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. 
great bones, it was in its original 1940 condition and needed updating. Construction began two days after her son, Douglas, was born.
Both their children, Douglas and Anna, attend St. Martin of Tours elementary school. Liz sought out 
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. 
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.
“She’s a great old girl with good bones,” Brent said. 
I have been a very bad blog girl. I wish I could say I’ve been lounging around here all summer and that’s why I have been so absent, but in fact it was only one week. I’ve been feeling overwhelmed these days. There is little time to write or photograph anything other than my own chaos–and well, that’s just not pretty. I have the usual excuses, work, kids, family, injuries and illnesses—not to mention my latest obsession tennis. So, we are getting into the home tour and holiday season and I’m turning over a new leaf—a lovely golden yellow leaf. I will make time–because this does bring me great joy to see how people have transformed their living spaces.
When I think of a Sunset house, I usually picture something a bit grand, perhaps on a hillside overlooking California oaks. So when I drove by the latest Sunset Dream Remodel in Los Gatos, I almost passed it. It’s small — a 1,550 square foot Mediterranean bungalow on the corner of a somewhat busy street. But the whole idea, in these tough economic times, is to showcase the wonderful things you can do in a small space. And when you look at it that way, this house really measures up.
“This project shows how big a small space can live if done right,” said San Jose builder, Mark De Mattei, who marks his sixth Sunset house with the renovation of this Los Gatos bungalow.
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.
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
“I wanted the challenge to do it as inexpensively as I could,” said Marx, who loves nothing better than finding a cast-off sofa here or discarded end table there. “They’re little orphans. I like giving them a home.”
The last time the house had a makeover was in the early 1990s, a few years after Peters bought it. As was the style at the time, she decorated with a palette of black, white and chrome, including white marble flooring in the living and dining rooms. But over the years, the space had grown tired and cold. And Peters had little time to pay attention to it. She made brief attempts at repainting the interior, but when her artwork came down, including her collection of Asian masks, she never put it back up. In her entry hall, all she had was a plant.
With that, Peters cleared out the entire living, dining and family rooms of furniture, handed Marx the key to the front door, and took off for three weeks.
Marx mined Peters’ garage for lost treasures, pulling out her old trunk and a collection of masks. She hung Peters’ prints and some Chinese silk panels she had bought at auction and arranged everything just so. For finishing touches, she displayed martini glasses on the bar and filled a glass vase in the kitchen with fortune cookies.
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