After almost 40 years away, this homeowner is happy to return to the neighborhood she loves
In Cerelle Doran’s living room, a shadow box is mounted on the wall. In it are an old lock, a doorknob, keys and a dated picture of a house.
For Doran, who moved back to the Lakewood area in 2000 after spending nearly four decades in Lake Highlands, the items represent a homecoming.
“I guess in a way, I feel I have come full circle,” she says. “The Lakewood area was wonderful many years ago, and it hasn’t changed, with its beautiful homes, gorgeous mature trees, great shops, friendly people and a terrific location. And, for me, there are so many wonderful memories.”
Doran grew up in a house on Beacon Street, which is now torn down but immortalized in the shadow box photo. She went to school at Lipscomb, Long and Woodrow.
“I lived there until I got married at 19,” says Doran, who comes from an established Dallas family (her great-grandfather was Gen. John J. Good, one of the first mayors of Dallas and for whom Good Latimer Expressway was named after.) “Since then, I can’t count on my 10 fingers the number of places I lived.”
What she does know is that, since 1962, the year she moved out of Lakewood, she has renovated eight houses, including the one she lives in now. In fact, the running joke at the real estate agency she once worked at was: When is your house going to be ready to sell?
“I don’t know. It’s just fun,” she says. “It’s like a hobby. I found that when I’d get through with one house, I wanted to start over on something new.”
Doran hasn’t been formally educated as an interior designer, but her practical experience has made her good at turning a dire-looking “before” into a lovely “after.”
Take her present home, a duplex she bought on the M Streets. When she bought it, a couple of aesthetically challenged bachelors had been living there for quite some time. The first things she noticed upon seeing the place were a space heater in the corner and a deer head staring at her from the wall.
“It didn’t bother me,” she laughs. “I look for location and floor plan.”
And she knew the house was just what she was looking for. As a single woman living on a fixed income, Doran knew if she was going to move back to her beloved neighborhood, she’d have to seriously downsize.
So she sold her 2,000-square-foot house in Lake Highlands, sold or gave away many of her belongings, and focused on her new, 764-square-foot, five-room duplex.
“Everything I sold, it doesn’t bother me that it’s gone,” she says. “I just wanted to be back down here.”
After she moved in, she redid every room, focusing on details such as adding French doors, creating artful archways between rooms, redoing the hardwood floors and adding glass blocks in the bathroom. She gutted and completely renovated the kitchen, which she says was the most challenging part of the transition.
“I had to live without it [a kitchen] for three weeks,” she says. “And the usual-type hot water heater was changed to a tankless heater, which is in the attic, so there were several days of only cold water. It was the biggest mess as far as dirt, dust and inconvenience.”
She also gave the exterior of the duplex, built in the 1940s, a dramatic facelift. Doran now lives on one side of the house and rents the other side out to a tenant.
It’s hard for her to pick a favorite room because she has so few of them, but she’s fond of her kitchen because it displays some of the many items she used to collect, most of which she gave away in the relocation. Fairy tale-inspired cookie jars line a shelf near the ceiling. On the walls, Doran has stenciled “This house believes” on one side of the window and “Once upon a time” on the other.
“I think I’m in my second childhood,” Doran laughs.
Though the house is small, she still has family over for get-togethers and holidays, including her son, daughter and son-in-law and her grandsons, 6 and 12.
She also gets a little decorating help from her daughter, Kelli Brewer, who owns Accessory Market, a home furnishings and décor store in Lake Highlands.
“Every time I go in there, I see something I can’t live without,” she says.
She also enjoys shopping in Lakewood, though with a house as small as hers, she says she spends more time browsing than actually buying.
“I go to Ole Moon, the antique stories, Of, Talulah Belle,” she says, adding that some things are just too good to pass up. “I am very eclectic, and if I see something that catches my eye, I’ll buy it.”
Though friends and family kid her that she can’t stay in one place for long, she says she’s here for good.
“Nobody believes me, but I’m going to die here,” she says with a laugh. “I feel that I’ve come back home.”
