Rebecca and John Lane were avid fans of “This Old House” and looking for a new project when they first laid eyes on this 1905 Neoclassical Victorian.  The San Jose house with its Roman-style round columns and dentil moldings was in nearly original condition, but needed a lot of work. With the help of architectural designer Lynn Miller in 2007, they took the house down to the studs and began a four-year project that included every weekend of do-it-yourself projects, from refinishing floors to stripping and replacing moldings throughout the house. They tore out a carport and built a detached garage, with John custom-making seven types of molding to match the house. They graciously opened the home for the Rose Garden Homes Tour this fall.

Along the way, John, a mentor in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, taught teenager Devon Hunter the art of carpentry (and the fun of demolition.)

“He’s practically a member of the family at this point,” said John, who began mentoring 19-year-old Devon when he was just seven.

The Lanes left the front rooms in their original configuration, but opened up the back of the house, extending a breakfast nook onto an old porch area, and converting two bedrooms into a family room and stairwell. By excavating nearly two feet of dirt from under the basement, they turned the low-ceilinged space with exposed pipes into a complete living area with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a wine cellar and a “secret door.” The couple was surprised to find that a trap door that led them to the attic revealed 10-foot ceilings above. Adding extra dormers, this became their master suite. Rebecca found vintage-style corbels to use as shelf supports for the luxurious closet. They shopped at antique shops for vintage light fixtures and recovered stained glass windows from John’s parents’ attic in Portland to use as transom windows in the kitchen.

They named the house “Villa Roseto,” Italian for “Rose Garden Estate.”

“It was a much bigger deal than we originally anticipated,” John said of the project. But the 4,000 square foot result, he said, is worth it.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

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:

In the 10 months it took to build this house from the ground up, a lot happened in the Wetmore family. Diane’s mother, the matriarch of the family, died, and her daughter got married. What she realized then was just how important it was that this new home become the center, the gathering place, for the family.

And to Diane and Ray, whose four grown daughters all attended St. Martin of Tours, that meant big, open spaces for entertaining, both inside and out. And that starts at the majestic front door, a work of iron art with wavy glass windows that open behind it, letting the California breeze blow from the front all the way to the glass doors that slide into the wall in the back. The family graciously opened their home for the Rose Garden Homes Tour this fall.

Ray is a commercial masonry contractor and the home that Diane describes as part Arizona, part Florida and part Hawaii needed some signature stonework. With the help of architect Chris Spaulding and designer Susan Powell, they created a stone alcove that can be glimpsed from the entryway as well as a stone-covered stove hood. Even the risers on the curving staircase are covered in a distinctive tile to add interest. The living room ceiling soars two-stories high, with windows upon windows to let light in. The front room was designed as a “mancave” with leather sofas, a wet bar, stone fireplace and vintage wine barrels. Limestone tile floors make a seamless transition from the living room through the wall of windows(that disappear when opened) to the covered patio, complete with a Tuscan-style dining table and plans for a full-service barbecue area.

With a gracious master bedroom downstairs, the upstairs is reserved for family, including a nursery for the Wetmore’s grandchildren.

“Everyone comes here and stays here,” Diane said. “It was built to bring the family together.”

Here’s the complete slideshow:

But when the road narrows and the oaks make way for redwoods, you reach the old gate at San Clemente Rancho, a private enclave dating back half a century. What the 1960s-era cabins here lack in square footage, they make up for in vintage charm and, in some cases, high style.

Folks from San Francisco to Salinas have discovered this special place and brought their own sense of style – from modern organic to rustic to Americana – to these little abodes. And at nearly every one, you’ll find deck railings covered with beach towels and walking sticks for hikes and buckets at back doors for catching bullfrogs at the lake.

Three cabin owners opened their doors for a peek into how they made the most of their small spaces by combining a respect for the past with their own family heirlooms and contemporary touches.

The look: Modern organic

Kathi Fanelli-Mann, a Bay Area interior designer, shares her one-bedroom, 600-square-foot cabin with her husband, playwright Michael Norman Mann, and their two sons.

Their large Hollister home is filled with vivid colors – but not their tiny cabin at the rancho.

“I wanted to keep it peaceful in here with the color scheme,” she said. The existing whitewashed redwood walls drove the theme and texture. From the bedroom on one side, through the kitchen, she covered the floor with a neutral seagrass – a forgiving flooring that hides the tracked-in dirt and dries quickly when the boys leave their wet bathing suits behind. The chairs are covered in linen, the windows in canvas. A block of wood serves as an end table. Fern leaves picked from the property and propped in oversize jars provide the organic color that brings in the outdoors.

The most stunning focal point is reserved for the bedroom – a huge photo-on-canvas of a snow-covered Yellowstone bison that Mann took on vacation. But this lone bedroom is no master bedroom. Indeed, the Manns gave it up for their boys and flanked the buffalo with a pair of twin beds. A mirrored cabinet from Ikea provides storage and adds visual space – and a bit of sparkle – to the room. A jar next to one of the beds keeps a collection of wild turkey and quail feathers the boys gathered on the property.

An added benefit of giving the children the bedroom? Close the door and hide the mess.

The couple sleeps in the living room, in a sleek daybed with decorative pillows that doubles as a lounge space.

The real magic is outdoors, where an old patio lined by a low stone wall nestles into a grove of live oaks and a new deck overlooks a fish pond, Mann’s favorite place to write.

“In the evenings,” Fanelli-Mann said, “we sit outside, wrap ourselves in blankets and watch the bats come out.”

The look: Americana

When Lee Wilson first saw the Blackrock Creek surging past the cabin for sale at San Clemente Rancho, “I was absolutely enthralled.”

As a kid, he had spent time at a cabin in Boulder Creek with a stream running under it, so “when I saw this I thought, oh, I’ve got to have that. This is where I’ve got to be.”

The previous owners had left the one-bedroom cabin with a loft furnished – with a sofa, leather chair, an oak table and a pair of monumental elk trophy heads on the wall.

“I wasn’t real gung-ho about keeping those,” wife Terry Wilson said of the trophies. She thought their grown daughter “would have a fit and not want to be up there.”

But they didn’t seem to bother her, “so we just left them.”

They were part of the history of the cabin, after all.

An avid antiques collector, Terry Wilson filled the cabin with special touches, from vintage canoe paddles and embroidered samplers to a drum coffee table.

“I tried to pick little things that were Americana-looking, the red, white and blue,” she said. Many pieces are sentimental, from a handcrafted hutch her father made, to her mother’s handwoven Mexican blankets and her parents’ wall clock. On the hearth rest four pairs of children’s cowboy boots that belonged to her, her brother and the most recent addition – her granddaughter’s pink ones.

As much as Terry Wilson loves to decorate, it was Lee Wilson who was adamant about several statement pieces he acquired from places as divergent as the San Francisco Design Center (an American flag tile mosaic for the front walkway) and a roadside trash bin (a shutter for above the kitchen sink). He nailed to the kitchen wall his collection of Griswold cast-iron skillets and placed an old cigar-store Indian that was a gift from a friend at the front gate.

“I just walk in and have extreme calm,” he said. “I don’t go to the pool or the rec center because I’ve got everything right here, the best of all worlds.”

The look:Lakeside rustic

As you walk up the front path to this cabin, you spot the green canoe floating against the deck and wonder whether you’ve actually stepped into a Winslow Homer painting.

Carol and Lin Krebs of Los Gatos were smitten when they laid eyes on the lakeside cabin, made from a cedar log kit in 1972 from Pan-Abode, a company still in business today. The cabin was built by Mike and Donna Dormody and their four children, who bought the rancho in 1960 from the McFadden family that homesteaded the land in the 1920s. Some 16 miles southeast of Carmel, the property lies in the Santa Lucia Mountains – a two-hour drive from the South Bay.

At 1,000 square feet with three bedrooms and a loft, “it was one of the biggest,” said Bruce Dormody, who now runs the entire San Clemente Rancho development. While he and his family own the land, they sell 99-year licensing agreements to cabin owners. (Cabins for sale range from the mid-$100,000s to low-$500,000s, plus membership and other fees, and can be seen at www.mountain-cabins.com.)

At the lakeside cabin, Dormody recalled, none of the bedrooms had closets.

That was a problem the Krebs family set out to change, adding a master bedroom, bath and closet. With the help of decorator Lillian Stahl, they added a crackle finish to the kitchen cabinets, vintage chairs and Western paintings. Exposed pipes in the original bathroom were wrapped with rope.

On Fourth of July weekend, they drape red, white and blue bunting from the railing of the wraparound deck and watch the fish jump, the egrets fly and the kids jump off the swimming platform in the middle of Trout Lake. “You really feel you’re floating on the water,” she said.

Inside, she said, “small, comfortable and cozy was what I really wanted.”

And like most of the cabin owners who have found a respite here, that’s exactly what she got.

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.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Thierry Buisson’s parents met in a French military hospital in Marrakech, Morocco. She was a local nurse born and raised there. He was a doctor from a farming village in the south of France.Growing up in Paris, Buisson spent time in both places, from his grandparents’ rustic farmhouse to the colorful marketplaces of Marrakech.Buisson, who came to the United States two decades ago, is a personal shopper at Neiman Marcus in San Francisco and does interior design work on the side. A dining room he decorated with zebra skin and a custom-made topiary of his dog Winston, of all things, was featured in the Summit League’s “Homes for the Holidays” tour last Christmas.

His love of collecting started with his father.

When Buisson was a boy, he and his father would spend weekends at Paris flea markets and antique shops, searching for

“just that magical piece that turns you on.”

It was there he learned “the patience of finding something that makes your heart beat.”

His father would often collect small things, silver and china.

“The biggest piece he ever bought was an 18th-century Aubusson tapestry. My mom just freaked out,” Buisson said. “My dad had to justify every purchase, either hide it or bring it out for a birthday.”

In summers, they would often visit his grandparents in the village of Le Breuil. He remembers two things about the farmhouse in particular:a huge fireplace in the kitchen along with a “gigantic dining room table,” as well as the handmade, white linen sheets in the bedroom that were so cold “it would take us hours to get in bed.”

And every Christmas, the family would travel to his mother’s homeland of Marrakech, where he absorbed the spicy aromas and the colorful textiles. “It’s the most phenomenal, magical place I’ve ever been to,” he said.

And now the home he shares with his partner is filled with the influences of his youth, inside and out.

The front walkway is lined with potted citrus trees, giving you the feeling of approaching a French “orangerie.” Inside, a 19th-century, hand-painted French vaisselier for storing and displaying china sits in the living room — a find from friend Darin Geise who owns the Coup d’Etat showroom across from the Design Center in San Francisco. Atop a leather ottoman is a bright green tray and a Moroccan lantern. Louis XVI chairs are covered in charcoal grey Pierre Frey toile. French doors lead you to a deck that looks like the courtyard of a boutique hotel, with topiaries and Moroccan-tiled wrought-iron tables. On an end table in a guest room is a collection of miniature porcelain busts he collected from the Alameda Point Antiques Faire. In his room, he keeps a collection of antique boxes. His sister, who owns an antique shop in the seventh arrondissement of Paris called “Fauve,” sends him a tiny box for every birthday.

And in an ode to his grandparents, on his bed he keeps French linen sheets. But unlike the farmhouse in France, in his masterbedroom, he has a fireplace to keep them warm.

(Thierry Buisson can be reached at thierryinteriors@gmail.com or 408-828-1685.)

Here’s the complete slideshow:

When Ayesha Sikandar and her husband walked into
the 1960s ranch-style house in San Mateo, it had the signs of an angry
exit _ walls with holes that looked as though someone kicked them in.
Neighbors told them the owner had lost his job, his relationship, his
health and finally, in foreclosure, his home.  The house had become an
eyesore.
But this couple from Pakistan, who had studied and worked in the Bay
Area for a decade and saved for so long, finally found a house they
could afford.
“It’s not a good feeling to go into someone’s house who has gone
through that,” she said. “But the time and price were right for us and
we made it our own.”
The single-story, 1,350-square foot tract home needed a lot of work, but had a nice floorplan that opened to a south-facing backyard. They saw potential .
So they took it upon themselves to turn this house of sorrow back into a happy home.
First, the budding designer and her husband, Musa Sayyed, an artist who designs games for LucusArts in San Francisco, had to agree on a style.
“I’m very modern. My husband likes warm and traditional,” she said. “He was a tough client to please.”
And they needed to stay on budget, which meant many do-it-yourself projects that had them working side-by-side past midnight.
They tackled the big projects first — new handscraped hardwood flooring and double-paned windows. A straight replacement would have meant customizing windows to fit in the spaces. Instead, they made the openings a bit smaller to accommodate standard-size windows.
They also ripped out a kitchen wall and hanging cabinets that separated the kitchen from the big dining and living rooms, creating an open, entertaining space. From Ikea to Lowe’s and Home Depot, they found rolling coffee tables, modern pendant lights and peel-and-stick, rectangular metal plates to add a contemporary dimension to the kitchen backsplash — as well as the corners of her dining room table legs.
A huge brick fireplace separating the dining and living rooms was also given a new look, with a creamy stucco finish.
Sikandar, who has launched her own Maddimensions design firm, embraced a bold, modern palette of black and white, but also introduced warm gold and orange hues to satisfy her husband’s aesthetic. Travertine was used in the bathroom and bands of warm-hued glass mozaic tiles were used to add sparkle and depth to the kitchen and fireplace.
Sikandar’s favorite design element, and by far the cheapest, was the swirling stencil pattern she used on several walls throughout the house to unify the rooms and add a signature element.
They also re-landscaped the back yard to give themselves a bigger lawn and removed the corrogated green roof from the trellis to bring more light into the house.
“My husband and I had our moments,” she said. “But at night, when we sit by the fire, we think we did alright and we’re happy.”
The neighbors are happy, too. Often through the summer, they would stop by with gifts of fresh vegetables from their garden.,
“This was a milestone for us,” Sikandar said. “We’ve come a long way.”

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Unpacked boxes were everywhere. Only the living room and kitchen looked presentable. And she needed a privacy curtain for the front bathroom or her guests would be flashing the neighbors. She had already raced around Indian shops in Sunnyvale looking for fabric that would work in the iridescent blue bathroom and found nothing. As she was unpacking a box full of old clothes she hadn’t seen in a year, she pulled out a sari-like dress.

Hmm, she thought. “Dress or curtain? Dress or curtain?”

She took out the shears, cut it, and began the whirr of the sewing machine.

The entire remodel, which has been a year in construction and chronicled by Lookiloos and the Mercury News, has been a hands-on, nail-biting project from the start. Murray is an artist and wanted the home to reflect her avant-garde style as well as their international roots. Like many Silicon Valley families, they have traveled a circuitous route to get here. Murray’s husband, Craig Hinkley, is an Australia native. She grew up in Canada. With their two children, now 14 and 12, they have traveled the world and the United States, moving every two years or so following Hinkley’s jobs in high tech.

Unlike other homes Murray has transformed to suit their needs and prepare for resale over the years, she designed this one with creative abandon. She isn’t worried about pleasing a potential buyer anymore. After more than two years enjoying the life and climate of Silicon Valley and the town tucked into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, they plan to settle down this time.

So when they moved their family, plus their rambunctious boxer Millie, back into the house just in time for Christmas, they began to feel a whole new sense of home. And with a giant angel on their shoulder — or tucked under the bed until the towering stained-glass window was safely installed in the living room — they have survived rainstorms and mud bogs, accidents and injuries, cramped quarters and a leaking storage unit that left many family keepsakes in ruins.

And now, after all that, Murray said, “We finally stopped moving, stopped renovating, stopped the dirt, stopped the noise and just put on the music.”

They can finally sit back and enjoy the home they built for no one but themselves. The peacock-blue backsplash in the kitchen. The quatrefoil ironwork on the banister. The colorful Moroccan lanterns above the dining table and the industrial pendants over the kitchen island.

And across the room from the stained-glass angel that casts colorful light across the floor is a sensuous portrait of Proserpina, the Roman goddess of spring, that Murray painted on the sliding pocket door.

“By saying to yourself, ‘I am not going to move; this is the house I would like my grandchildren to come to,’ you make it in a way that is incredibly personal,” she said. “You don’t need to answer to neutrality. You can take who you are and run with it.”

All along the way, her contractor, Vinnie Tran of VT Construction, put up with her brainstorms and second-guesses and finished the project within the year he promised.

Murray even changed the size and scale of the house early on, giving up a formal dining room and more interior space when they reined in their budget and decided to better enjoy what the Bay Area has to offer that their former residences of Charlotte, N.C., and Seattle didn’t — great weather. Instead of a formal living room, they now have a covered terrace.

The landscaping will have to wait. Inside, boxes remained unpacked and rooms undecorated. But after a full year of the parents sleeping in the cottage and the kids in bunk beds in the garage, they are all sleeping under the same roof.

Even now, they look back fondly on the past year. Son Cal says his best Christmas was in the cottage when they decorated the Charlie Brown Christmas tree in about 20 minutes and the smell of ham filled every square inch of the 360-square-foot dwelling.

In the new house the other night, Murray lit the outdoor fireplace and called the family to join her.

“I said to everyone, put down the homework, stop the texting, get off the phone. Let’s sit and listen to the crackling fire and the music and the frogs from the creek,” she said. “Everyone stop and be thankful for this moment and where we are.”

And then, for a memorable moment, the four of them sat together and talked.
Contact Julia Prodis Sulek at jsulek@mercurynews.com. Read the previous stories in “This Darned House” saga at www.lookiloos.com.

LESSONS LEARNED

Have a renovation in your future? Here is Lisa Murray’s advice to other homeowners:

Know your style. If you are not confident in your design abilities, hire a designer who can communicate your style to your architect, contractor, stonemason, tiler, painter, etc.

Building green is relatively easy thanks to new state energy efficiency standards. It’s the demolition of the old home that is difficult.

Find a contractor that you like, respect and trust. This choice will affect your experience more than any other one. A good contractor will have good subcontractors and good subs collectively create well-built homes.

Never compromise on your finishes as this is what you will touch and feel every day.

The renovation will seem like it is taking forever. But, upon reflection, it will seem like it went at light speed.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Men's Smoking Lounge by lulu Pom

In a manner of days, the duo transformed what had looked more like a woman’s sitting room into a masculine man’s smoking room, or as Linda and Laura put it, “a history-reading, cigar-smoking, absynthe-drinking room.”

Niche with collections and curiosities

Some of the “added to” included the central focal point — a pair of vintage wing-back chairs whose dark wooden frames were bleached and wire-brushed, then reupholstered in a faux bois fabric with nickle nail heads and placed atop a zebra-skin rug for a “pattern on pattern” look.

Linda and Laura are expert at pairing vintage with modern and did so in the niche, where they replaced a sofa with a sparkling  starburst mirror and a credenza to display books, bankers’ boxes, crystal decanters and curiosities. They painted the ceiling a high-gloss gray to add more sparkle.

Absynthe glasses at the ready

While the spaces may have been designed with men in mind, the many women on the tour certainly wanted to linger.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

A glimpse from the 2008 tour

Three beautiful Saratoga homes will be featured this year, each decorated in full holiday regalia by local designers and florists.

If it was this great in 2008, imagine 2010.

The second house is a contemporary Tuscan home built in 2002 with a classic red-tiled roof, arched windows and warm interiors. The family built the house around outdoor entertaining. The resort-inspired grounds include a mosaic-tiled pool, terraces with wisteria-covered pergolas, fireplaces and a full kitchen with a pizza oven.

The third house is a French Chateau built atop a Saratoga foothill. The entry hall features a pier mirror that the family brought around the Horn in the late 1800s. A “tree house” office was added during the most recent renovation and the dining room decor evokes the feeling of a french garden. The renovated kitchen is state-of-the-art.

Leave a comment about why you want to go on the Summit League Homes for the Holidays tour and we’ll select a winner for a pair of tickets!