Jeff Head remembers Prescott Mining Company as a formative part of his childhood. The landmark northern Arizona restaurant – owned by his parents, Donald and Connie, for twelve years – provided the setting for Jeff's first experiments with "distressing" interior design elements. The memory of energetically whipping furniture with a chain brings a broader smile to his face than do recollections of other lessons from the family businesses.

Hands-on involvement – on a vastly more sophisticated level, of course – continues to identify Jeff's work. As president of Centurian Development, a firm he took over after his father's recent retirement, Jeff draws on expertise in various home-building trades as much as he does on architectural studies and contracting experience. He knows not only what people want their homes to feel like, but every step toward the reality. And he employed that background fully when building his parents' custom residence in North Scottsdale.

The project began when Don and Connie met with architectural designer James Ashbel Rogers to review their expectations and needs. "One of my parents' initial intentions was to downsize," re-calls Jeff with a laugh. "But it didn't quite turn out that way. In terms of square footage, this house is roughly comparable to the one they left." But in many other regards, the new plan uses the space more efficiently for the senior Heads' lifestyle.

Both Don and Connie love to entertain. In this home, Connie, an Allied Member of the American Society of Interior Designers, wanted to be able to prepare food and talk with guests in adjoining rooms. She also desired a kitchen window oriented toward nearby Pinnacle Peak. "The house was basically designed around that view," she explains.

One step inside the Head residence reveals nearly all of its public areas. Half-walls and curved bancos define particular spaces, yet leave them open to a many-leveled great room. Hand-smoothed walls prove invitingly tactile and southwest- ern detail blends into a harmonious whole.

The dining area contains a baby grand piano for music on formal occasions. Curved around it, rather like a chambered nautilus, sweeping central stairs provide a carpeted path up to the 1,100-square-foot master bedroom suite.

Cantilevered outward on steel beams, this upper structure extends beyond the ground level interior rooms to shade the flagstone patio without any obstructing posts. The overhang contains its own secrets, among them a private patio and six- person whirlpool spa oriented toward scintillating city lights.

Connie chose the furnishings and collaborated with Est Est, Inc. on the selection of other interior elements. She also worked with Legard-McDaniel Electric to ensure proper placement of art illumination, low voltage ceiling cans, and task and mood-lighting. "At night, the lighting gives the whole interior space a spectacular feeling," says Jeff.

Integrally colored stucco and double walls resulting in twelve-inch window recesses give an adobe-like impression. Hand- carved corbels top support posts and giant vigas fan out from an axis point in the kitchen. Jordan+ Jordan worked from Connie's design to create the grilles set into the faces of the kitchen's distressed alder cabinets, which also sport iron insets and rusted hardware.

Product and system selections at each step favored quality over any other consideration. As examples, the whole-house Bose sound system features speaker controls in each room, high-end Grohe and Jado European-manufactured fixtures went into the kitchen and bath areas, all copper plumbing is oversized, and a re-circulating system provides instantaneous hot water at the turn of a tap. The environmental control system ranks, in Jeff s experience, as the best currently available: "In addition to constantly filtering the air clean, it can adjust the humidity from very dry to Hawaii. And all the ducts are insulated, so the system is extremely quiet."

Metal clavos embellish a solid cedar entry door sandblasted for texture. Xeriscape plantings, mandated for the front landscaping, continue around the poolside patio, where boulders channel a water feature that spills into the pebble textured pool.

"It was easy to communicate about ideas for the house," Connie says of working with her son, the builder. "He's very artistic. He got that from his mother."