“There was not a part of the house that wasn’t touched in the renovation,” says Pierce. But amid the completely new bathrooms and moving “every wall” of the primary suite, they honored the history of the home—bringing a curved sofa into the foyer to play off of the existing curved staircase, extending the stone that already existed in the kitchen and family room—while also bringing to life Galecki’s unique “haunted” sensibility. “We repurposed a lot of his stuff. He also just has really cool taste,” says Ward. Some of his most prized possessions, now on display, include an Italian foosball table from the 1950s, a vintage surgery kit, a collection of vintage glass eyes, and wax molds of Charlie Chaplin’s hands.
Galecki came to Pierce and Ward with an unusual vision for the primary suite. He wanted the bed to float in the center of the room, which they delivered, and he also told them he wouldn’t mind if they were to forgo bathroom walls. “I was like, yeah, but you want some kind of division, so let’s have this gorgeous window where you still feel totally connected, but you can have some separation,” says Pierce. Behind the custom-made bed is a dressing area with a dresser and mirror, opposite which is an oil painting facing outward, above the headboard.
“To get a client who lets you execute these crazy notions, it’s just such a dream,” says Ward, who calls the high-ceilinged space with board and batten walls “our favorite thing we’ve ever done.”
The final room completed in this funhouse of a home is also the actor’s favorite: the library. When the original plan for the room, distressed wood, simply wasn’t working, the designers showed Galecki “inspiration pictures of really bold-colored, high-lacquer-painted rooms,” explains Pierce. He fell in love with one in the Maison de la Luz Guest House in New Orleans, designed by Pamela Shamshiri of AD100 design firm Studio Shamshiri, and the next thing everyone knew, every inch of this last room was being painted fire-engine red.
“Johnny is just one of those people that forces you more outside of the box than you already thought you were,” says Ward. Pierce agrees: “I’d say he’s one of the only clients that we’ve ever had that has been like, I want this to be more interesting.”
Johnny Galecki’s Nashville home appears in AD’s March 2024 issue. Never miss an issue when you subscribe to AD.