Bruce Falck long dreamed of following the example set by his father, who ran a construction company in Johannesburg, South Africa: He wanted to build a house designed specifically for his family.
“My dad was a civil engineer, and he built both of the houses I grew up in,” said Mr. Falck, 52, a former Twitter executive now working on a start-up. “I always thought of building a house as something a dad does for his family.”
In 2011, he came close. Mr. Falck and his wife, Lauren Weitzman, now 41, who works at Google, bought a house in San Francisco, hiring the architecture firm Studio Vara to do a gut renovation. But just as construction was about to begin in 2013, the couple had a change of heart.
“Kids were imminent,” Mr. Falck said, and the prospect of living in limbo during a multiyear construction project no longer seemed that feasible, especially to Ms. Weitzman. (They now have three children between the ages of 4 and 8.) Instead, they decided to sell the house and buy something that was move-in ready.
“Bruce was really bummed,” said Christopher Roach, a partner at Studio Vara. “But he said, ‘I promise you, in a few years we’re going to look for some land up in wine country, and we’re going to do a project together.’”
