The owners of this home were drawn to Ladue’s location —more convenient to the airport and downtown than the couple’s previous home in Chesterfield. As they imagined their dream home, the couple already knew who’d be part of the team creating it. Award-winning builder Mike Mahn is a family member, and interior designer Debbie Donnelly had worked on remodeling the couple’s Chesterfield home. Now the owners needed to find the perfect lot where they would build.

   This is a California house located in Clayton, owned by a St. Louis woman with an affinity for all things Cali. While both home and human are firmly rooted in the Midwest, one reaches back in time while the other fondly looks to the West.

When the sky’s the limit, building a custom home can get overwhelming without the proper guidance and expertise. Decisions become daunting, with endless choices of materials and finishes that might look good on paper but become overpowering or underwhelming in application. But through the marvels of technology, many home buyers can now walk through their new spaces before they’ve even been constructed. Such was the scenario for Jacquelyn and Mike Nolan, a young couple aspiring to build a sprawling ranch home nestled in a quiet cul de sac in south St. Louis County.

As this Ladue home was being built in the mid-1960s, the current owner was a young boy. His mother drove him by the site every day on their way to school. “I was really interested in home construction then,” the owner recalls. “My mom and dad were having a home built at the same time by Higginbotham Bros., who was building this house, too.” The parallels extended to the architect, the renowned Ralph Fournier, who had designed both homes.