River House

“She likes to watch the sunset every single day. Every single day she posts a sunset picture — rain, shine, whatever it is.“
— Mike Hollaway

River House sits on a tight, distinctive lot in Kingsland — less than thirty feet across at the street line — that opens onto the point of a canal where it meets the main river. The owners are repeat Hollaway clients, now living at the lake full-time after years of part-time use. The brief was to maximize outdoor enjoyment while minimizing yard work, and to design the home as a full-scale entertaining environment for the family they regularly host.

The front of the home is organized around a private courtyard. The driveway is roughly fifteen feet long, closed off by a decorative plasma-cut electric gate that allows air to flow through the property while delivering privacy when the family travels. The courtyard sits off the master study and front entry, giving the owners somewhere to take coffee in the morning or step out of the sun in the afternoon — separated from the activity at the back of the property.

The rear of the home is essentially a wall of glass opening onto a covered patio organized around a circular bar split by a stacking door system. Open it up, and the bar sits in the middle between the great room and the patio — pour from inside or outside, host on either side, or both. A 15-foot infinity-edge pool runs off the back of the patio with a 15-foot wall of water working as a waterfall down to a turfed entertainment area below. The boat house carries a rooftop deck connected to the main patio level by a bridge walkway.

River House is the latest chapter in a long relationship. The owners had already worked with the Hollaway team on two prior projects, including a flood-driven full rebuild after their previous Kingsland home took on seven feet of water in the 2018 flood. When they found this property after walking the neighborhood, the husband saw the elevation and the layout potential and pushed for it; the wife thought he was crazy at first, but the flood scare made the upgrade make sense.

The team executed roughly a 70% rebuild of the existing structure on the site. The rear wall came down to glass; the floor plan reorganized around a circular bar designed to be split by a stacking door system between great room and patio; a 15-foot infinity-edge pool was installed with a waterfall edge dropping to a turfed entertainment area. A bridge walkway was added connecting the patio level to a rooftop deck above the existing boat house.

Inside, a prep kitchen sits behind the main kitchen with a direct door to the outdoor kitchen — meaning the main kitchen can stay clean and open during entertaining while the real cooking happens behind it. The bunk room carries built-in bunks and a lofted sofa platform arranged like a movie theater, with curtains that pull back to reveal a full river view. Practical touches across the home include an elevated dog wash in the laundry (with paw-print tile cut into the floor), a deep climate-controlled hunting storage closet built into the garage for the husband’s gear and trophies, and a climatized garage large enough for vehicles, a golf cart, or — if a future owner wanted it — a full-size boat.

 

River House represents the third major project the Hollaway team has completed for this Kingsland family — the kind of repeat-client trust that the firm tracks more closely than any trophy. The home is also a textbook Highland Lakes waterfront build: tight street-side lot, water-side everything, designed for the year-round lake lifestyle that more and more former-city owners are choosing.