It’s impossible to speak with Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy about the couple's home in Little Woody Creek, Colorado, and not feel an immediate urge to hop on a plane, knock on the door of their postcard-perfect gabled Colonial, kick off your shoes, and join the inevitable singalong, the Shameless actor accompanying on his ukulele. Next would come a floating dinner party prepared by Huffman (whom Macy proclaims to be a great cook despite her misgivings), perhaps in the coffered-ceilinged library or on the bucolic back porch, surrounded by snowcapped peaks, pastures, and maybe some visiting elk.
The next day, you’d cozy up with coffee in front of the fireplace on the double-sided sofa before venturing into Macy’s workshop to watch him build one of his two-legged benches (he claims he's on a kick), hiking or doing yoga with the American Crime actress, or engaging in a litany of other active pursuits: “We’ve got extra cross-country skis; we’ve got go-karts; we’ve got horses—anything you want to play with, we’ve got the toys,” says Macy of the stockpile designed to entice their teenage daughters back once they leave for college. But bells and whistles aside, it's hard to imagine anyone not wanting to return to a house—or couple—that exudes this much warmth.
And it's not only the promise of good times with an illustrious yet refreshingly real Hollywood couple that is appealing. It’s their genuinely good-natured energy and values, which are reflected beautifully in the antique- and family portrait–studded home, an “old-new house” (as the couple refers to it) with an appropriately rich and poignant backstory. Huffman grew up in the slightly smaller original structure on the same land, built in the ’50s and purchased by her mother when the actress was a child. Huffman and Macy were married there in 1997, as were most of her six older sisters. Her parents’ ashes are even buried under the rose bushes. But after her mother’s death, the house was put up for sale. Then, recalls Huffman, “My wonderful husband, Bill Macy, said, ‘Hey, why don’t we try and buy it?’ And then my wonderful family said, ‘We’ll help you.’”
The actress was ecstatic. “I went, Oh my gosh, I’m going to get my childhood home. I’m so happy! I’m so happy!” Of course, there was a twist. The post-sale inspection elicited this verdict: "'This house is falling apart. You should wear a hard hat when you’re in it,’” Huffman recalls hearing. But her super-handy son-of-a-carpenter husband—“I’m the worst carpenter I know, but I love it,” Macy humbly admits—had made note of plenty of problems over the years. “He’d go, ‘Nothing works! Everything is, like, duct-taped together, superglued.’” It was also not up to county codes, sitting too close to Little Woody Creek. Huffman’s dream pivoted into a teardown, but not before the couple took photos for the architect—they wanted him to replicate it on a slightly larger scale—and spent plenty of time inside with the third-generation builders, as well as interior designer Lonni Paul. “It had a very particular feel,” says Huffman, “and I think everyone sort of got the zeitgeist of that house.” In addition, the artwork of family members was Paul’s primary source of design inspiration.
Introduced to the couple early on in the design process by a mutual friend, she “felt a real obligation to make sure the house ended up being everything they wanted and more. It’s so dear to their family, it was really a labor of love.” Both actors were incredibly hands-on, down to the demolition of the old property, with Huffman—followed by Macy—using a giant excavator to take the first bite out of it. “It felt ritualistic,” she recalls.
Thus the “old-new house," as the couple calls it, has the same basic structure Huffman grew up with, but expanded and shifted 100 feet to the left of its original location. Now, each of the five upstairs bedrooms contains its own bathroom (a stark contrast to Huffman sharing one bathroom with her six sisters). They also threw out dead space like the formal dining room, opting instead to have roving dinners in several rooms. A weathervane-topped cupola still resides on the roof, but they pried off the pantry door marked with heights of their kids, and moved Huffman’s mom’s bright yellow kitchen cabinets into Macy’s woodworking shop. The third-generation Divide Creek Builders were brilliant and truly got it, Huffman says, even though the Eastern house they were constructing differed greatly from the big, beautiful timber mountain homes that are their usual bread and butter throughout Colorado. Paul also weighed in on the shape of the house, not just the “icing,” proving integral in anticipating functional issues. “She’d go, ‘Do you want this size TV? The room can’t be like that. We have to bump it out a couple feet,’” says Huffman.
While Paul says they didn’t want to get too flashy—comfort was their main priority—Macy says the pair did indulge a bit: “We went the whole nine yards; we put picture lights up,” says Macy. “It’s a grown-up house and sometimes I feel a little silly there.” There are “a trillion” UV-protected Andersen windows, and radiant heating in the Armstrong hardwood floors. One living room sofa faces a bay window, a choice Macy says confused a friend until he hit a button and “up comes this gigantor TV—it’s wicked.” These modern conveniences, he admits, “make living so easy and efficient.”
To put it simply, “it’s the Hollywood version of the old house,” says Macy, laughing. Whereas the previous structure had coffered ceilings, they were nothing like the intricate focal points today, which the actor says presented the carpenters a fun challenge. “At one point I went in and said, ‘This thing is more complicated than Versailles! We’ve got to simplify it.’ They even called in a trompe l’oeil guy who did the switch plates and the covers of the music speakers!”
Rarely did the pair disagree, which Macy owes to their shared background in show business having trained them to compromise and not get stuck on something. “And we’re both smart enough to realize that if it’s important to the other person, walk away. It’s not the end of the world.” That prompts Huffman to ask, “Do you think you gave me more of my way in this house?” Macy’s genuine and immediate response: “No. There’s not a thing in the house that I regret or don’t like, including the chandeliers in the living room. I was so sure we’d be replacing them, and the second we got furniture in the house I loved the chandeliers!” (Most of the lighting fixtures, including the chandeliers, Paul and Huffman obsessed over, eventually selecting Circa Lighting for nearly every one in the home).
In this case, the third time’s the charm—the other two houses the couple has built came with regrets or missteps. When Huffman entered their completed home in Colorado, she first felt relief, “because I loved everything about it. There wasn’t a catch. It’s nostalgic,” she says. "The smell of the area, the sounds of the brook, the trees. It’s a little bit of a time machine because I do go back to being 8 and 10 and 15 and 20, on the lawn where everybody got married.” For Macy, the memory-packed holiday house with strong family ties is "so indescribably beautiful in any direction you look, just magnificent." But for Huffman, it's not just about her past. It's about her family's future, too. Being in the home they've built—or rebuilt—together “is like mainlining memories while you’re making new ones."
