When Gretchen and Dominic Kotab first saw this 1930 Spanish-style home in San Jose, they thought it would be perfect for their growing family. The living room with its 15-foot ceilings and exposed rustic wood beams was ideal for their piano — along with all the lessons for their children to come.

“It just had a lot of charm,” Gretchen said, including original hardwood floors throughout.

 The kitchen faced the back of the house, so Gretchen could keep an eye on the kids in the backyard. The house was already graciously proportioned, with four bedrooms and three baths. But the kitchen and bathrooms hadn’t been touched in decades. The family lived in the house for five years before moving out for a substantial remodel when their oldest entered kindergarten at St. Martin’s.

“It was chaos,” Gretchen said.

Her favorite part of the project was a trip to Los Angeles to Mission Tile West, where she chose gorgeous, vintage-inspired tile for the kitchen and baths. The kitchen backsplash is especially fabulous, with a cream and green interlocking pattern. Their master bath is small, but Gretchen wanted to make it elegant, choosing Carrera marble. They expanded the front and back patios, covering the front with Spanish tile and the back with slate. With the children ages 3, 5 and 7 now, the house is just right.

They opened their doors this fall for the Rose Garden Homes Tour. Floral Designer Jose Ibarra worked his magic in nearly every room, from the dining room table and sideboard, to the branches on the living room mantle, to the front courtyard. A master at work!

Here’s the complete slideshow:

This house has been ahead of its time since it was built in 1950. Unlike most ranch houses of its era, it had a family room connected to the kitchen and walls of glass looking out to the back garden. For the past 34 years, it has been carefully maintained, updated and adorned by the current homeowners. The house had great bones to start, including gracious formal living and dining rooms and a burgundy and pink tiled central bathroom that remains in mint condition. (Take a look at the antiqued mirror-fronted bathroom cabinets. Original and glamorous!)

The homeowners opened their doors to the Rose Garden Homes Tour this fall.

One of the homeowners, a retired schoolteacher, is the artisan of the duo and took his talents to add color, texture and craftsmanship to the kitchen and bathrooms especially. An expert is paint finishes and detailed woodworking, he has transformed walls and cabinets. Peek at his detail work, including the Venetian plaster ceiling in the bathroom off the laundry room. Ask a docent to open the secret spice racks he built into the stove hood and the curved drawers for silverware in the island. The rear bathroom is another masterpiece, where he engineered a swinging bedroom door that doubles as a bathroom closet door. (When the bedroom door is open, the door then closes the bathroom closet. And notice the woodwork on the door he matched with the cabinetry.) He also fashioned a medicine cabinet using an oil painting, instead of a mirror, on the facade. The couple have collected antiques at shops and auction houses around the Bay Area, and also cherish their two Lalique statues, one of fish in the living room, and another of cats in the dining room.

This house, built for the Zolezzi family more than a half century ago, remains in pristine condition today.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

With help from Steve Gilbert of Willow Glen Home and Garden, the homeowners, Virginia and Brett Nicoletti, have created the kind of rooms you want to live in. They graciously opened their home to the 2011 Willow Glen Lifestyles home tour.

The front bedroom with the orange palette was one of my favorites. Don’t you just love the bedding?

And the youngest daughter also has a haven all in pink. I also love the vintage-style bedspread in this room.

The 1992 home began an update when the Nicolettis bought it in 2000. They extended hardwoods throughout the house and antiqued the kitchen cabinets.   The result is an elegant space, upstairs and down.

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Walk in the front door of this charming 1940 brick cottage and the front rooms are as traditional as you’d imagine: graceful dining room on the left, formal living on the right. But step through the front hallway and the back of the house opens to a modern, light-filled space.

Phil Health, who works at Nasa Ames Research Center, and Sam Miller, who owns a Mountain View laundromat, bought the house in June 2009, deciding they wanted to downsize after remodeling their big house on a big lot on the Peninsula.

They turned to San Jose architect Steve Hinderberger to update the dated and chopped up space and add a second story with a master suite. The couple wanted sleek, modern lines, but also were adamant about connecting with the rest of the traditional house. Hinderberger used wood detailing in rich stains, but gave modern details, including aluminum accents, on the stair railings and support columns.

The kitchen features green, orange and yellow tiles from San Jose’s Fireclay Tile. While the windows in the front of the house are divided light, the couple used no panes in the French doors overlooking the backyard.

Slate tile floors run from the kitchen through to the outdoor patio, connecting indoors and out. Upstairs, frosted sliding glass doors give privacy to the master suite, but let in light. The master bath was tiled in “boneyard” pieces of tile in different shapes and sheens to give added interest. A neighbor once likened the shower tile to a “bamboo forest.”

They have decorated the house with artwork collected along their travels as well as local “open studio” events. A prized pair of art deco console tables purchased at a San Francisco auction adorn the living room. The couple opened their home to the Rose Garden Homes Tour, benefitting St. Martin of Tours schools.

GreenDesign provided the floral pieces. The landscaping and hardscaping was done by Rodriquez Landscape.

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When Nora Sandoval first stepped into this house in 1997, lockers lined the entry way, desks were scattered through the living room and baby cribs lined the library. Surely this wasn’t a house for sale, she thought. In fact, though, it was a home for some 16 teenaged unwed mothers run by the Volunteers of America.

It was time for this 1912 home originally owned by a dentist and his wife and their six children to revert to a single family. But with stenciled rattles painted up the stairway and each bedroom painted in a flower theme (daisy, rose and violet) it needed a lot of work.

Still, said Nora, a Realtor with the Sereno Group, “when I came in here, I felt good karma. There was a lot of love in this house.”

Over the past 13 years, Sandoval and her husband, Adobe executive Digby Horner, and their now-grown son, Matthew, made it their own. Digby did most of the detail work himself, including stripping hinges, and adorned the ceilings throughout the home with his collections of antique light fixtures and shades. They splurged on Bradbury and Bradbury wallpaper for the living room, which hadn’t been produced by the Benicia manufacturer since it ran the 17-color paper for singer Linda Ronstadt 11 years earlier.

A century-old pool table from Pennsylvania adds gravitas to the room. The couple recently finished a major kitchen remodel, adding a sunny breakfast room with a beadboard ceiling they had milled to match the original laundry room walls.

Upstairs, the house has what appears to be twin master bedrooms connected by a walk-through closet. The couple is waiting to finish the front landscaping until they determine whether their efforts to save the oak tree out front are successful.
For years after they moved in, people would leave bags of baby clothes and diapers on their front porch. When the mailman left soap samples, he would stuff 20 through the mail slot.
“This house has wrapped its arms around a lot of people,” Nora said, “and now we’re wrapping our arms around this house.”

The couple readied the house for the Rose Garden Homes Tour, benefitting St. Martin of Tours school. Hill’s Flowers providing the floral arrangements.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Liz Page was pregnant with their first child in 2002 when she and her husband Mark first laid eyes on this charming New England-style home. Liz grew up in Massachusetts and the traditional home with the formal entry hall and central staircase just felt right.

She wrote a “tear-stained letter” to the owner saying “this is where we want to raise our family.”

The house became their home on Halloween, the night the neighborhood comes to life with hundreds of children trick or treating. While the house had great bones, it was in its original 1940 condition and needed updating. Construction began two days after her son, Douglas, was born.

They ripped up wall-to-wall carpeting to reveal mint-condition hardwood floors, and redid electrical and plumbing. To add a master suite, they built over the existing living room. The kitchen was remodeled and a mudroom added.

And just recently, they pushed out the back, adding a family room behind the living room, and an office on top, an extension of the master suite, for Mark, a marketing executive. In the end, they got exactly what they wanted: a charming family home that maintained the look and feel of the original.

Both their children, Douglas and Anna, attend St. Martin of Tours elementary school. Liz sought out Willow Glen Home and Garden to help choose comfortable family furniture paired with fun accessories as well as designing the back garden area with patios, trellises, stone walls, a fountain, umbrellas and patio furniture. The home was featured on the Rose Garden Homes Tour, benefitting St. Martin of Tours. It wouldn’t be complete without Jose Ibarra, who came in and worked magic with his floral designs throughout the house.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

When Brent Riedberger and Chris Johansen offered their backyard for their neighbor’s wedding in late summer, they shifted into high gear to get it ready. And as they have with much of their Dutch Colonial house, they did most of the work themselves – and with vintage materials.

“It’s been a hodgepodge of resalvaged this and repurposed that,” Brent said.

Whenever they noticed piles of old bricks being pulled out of neighbors’ yards to make way for stamped concrete and pavers, Brent would ask if he could take it off their hands. “We’ve salvaged 9,000 bricks since March.” And one by one, he recovered what had been a broad black asphalt motor court with old bricks, which made for a perfect area for dinner tables for the wedding guests. They also asked the owner of a house around the corner for the discarded pillars that had been removed from a port cochere. With them, they built a lovely pavilion at the back of the property.

“The bride, groom and parents came over and whitewashed all the arbors so it will look crisp and white for the wedding,” Brent said. He even transplanted an ancient rhododendron from a Los Gatos house.

Along with the garden, Brent and Chris graciously opened the first floor of their 1920s Dutch Colonial to Rose Garden Homes Tour, sponsored by St. Martin of Tours, which includes a remodeled kitchen and grand living and dining rooms. One of the most fabulous rooms on the tour was their spectacular dining room, with a huge round table with leaves that circle the table. Perfect!

“She’s a great old girl with good bones,” Brent said.

Interior Design by Julie Riera Matsushima, Floral Design by Bloomster’s,

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The first time the Los Gatos house got a makeover, Betsy and Dan “Whizzer” White just needed a bigger house for their growing family. The house they bought in 1977 was 900 square feet and with one child and another on the way, they added a second story in 1984. In 1991, they did a major kitchen/family room remodel. Then on New Year’s Eve 2003 while Whizzer and Betsy were at a party, they got a call from a neighbor: “Your house is burning.”

A lit candle left  on her daughter’s bedroom desk had destroyed nearly the entire house. With the help of architect Phoebe Bressack of Bressack and Wasserman Architects in Los Altos, ) Chateau Construction (theirr builder for 30 years), interior designers Ann Sonnenberg of Palo Alto and Susan Hoffman from Los Gatos, the house was redesigned, rebuilt and redecorated. With all the loss, chaos and rebuilding, Betsy said, “The day I cried was when I found I could have the same tile in the kitchen,” that she had loved when she remodeled it in 1991.

As much as she loved her house before the fire, the third incarnation has it’s benefits. Along with increasing from a three bedroom, two bath, the house –built in a Bernard Maybeck craftsman style and shingled — now has four bedrooms and three-and-a-half baths. They reconfigured the downstairs space to add an office and laundry room. All the bonuses came inside an extra 400 square feet.

The stair railing also saw an upgrade, from what Betsy affectionately called “barnyard chic” to an elegant iron railing with a leaf motif modeled after the magnolia tree outside the window. The couple enjoyed weekends at garage sales and antique shops to replace their furnishings and collected Mexican pottery and other crafts from one of their favorite destinations: San Miguel de Allende.

The house sits on nearly a third of an acre and the grounds are gorgeous, from a shady patio  in front to a lush vegetable garden in the back.

While Whizzer’s wife considers her husband a “farmer,” because of his 60 tomato plants, chili peppers and other fruits and vegetables, Whizzer simply considers himself a “foodie.”

With his heirloom tomatoes, “I  freeze 50 pounds a year for cooking and give away about 200 pounds,” he said.  He’s also proud of his “pimientos de padron,” a chili pepper made famous by writer Calvin Trillin that is popular in Spanish tapas.

 Whizzer is well known in Los Gatos for supplying the enormous squash for the annual march of the “Cucuzza Squash Drill Team” in the town’s Christmas parade. “We’re the successors to the Pigmy Goat Herders that were kicked out a few years ago,” he said. “They got too outrageous.”

And while Betsy still finds herself “going for light switches in places that were there for 20 years,” she loves the third makeover of her home. The couple have no plans to do it again. Knock on wood.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

When De Mattei first bought the property, the house was even smaller — 1,300 square feet, and faced the busy University Avenue. To take full advantage of the corner lot, he lifted up the house, built a new foundation and turned it to face Town Terrace.
From the outside, you appreciate that this little house retains all its charm –including original arched windows at the front. But every inch, inside and out, is maximized. The front garden, designed by Tamura Designs of San Jose, with gravel pathways in a lovely geometric pattern with pea gravel and planting beds makes me want to do the same in my yard. I love the big urn as a centerpiece in the middle with herbs and vegetables growing in the beds –in the front yard no less.
A side yard leading to the sidewalk and busy street was also put to best use with a deck right off the dining room. A
One of the tricks to making a small space seem large, De Mattei said, is to keep spaces open. From the front entryhall, you can look right through the living room, dining and kitchen to see the lovely back courtyard. Wide wooden floors run the length of the house, fooling your eye to think the floorplan goes on and on.
Instead of dividing living spaces with walls, different ceiling treatments do the trick, from a flat 8-foot-ceiling in the living room, to a higher, beamed-ceiling in the dining room.
And you can always count on Sunset to have beautiful decor, from handmade tiles in the kitchen to my favorite thing: the gray trefoil tiles in the masterbath. (Those might be lovely in my pending bath renovation!) Room and Board supplied most of the furnishings, and Anteo Home in Los Gatos brought in the dining room chairs and special pieces.
If you want to see the house for yourself, it’s well worth it. Here’s the skinny:

Friday, Saturday and Sunday
July 23 – August 15, 2010 Time:10:00 am – 5:00 pm Tickets (purchase on-site):$15 adults
$12 seniors 65+ Fridays only
$5 children 12 and under Location:100 Towne Terrace
Los Gatos, California 95032

Here’s the complete slideshow:

My husband, Chris, and I are finally ready to bite the bullet on our so-called master bathroom. Ever since he took the sledgehammer to our tiny shower eight years ago because the pan leaked through to our laundry room, we have been using the kids’ bathroom down the hall. Our shower became storage for our Costco supply of bath tissue.

In those eight years, our 1970s-era irridescent green tile on the floor and walls has come back into retro-fashion. But it’s too late to salvage. The sledgehammer took to the bathroom floorboards as well when we replaced the plumbing with copper piping some years ago.
What remains is a funky patchwork of neglect and afterthoughts. Like an unhappy housewife, our master bathroom has “let herself go.” One of the cane doors on the cabinet beneath the sink has a hole in it. The towel rack fell off the wall long ago leaving big holes where the screws once were. And even though the entire space is barely eight feet by four feet, I still manage to have three separate piles of Vanity Fair and Elle Decor magazines: on a book shelf along the wall, a rolling cart between the sink and toilet and on a vintage rack on the floor. A once-special Navajo rug I bought from a shaman’s wife seems contrary and disrespected underfoot. And as much as I like a newly-purchased, vintage mirror with an Asian motif, the whimsy I was going for falls as flat as a bad joke. And please forgive me, my fellow Lookiloos, the metal blinds. (I can’t believe I even committed that to print!)
Our bathroom needs a makeover and we need help!
Our house is 1938 unadorned art deco-style. It is angular and asymetrical, with windows meeting in the corners. The only special touches are the glass block on either side of the front door, which has a chevron pattern matching the garage doors. When it comes to the bathroom, we want simple, clean lines. Nothing tumbled. Nothing too trendy. I like the idea of gray and white (I’m thinking Deco cruise ship) with pops of accent color. Chris likes a warmer palette, perhaps yellow tile.
We need storage and two “stations” in this tiny, one-sink bathroom: one for my husband shaving at the sink, another for me drying my hair right behind him (cheek to cheek so to speak.)
We’re open to ideas. Please share!