The newly renovated breakfast room

Pam Gilberd hated nearly everything about the dilapidated ranch house they looked at in the Carmel Valley. “It smelled. The yard was described as an Italian cemetery. It had a hot tub 10 feet from the front door and you had to walk over the cord to get to it.”

Before:The original facade with hot tub in front yard.

Her husband, retired stockbroker Fred Gilberd, however, saw only possibilities. The view across Carmel Valley Ranch and to the Santa Lucia Mountains was stunning. The single-story layout worked. And he was anxious to prove his theory that with a little vision and a lot of elbow grease, “you could make anything nice.”

And so the couple embarked on a two-year project that Pam — a writer — hoped would be as romantic as the Italian remodel in bestseller “Under The Tuscan Sun.” After remodeling, compromising, nearly giving up,  finding hidden creativity — and, yes, romance — the Gilberds have just self-published their own version: “Under the Carmel Valley Sun.”  (Lookiloos will be giving away two copies of the book, so please leave a comment below!)

The couple bought the house in 2000, a market peak when there was little else for sale. At the time, they had no idea what they wanted the house to look like when they were finished.  But a previously scheduled bike-riding trip through Provence inspired them to work towards a French country look. And they vowed to do it themselves, without handing off any major work to contractors.

“For one reason, I’m a cheapskate,” Fred, 70,  said. “I also wanted the satisfaction of doing it myself.”

After: The updated facade, with faux-painted door.

But what the couple quickly realized, as they ate dinner each night on one of the few pieces of furniture — their bed — “we got into something that was way over our heads,” Fred said.

Pam, 63, reached her low point about halfway though. She had envisioned that she would be like other homeowners who would uncover “wonderful archways” and would “laugh and learn together.”  At that point in the Gilberd remodel, however, there wasn’t much laughing going on.

“Pam was reaching a crisis stage,” Fred said. Even playing the soundtrack to Out of Africa for her, which had seemed to settle emotions before, had little effect. He suggested they simply finish off the house with white paint throughout and put it on the market.

Pam was shocked that he would even consider giving up his dream because she wasn’t happy. “To me that was one of the most romantic things he ever said to me,” Pam said. For Pam, it was a turning point. “When he said that, I said, ”No way. Of course we’re going to finish this.’ I became almost as obsessive as he was.”

She doesn’t like sewing, but because they spent so much money redoing their fireplace, she pulled out her sewing machine to make her own cushions and curtains. She read books on the Toll House painting style and  painted two-tone fruits on a long, narrow dining table Fred made for her, and  olive branches on the walls of  her narrow hallway.

“It really forced us to expand our skills and our vision of what we could do,” she said.

And it also brought them closer together. “Renovating a house is a test of a marriage,” Pam said, but “it can be a wonderfully bonding time–as long as the small stuff stays in proportion to the overall intent.”

After:The new kitchen

They looked for ways to complement instead of criticize, she said, and “got a lot further that way and had more fun.”

In the end, not only did they transform a run-down ranch into a French county oasis, but they were so proud of their accomplishment together, they took on another challenge: writing a diary-style book of their adventure.

When they realized their memories of the same events differed so wildly, they decided to write a he-said, she-said book with each penning chapters. It’s a delightful story of the highs and lows and –  with patience, understanding and compromise — the romance of the remodel.

 Leave a comment and let us know if you’d like a copy.