The Problem: The 1931 Tudor cottage in San Jose’s Rose Garden was always referred to as a Hansel and Gretel house. But when Amy and Parke Young bought it, they figured it got that name because people thought a witch must live in it. "It looked scary," Amy said, "a Tudor house behind the scary trees in the woods." The front yard was so overgrown with shrubbery and dense redwood trees with branches almost touching the ground that the real estate photo had to be taken from a side view. The brown and green paint colors were drab, and the facade was flat.
The Solution: The Youngs loved the rubble stone brickwork and the slate-like roof and knew "there was a lot of character hiding behind the trees." The couple first considered removing the redwoods, but Parke Young, a general contractor, skirted them instead, taking off limbs up to 16 feet high. He rebuilt the front walls, which were rotted because of leaking wooden gutters, then added copper gutters and a copper-topped bay window.
They painted the house, added brick planters in front and completely re-landscaped with a white palette of iceberg roses, camelias and ornamental cherry topiaries. They added a window box on the second story. "We didn’t used to be Tudor people," Amy said. "But we are now."
And instead of the house looking like it came out of a scary fairytale, the story of this remodel has a happy ending.
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