Terry Matias is Leslie's wife and the co-owner of this house. The project was called Leslie House, but everybody on it knew Terry was the boss. Leslie ran the subs like a general superintendent. Terry ran the programme - and every decision about how the finished rooms would look.
Specification
- Role
- Leslie's wife. Owner and owner-builder
- Ran
- Program, invoicing, change orders, schedule
- Interiors
- Every decorating decision in the house
- Artist
- Original work by Terry hangs throughout the house
- Standard
- Every trade held accountable for showing up
Programme and site conduct as told by the construction team. Interiors and artwork are stated by the owners.
From the build team
Super articulate, professional and polite — and the centre console of this entire project. Terry would not miss a single invoice. Change orders stayed controlled. Scheduling ran like clockwork. And if you did not show up, Terry held you accountable for it.
By the end the entire construction team agreed that Terry should get a statue, at least the size of the Statue of Liberty. We found out City of Miami zoning would likely reject it inside the lot.
Academia Development Corp — general contractor
The interiors
She finished it.
A builder hands over a shell with services in it. What turns that into a house is a thousand decisions nobody writes a specification for — and on this job every one of them was Terry’s.
Stone, furniture, the way the light sits in a room at night, what goes on a wall and what is left empty. The house is finished in her taste, not a decorator’s. And some of what hangs in it she painted herself: the artwork through these rooms is her own. It is the one part of the building that no drawing called for, no permit covered, and no subcontractor could have delivered.
The rooms in the Inside section are the ones she decided — the surfaces, the light, the way each space reads when you stand in it. Every call that a drawing leaves open landed on Terry.
Walking the finishes
The two of them, deciding.
Late in the job, in a room still in primer. The decisions being made here are the ones that do not appear on any drawing - where a soffit turns, how a corner meets the light. This is what owner-builders actually do.
The punch walk
Going through it inch by inch.
The punch walk: going room by room writing down every defect that has to be put right - a mark on a jamb, a reveal that is out, a line that does not hold. It is the least glamorous work on a job and the reason a house reads as finished rather than nearly. Terry did it with Toshi, and neither of them was in a hurry.
On site
The program, in person.
