This Port Royal Plantation home was renovated in three seperate phases over a ten year time period. The Gomez’s had always been attracted to the architectural features of older homes and wanted to preserve some of the aspects of the existing structure. Redesign and interiors by Kelly Hughes, Kelly Hughes Interiors and Interiors by Parker Paton, Parker Paton Design
While many Hilton Head families are transplants from other places, most of those places are within the United States, and the families made their decision to move permanently to the island after vacationing here, some for many years. Not so for Chris and Kety Gomez. While Chris was born in the U.S., his family was from Spain where they spent a considerable amount of time. Kety was born and raised in Seville. It was not until they were teens that serendipity brought them together on Hilton Head Island.
“My father was a master tailor who made custom European suits for men and did alterations,” Chris said. “We would spend three or four months a year in Spain and then come back to Hilton Head when school started back. Many of the professional golfers were his clients, including Jack Nicklaus, and the actor Orson Welles and famous anchorman Walter Cronkite.”
Interestingly, both of Chris’s parents were deaf, so both Chris and his brother were very involved in their father’s business, helping him communicate with clients.
“Being completely deaf and unable to speak English, communicating with clients was difficult,” Chris said. “Each night, Dad would bring little pieces of paper to us with the client’s last name and a phone number. We would call each one to let them know their clothes were ready to be picked up.”
The goal was to update a 1970s midcentury ranch and give it a more traditional Mediterranean style.
Jump ahead to 1994, when Kety was enrolled in Hilton Head Prep as a foreign exchange student from Seville, Spain, and Chris was just starting college. The pair met, finished college together, and married six years later.
“We traveled a good bit and actually lived in southern Spain for about three years before moving back to Hilton Head and starting our family and our own businesses,” Kety said. “We have three kids now—nine-year-old Ines, 15-year-old Ketina, and 17-year-old Fernando.”
Chris is a full-time real estate agent with Coast Real Estate, and the couple owns several businesses on the island, including both Namaste Spa locations and HH Cleaning Services, which has been around for about 15 years.
“We’re a full-service cleaning business. We do residential, commercial and vacation villa cleaning, and we have an on-site laundry service, too,” Chris said.
Curved lines and rounded corners were added throughout the house to soften things up.
Before moving to Port Royal Plantation, the family lived in Hilton Head Plantation, Shipyard, and most recently Moss Creek, however, the volume of their island businesses and the commute necessitated a move back to the island. Chris’s grandparents had formerly lived in a beachfront home in Port Royal Plantation, so he grew up appreciating the unique qualities of the Port Royal Plantation community.
“In 1972, when my immediate family moved to Hilton Head, my grandparents came too, and they bought a house on North Port Royal Drive,” Chris said. “I still have the original listing on a piece of paper with an actual photo and a description of the home as it was when my grandparents bought it. While my parents and I lived in Sea Pines, we spent endless days on the beaches of Port Royal Plantation, so it has always been our ultimate destination to buy a home here.”
The Gomez’s love Port Royal Plantation for sentimental reasons, as well as practical ones. “One big plus is that there are no short-term rentals allowed,” Kety said. “When we come through the gates in the middle of July when everywhere else is crowded, we can leave all that behind and essentially have a private beach to ourselves. That, to us, is priceless. We can walk on our beach in the middle of summer and sometimes be the only ones out there.”
A large window spills light into the kitchen and shows off an outdoor flower box.
The couple also likes that Port Royal Plantation enjoys a bit more natural environment than some of the more manicured and tailored communities, that there is rich history right in their own backyard, and that there are no exorbitant mandatory fees, yet all the luxuries of private living.
When the Gomez’s bought their Port Royal home, originally built in 1974, most of the builders advised them to tear it down and start over. But the couple has always been attracted to the architectural features of older homes, so they were intent on preserving those features in this home. They decided to manage the remodeling project themselves, with Chris’s business partner Fallon Langel, from Ecotech, assisting with permitting and construction. They have completed the renovations in phases with the help of Kelly Hughes and Parker Paton as interior designers.
“It definitely didn’t happen overnight,” Chris said. “We completed the renovations in three phases over the past decade while living in the home, which included the additional square footage. I felt like we had to be creative to make it work, but we just loved the house. It’s got an old ’70s vibe to it, which is what I wanted to preserve.”
Initially, the couple simply wanted to get the house in livable conditions, making minimal updates like removing some walls and installing new flooring and paint. Over time, it’s become a brand-new home. With Hughes’ help, the couple had an idea of what they needed to accomplish in the second phase of renovations where they converted the garage into a bedroom for their oldest child, Fernando, when their youngest child was born. They created a detached garage connected by a breezeway, and built Fernando a new bedroom, new bathroom, and new hallway. They also installed a gazebo-inspired structure with a pitched roof as the new front entry.
One of the home’s most appealing aspects is the ample outdoor living space, with a large pool at the center.
The master bedroom opens to the screened pool area with two adjacent sliding doors.
“The goal was to update a 1970s midcentury ranch and give it a more traditional Mediterranean style that represents the Gomez’s Spanish roots,” Hughes said. “We added a lot of curved lines throughout the house and rounded corners to soften things up. We also kept the fireplace, which was an important element, and played up the great natural light in the home.”
The third phase included a complete overhaul of the home’s plumbing; installing a huge outdoor deck and basketball court where the previous driveway was; and additional interior updates, which were completed by designer Parker Paton.
“In April of 2020, several weeks in the lockdown, Chris and Kety called me asked for recommendations for a new paint color for their kitchen cabinets,” Paton said. “Ordinarily, I would do that in person, but during that time, we couldn’t get together. So, we spent several days over Facetime and text trying out different paints on their kitchen cabinets. And while it was more challenging that way, we were having a blast doing it because we were literally stuck in our living rooms, bored to death. We joked that it was the most fun we’d had in a month.”
Over the next several months, they lightened the paint on a large China cabinet, added some lamps, some soft goods, some new artwork, and a couple of chests, and redid the foyer, lending a coziness to the space that comes with that last layer of interior design. The Gomezes love the new look of their home, especially the opportunity for indoor/outdoor living and the grandfathered-in screened pool deck, which is no longer available for new construction in Port Royal Plantation.
The master bath is bright and expansive, complete with soaking tub and a beautifully tiled shower area.
“We wake up in the morning and open up the two big sliders in our master bedroom right into the pool area and the four-panel slider that opens the living room,” Kety said. “We love it. It not only has the Mediterranean flair but also a bit of the Miami element that we love so much.”
And they’re not done yet. They have plans to update the pool pavers with white stone, install new black-framed windows, paint the exterior white, remove the side deck and replace it with a sunken fire pit, and more.
The result is a beautiful fusion of cultures and styles in a Lowcountry setting. The home reflects the couple with the European influence of their upbringing blended with their mutual passion for the Latin culture of Miami, all within the bones of a midcentury-style home.
