“We had just lost out on a house that we absolutely loved to a competing offer,” Ellsworth says. “And so we offered, I think, asking price, or right over asking price. We’re like, ‘They’re not going to accept it, right?’ And then they did, and we were like, ‘Oh, crap, what do we do?’ But it was a really beautiful house.”
That’s where they brought their daughter home.
“So it has, you know, beautiful memories,” she says.
And in 2023, they found their M Streets-adjacent house. The Kenwood Avenue Tudor needed significant structural work. The joints in the ceiling above the primary bedroom were cracked causing the ceiling to cave in. The flooring around the refrigerator had rotted due to a leak. Neither of them enjoyed all of the crown molding that needed to be done to be period-appropriate.
“The renovation process has allowed us to buy homes that otherwise we wouldn’t be able to afford,” he says. “We’re able to get into houses with potential and cool neighborhoods, and we enjoy it. There’s a lot of satisfaction that comes from improving spaces and making them livable and beautiful.”
There was temporary buyer’s regret, but they loved the finished product. It went well with their ornate art frames, refurbished vintage and contemporary furnishing they picked up secondhand.
But then there was an open house.
“We weren’t even looking for a house. We were just wrapping up our M Streets house,” Ellsworth says.
She didn’t know much about Ju-Nel architecture and hadn’t spent much time east of the lake. Their daughter was napping at home with Iwaniw and she decided to drop in on the home created by Dallas-favorite architects Lyle Rowley and Jack Wilson.
“I just want to see it, you know?” Ellsworth says. “I just walked around. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this house is amazing.’”
They didn’t even think about putting an offer. There was already a slew of bids and another bidding war seemed exhausting. And again, they had just finished the Tudor.
But when Ellsworth sat on the edge of the bed in the primary bedroom, looking at the original 9-foot 1960s pool through a wall of glass, she fell in love.