Photo: Robert Peterson
He sat down with PEOPLE to share some little-known secrets and talk about the franchise’supcoming 25th anniversaryand the 2021 Dream Home, which he and his team recently put the finishing touches on in Newport, Rhode Island.
“It still hasn’t hit me that I have been doing this for more than half of the decade,” the designer, 44, tells PEOPLE. “It still feels like a brand new job because it’s just so creatively fulfilling.”
Flynn explains that Rennie had undergone a kidney transplant prior to winning the grand prize, so he had plenty of time to enter the sweepstakes twice a day, every day, while recovering.
“She does have a cool job, but there’s a lot of complexity,” Flynn says of his colleague, noting that she has to take into consideration factors like weather conditions, distance from the nearest airport, and whether the location can offer 3,000 to 4,000 square feet of interior space so that the home can be a fit for families and entertaining.
Once a destination is chosen, Flynn says he then designs with the style and culture of each location in mind — something that’s very clear when looking through the past homes.
“I think what’s really interesting is when you look at the houses from year to year, they’re never the same,” Flynn says. “I think part of my job is to consistently design and decorate based on things that inspire people, while also trying to avoid anything that can become super dated in one or two years."
“What we usually try to do is come up with something that’s really original and unexpected, and then morph it back into the location and type of architecture,” he adds.
Flynn’s favorite Dream Home he’s designed, he says, isthe 2019 cabin in Whitefish, Montana, calling it “so unbelievably scenic.”
“No matter where you go, you’re only 45 minutes from a National Park,” he says of the ski town. ”And then on top of that, the house was literally located on a ski slope, so it was a ski-in, ski-out house. I’m still waiting for what will top it. Something will come along, but I think my heart is still there in the West.”
Flynn got to spend a good part of 2020 in Rhode Island working on his first-ever Dream Home in New England. (The house is located in Portsmouth, close to Newport.) But thanks to the pandemic, he says, this year’s project was a little less like a vacation.
“It is a miracle we finished the house on time,” he says, noting that so many supply lines were interrupted due to the pandemic and importing and exporting procedures have been shaken up across the world.
Despite the circumstances, Flynn says, the hillside, shingled home “turned out absolutely beautiful.” It features three stories, a rooftop entertainment deck with a wet bar, and views of sailboats on the water just beyond.
“I think that it’s part of everybody’s American dream to one day move to a place that is not where you live right now, but a place that where you can create all these incredible memories and get excited about being active,” Flynn says, explaining why he thinks the Dream Home sweepstakes is so popular.
“I think a lot of us have the same goal,” he continues. “We want to work really hard through our twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, maybe into our mid-sixties, early seventies, and then we all dream of, “Hey, we’re going to retire. We’re going to pick a place that’s just totally dreamy. We’re going to go and we’re going to watch the sunrise and the sunset and take long walks and take life easy.’”
“So the fact that it’s a possibility is amazing,” he says. “And my job as the designer of the Dream Home is to create a place that has a little bit of something for everyone.”
source: people.com
