University Park houses are deceptive. From the street they read traditional. Inside, the renovations Jimmy walks into are some of the most considered in the Metroplex – open kitchens behind quiet facades, pool houses tucked behind hedges, garage apartments wired to the same control system as the main residence. A good smart home design has to respect the front of the house and the way people actually live in the back of it.
Jimmy designs lighting in University Park around the way the rooms are used at night. A reading lamp at low color temperature next to the chair in the den. Picture lights tuned to the work over the mantel, not five hundred Kelvin too cool. Cove lighting in the primary bedroom that comes up at three a.m. when someone walks down the hall, then dims itself away again. None of it visible until it is needed.
Motorized shading in University Park is usually a quiet retrofit. Jimmy specifies battery-powered roller shades for the rooms where pulling new low-voltage wire is not worth tearing into finished plaster, and hardwired shades for the new construction. Either way they are scheduled to the sun, grouped by elevation, and controlled from the same keypads as the lights. The homeowner does not have to learn a separate app.
Most University Park projects are anchored on a Lutron HomeWorks or Control4 platform with a small number of well-placed keypads – four-button at the entry, five-button in the primary, an engraved keypad at the back door for the patio and pool. Jimmy programs scenes that match the household's daily rhythm. Coffee at six. Dinner at seven. Movie at nine. Goodnight at eleven. The homeowner stops thinking about controls and starts thinking about the room.
Jimmy is the same person from start to finish. Twenty-five years inside the largest custom integration firms on the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex taught him what gets lost when a designer hands a project to a project manager who hands it to a junior tech. In his own studio he removed the handoffs. He walks the house, draws the plan, programs the scenes, and answers the phone two years later when something needs to change.
If you live in University Park and you are planning a renovation or building new, Jimmy will come walk the house with you for free. One conversation, no pressure. You will know within an hour whether his approach is the right fit for your project.