HOME SOLD and their third child on the way, Dallas designer Lisa Henderson and her husband, Luke, needed to find a new house—and fast. So when a 1954 brick ranch in their dream neighborhood came on the market, they beelined for it. “We saw it on a Sunday afternoon when I was seven months pregnant,” remembers Lisa. “Everyone else viewing the property was a builder. When the family heard that we wanted to live in it rather than tear it down, they told us it was ours on the spot.”

But soon after purchasing the place, the couple realized there was only one way to make the 1,600-square-foot house work for their newly minted party of five: “We went straight up,” says Lisa. With help from local architect Jay Smith, they added a second floor with a primary suite and kids’ bedrooms and reconfigured the main level for a smoother, more open flow.

If adding square footage was at the tippy-top of the designer’s remodel punch list, treating it to a character boost was a close second. “We really wanted to give it some charm, little things that we tried to incorporate to give it some interest,” says Lisa, who called for transoms over the doorways, a bay window in the dining room, and board-and-batten shutters (which they painted Farrow & Ball’s Light Blue, No. 22) on the exterior.