It’s almost what the builders didn’t do to this Spanish bungalow that makes it so appealing. They didn’t put on a towering second story. They didn’t blow out the kitchen into a giant great room. They didn’t take a sledgehammer to the vintage yellow tile bathroom.

Instead, Jim Gold and Linda Sutton made smaller, but meticulous improvements to this charming home on Shasta Avenue near San Jose’s Rose Garden. And in the midst of a housing crisis, when flipping homes seems like a recipe for disaster, they sold it in seven days for nearly asking price.

The main changes to this 2,000 square-foot house include a 150-square-foot master bedroom suite addition at the back of the house and an updated kitchen.

“We try to do understated,” Gold said, “but understated and sophisticated.”

Keeping in the style of the 1930s bungalow, he and Sutton replicated the detailed archway leading into the living into the kitchen as well. They cleaned up the mahogany window casements in the living room and copied them in the master bedroom. They left the original, built-in window screens. And while they removed a wall separating the kitchen from the breakfast nook to open up the space, they retained the old-fashioned milk door.

They found antique light fixtures at the Antiques Colony on W. San Carlos Street. Ralph Joins of The Joinery, who has done restoration work at Yosemite’s Ahwahnee Hotel, built the kitchen’s custom cabinetry.

As a finishing touch, a mosaic tiled medallion was laid in the front entry walk, making a graceful entry to a lovely gem.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 11:15 am and is filed under Architecture, Bungalow, Home and Garden, Interior Design, Julia, Kitchen, Lighting, Peek of the Week, Rose Garden, San Jose. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.