The house on Viewside transports you to your favorite desert in West Texas, Arizona or California.
The arid landscaping in the front and backyard are just what Molly Lowe wanted for her earthy home.
“I wanted everything to look like a rock garden because I’m a rock collector,” Lowe says.
The backyard pool is rectangular and simple with a patch of turf in the backyard because Lowe’s daughter wanted a proper place to practice cartwheels. A backyard kitchen also features a pizza oven that’s perfect for after-school and sports pizza parties for the kids.
Inside the Lowe family’s living room is a wall of shelves filled with memories of the family’s vacations. There are shells from the beaches of Florida, Portugal and Cabo San Lucas. Framed pictures of their daughters and cats are arranged next to Lowe’s collections of vintage glass, pottery and rocks.
You won’t find a TV in the living room because Lowe wants it to be a place where the family can hang out, talk and listen to music since there is a TV in every other room.
The kitchen has brown, wooden cabinets with black top-of-the-line appliances like Viking and Bosch. A vintage pig cookie jar which belonged to Lowe’s mother sits on the modern kitchen’s countertop.
Lowe and her daughters, Mallory and Macy, have a family tradition of collecting vintage items and shopping at local thrift shops, estate sales and flea markets.
“Mostly everything in this house is either from an estate sale or a flea market,” she says. The backyard features a bench covered in plants and succulents. Lowe bought the bench from an estate sale client who was thrilled that someone wanted her childhood bench, which had held her record player.
The family garage houses Molly’s ’79 Volkswagen Super Beetle and husband Matt’s ’61 Ford Thunderbird. Both were birthday gifts to one another.
“We love the old cars and we drive them,” Lowe says. “A lot of people with old cars keep them in the garage, but you’ll usually see us tooling around on the weekends. All the kids just love it. They grew up washing cars, hanging out and honking the horn on that T-Bird over and over.”
The U-shaped home in Town Creek fit every criterion 10 years ago when the Lowe family looked at the house. Their Realtor had been friends with the previous owners, who decided at the last minute that they weren’t moving.
“We were really picky,” Lowe says. “Thank God our Realtor was so nice. He must have shown us 40 houses over the course of three years. I kept comparing everything to this house. I really wanted this house.”
After two years, the original owners called the Lowes and said they were moving to Florida. “We walked in on a Thursday and did the paperwork on a Friday. It was a meant-to-be house.”
