When John Osher first laid eyes on his current home on Fort Lauderdale’s coveted Las Olas Isles, he wasn’t exactly awestruck by the house itself. But he immediately fell in love with a magnificent 120-year-old banyan tree in the backyard and the sprawling 120-foot dock, a rare find in South Florida.
“The house was charming but not a good house, so we basically kept our tree, kept the dock space and built a new house around it,” Osher recalls. The one-story home on Nurmi Drive was transformed into a dramatic three-bedroom estate that few have seen in east Fort Lauderdale.
“We started renovating the kitchen, and one thing led to another. Millions of dollars later, we gutted the house entirely – all new windows, roof, infrastructure and very specific and strong design decisions,” says Bill Bentz, president of W.A. Bentz Construction, who spearheaded the rebuild.
Osher tapped Fred Furze and Linda Bard of Furze-Bard and Associates in Hollywood to design the home, and the result is an artistic oasis full of wonder. While the home looks unassuming from the street, a bright graffiti wall of flowers and leaves on the right side of the house serves as a tease to the creativity that awaits inside. The team took luxury to another level, creating a lavish “smart house,” where everything from the cabinetry to the windows is controlled electronically. Every detail, from the custom handmade metal gate, which resembles an intertwined vine, to the bronze woven-pattern front door, is unique. Each wall in the home, too, is adorned with different, exciting textures, which adds another layer of intrigue.