Hans Witt is a lot like his house. At first sight, they both appear to be nice-looking but normal. Go inside, though, and find out how a first impression can be wrong in pleasantly surprising ways.
Witt has been the owner of this week’s featured house since 2008. The house is located in the western portion of Winter Beach, off of 65th Street, in the quiet, well-groomed High Pines subdivision.
The wood-frame, pink-stucco house with crisp white trim looks like many of the traditional houses on the street. Once inside, though, guests feel as though they are entering a house in one of those spiffy gated communities on the beach.
Doing much of the work himself, Witt transformed this one-story split floor plan into an exceptionally pleasing, functional and efficient haven from his job as a charter pilot.
Witt has an eye for color and the walls are warm neutrals, some with expensive looking textured wall paper from Germany, where Witt is from. He also knows how to get the most bang for his renovating buck.
The airy kitchen and great room are where this is most evident, although every last bit of this house have been loved into luxury over the past seven years.
Witt bought the house in 2008 from someone who had not kept up with the maintenance a home requires. He knew it was going to be a daunting task to bring it back to life, but he also needed an outlet for his artistic inclinations. Determined to make the house his home, Witt set a budget and stayed within the limits of it by being creative.
One day while reading the paper, Witt noticed a kitchen cabinet liquidator’s advertisement. He made the trip to Stuart himself and managed to snag exquisitely handcrafted blonde wood cabinets for a song. He updated the draw pulls and cabinet handles, used dark, rich looking granite for the counters and back splash, and upgraded the appliances.
The kitchen is now streamlined and elegant, worth every bit of Witt’s effort. Thought out with the precision, the result is a kitchen that works, especially when entertaining a crowd.
Most chefs who entertain like to be with their guests while they cook, but many kitchens are designed with stove facing away from guests. This one has an island cooktop where guests can gather and sit with a glass of wine and entertain the chef while he cooks. The location of the stove, a simple detail, is indicative of just the type of smart thinking details throughout the house.
The walls and floors throughout the house have been given the Witt Treatment, as well.
The floors in the formal common areas and the bathrooms are travertine marble, which definitely increases the luxury look and feel of the house. There are lighter polished wood floors throughout the less formal areas, giving them a warm, intimate feel.
Witt has lived an exciting life. He emigrated from West Germany to East Germany with his parents before the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961. He lived life under Communist power, before going back to West Germany when the Wall fell in 1989, leaving everything he owned in East Germany.
As a young man in West Germany, he worked for auto dealerships before owning his own Audi dealership. After many successful years as a car salesman, Witt sold his dealership and used the proceeds to finance his flight school tuition. He worked his way up the aeronautical ladder, as a flight instructor, first officer, and captain. He has hair-raising stories of flying over war-torn regions including Uganda, Dakar, Senegal and Kabul, Afghanistan. Bullets shot past him as he flew in from Malta to Libya while dictator Muammar Gaddafi was in power.
Vilmar Pires, a realtor with Coldwell Banker Paradise, is a friend and aviation colleague of Witt’s, and is not surprised by his friend’s creative talents.
“He is German and he is a pilot. Precision is in his DNA,” said Pires, a flight coordinator, smiling. “Between the European design elements and the ideas that Hans came up with and implemented, there are many surprises in this house.”
This precision shows in the master suite, where Witt put French doors that lead out from the bedroom to the screened-in patio and swimming pool. The master bathroom has its original deep bathtub and walk-in shower, but here is where some more of Witt’s imagination went to work with stunning effects. He tore up the lino floor and replaced it with more travertine marble. The vanities and bathtub base got the same upscale treatment. The shower was turned into an architectural masterpiece, complete with high-end fixtures and a spa shower. Witt knocked the small window out and put in architecture glass blocks to allow light in.
This lovely house is located in a quiet, well-maintained neighborhood, close to everything and yet hidden away. It has much to offer and can be seen by calling Coldwell Banker Paradise agents Vilmar or Jane Pires.