Featured in the San Jose Mercury News

Charming Cabin Style at San Clemente Rancho

Saturday, August 27th, 2011

Don’t be fooled by the approach. To get to the 100 cabins nestled deep in the hills behind Carmel Valley, you first wind along a luxurious golf course and pass new multimillion-dollar estates.

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:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Posted in Architecture, California Living, Carmel, cottage, Decorating, Featured, Featured in the San Jose Mercury News, Home and Garden, Home Decor, Inside Stories, Inside Story, Interior Design, Julia, Kitchen, Living Room, Modern, Outdoor Living, Summer Homes | 1 Comment »

High-rise living goes modern, urban chic

Saturday, May 14th, 2011

Sure, they had all seen the model units of the high-rise before they bought their own, a decorator’s idea of modern, urban living with straight-edged white couches and pops of color — and not a soul living in them.

But once they moved in, how did these new urban dwellers decorate their own spaces? And more important for the voyeur in all of them, how did their neighbors decorate theirs, especially the guys in the penthouse?

Last week, homeowners in the 22-story “The 88″ on Second Street in downtown San Jose hosted their own “progressive design party” to show off their own places and peek in on others.

“I want to see how other people live,” says Karen Mandell, who had cheese and wine waiting for her guests in the unit she shares with her husband on the ninth floor. (Hint: There was more than one white couch on the tour.)

High-rise living is new to San Jose, a city known more for its suburban sprawl than hip downtown living. Beginning in 2007, just as the real estate market was tanking, the first of four towers were built downtown, starting with City Heights, then Axis and The 88 and finally the 360 Residences. The 88 is the tallest of the four. It opened in late 2009, is 65 percent full, and the homeowners couldn’t seem happier.

About 30 neighbors gathered first in the “entertainment room” on the fifth floor that opens to the spalike pool and grand, tree-studded terrace. And a surprising mix of neighbors it was, from European singles working in local high-tech to a young couple who traded a 3,000-square-foot in Denver, to empty nesters who left their Redwood City home of 33 years.

The Colorado couple are Karen and Evan Mandell. They moved to San Jose in late 2009 when Karen Mandell, 37, got a job as the research director for the Mineta Transportation Institute. She gave up her car when she moved here and walks the half-mile to work.

“It’s a very simple, clean, sustainable lifestyle,” she says. (Grocery shopping is easy with a Safeway on the ground floor, her husband says. “It’s like having the world’s largest refrigerator in the basement.”)

When they sold their big Denver home and were moving to the one-bedroom unit in the high-rise, they were faced with the quandary of what to do with all their heavily carved, marble-topped Baroque-style furniture. “We sold everything but the bar,” she says.

“You have to maximize your style when you only have two or three rooms to work with,” Evan Mandell, 38, says.

In came a new white leather sectional, a triangle-shaped dining table that seats six and a can of dark red paint to add drama to the living room walls.

While Karen Mandell gave up a lot of furniture, she didn’t seem to get rid of any shoes. She has floor-to-ceiling shelves of them in her closet, which she illuminated with a pink crystal chandelier; it was one of the most popular rooms on the tour. “Who are you, Lady Gaga?” her neighbor, Rosa Passanisi, asks, peeking in.

Passanisi, who works at the U.S. Postal Service with her husband and is nearing retirement, took a different approach to decorating. She simply moved all the furniture that would fit from their Redwood City home, right down to the oak ladder-back dining room chairs. Her house is comfortable, she says. “We don’t have a showcase house.”

Mohamed “Mo” Marleen’s 14th-floor space couldn’t be more modern, from the white couch to the bubblelike chandelier and arching globe light.

Rob and Laurie Howe moved much of their traditional furniture with an Asian influence into their 17th-floor home, adding walls of storage to accommodate the extras they couldn’t part with from the 4,200-square-foot home they gave up on a half-acre in Belleview, Wash., when Rob Howe took a job at eBay.

The tour’s big reveal was one of the penthouses on the 21st floor. Engineers Paul Teixeira, 35, and Jose Mendez, 28, own this 1,700-square-foot home with two bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths, 11 1/2-foot ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows. “It’s like a glass box in the air,” Teixeira says.

Teixeira was happy to give up his four-bedroom, two-story house in South San Jose that kept him doing yard work on weekends for the penthouse with the views from the eastern foothills all the way to San Francisco. Both men take the light rail to work most days. About the only things Teixeira kept from the old house were his childhood piano with the varnish flaking off (“It’s rustic and kind of weird,” Teixeria says) and the massive sectional that fit perfectly between two support columns.

“It’s that modern rustic, a cross between Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware,” he says of the comfortable, low-profile couch. “Neither of us are ultramodern. We were trying to shoot for that clean modern look, but a little bit warmer.”

The bar with the LED-illuminated shelving is new — lighting up his liquor bottles in an array of colors — along with the outsized artwork on the walls.

Before moving in, the couple modified the kitchen, adding a huge granite-topped island that has become party central. To add color to the mostly black-and-white palette, they added a trio of blue pendant lights over the island.

They also made a centerpiece on their seldom-used dining table with a giant ceramic abalone shell and blue and green blown glass that practically glows when the natural light streams through it.

As much as the couple enjoys the inside of their penthouse, it’s what’s outside that made them fall in love with it. On a clear day, they can see the Golden Gate Bridge.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Posted in Architecture, Condos, Downtown Living, Downtown San Jose, Eco Friendly, Featured, Featured in the San Jose Mercury News, Inside Stories, Inside Story, Julia, Modern, Penthouse, San Jose, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

San Mateo Foreclosure House Turns into Happy Home Remodel

Monday, January 10th, 2011

5312999145_cd2a5cea9b_b[1]

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.
5313590196_885af56599_o[1] “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.
5312994237_602f8d582d_b[1] 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.
5312994959_be7309ec10_b[1] “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.” Julia Looking Right - Lookiloos

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Posted in Architecture, Backyard, Before and After, California Living, Decorating, Dining Room, DIY, Featured, Featured in the San Jose Mercury News, Inside Stories, Inside Story, Interior Design, Julia, Kitchen, Modern, Ranch, Remodel, San Mateo | 8 Comments »

Lookiloos: Home (finally!) for the Holidays

Saturday, December 25th, 2010

Lisa Murray was getting down to the wire. House guests from Australia were expected that afternoon, barely two weeks after she moved her family of four out of their tiny cottage on the back of the property and into their newly remodeled house in Los Gatos.

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.

Julia Looking Left - Lookiloos

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:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Posted in Architecture, California Living, Decorating, Featured, Featured in the San Jose Mercury News, Home and Garden, Home Decor, Home Improvement, Inside Stories, Inside Story, Interior Design, Julia, Los Gatos, Remodel, This Darned House, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

This Darned House: A Wet Winter Destroys Heirlooms in Remodel

Saturday, November 20th, 2010

Lisa Murray thought opening the storage containers that sat idle for a year would be like crossing the finish line of their house remodel. She had looked forward to sifting through family photos and baby quilts made for her two children by her late mother, and uncrating the art books she had built a library for. Murray and her husband, Craig Hinkley, built this house to settle down their vagabond family that had moved every two-and-a-half years for the past 16. The family momentos would help make this house a home.

Cottaged shared by family of four---plus dog.

Cottage shared by family of four---plus dog.

After a year of construction while the couple shared a tiny cottage out back and the two kids — 14 and 12 – plus the dog, Millie the boxer, slept in bunk beds in the garage, Murray was ready to put their family lives back in order. They had lived with an overflowing toilet, electricity outages, and a winter of rain that left mud bogs that Millie tracked inside. At one point, Murray wretched her knee and needed a cane after tripping on broken flagstone.

Lookiloos and the Mercury News have been chronicling their remodel odyssey.

Daily, she shuttled back and forth to Home Depot to pick up odds and ends for her contractor so he could stay focused on the building and she could get her kids out of the garage and into their home. As a family, they pickled ceiling beams on saw horses in the back yard. She and her husband climbed into the rafters to install fiber optics for an art installation in the master bedroom.

The inconveniences and stresses were worth it. She kept her eye on the prize — a big house they downsized during planning, a house where this avant garde artist could express her creativity in bold colors and bubble chairs, Gothic details and a female portrait she painted on a sliding door that disappears into the wall.

Woman on Sliding Door---Truly Stunning!

Still, she had a reality check when her son, Cal, was attacked by a dog last summer that tore a gash into his face that threatened to leave lasting scars. This is a woman who understands what’s important in life — Los Gatos remodel or not.

When she and her husband opened the storage containers last weekend, they were devastated. To save money, they had decided to keep three storage containers on their property during construction. They covered them with tarps to add extra water proofing.

That wasn’t enough.

Through the heavy winter rains, as she was choosing tile and light fixtures, ninety percent of the art books she had collected in her travels were turned into muck. All the Nancy Drew books that she and her daughter, Madison, read together in bed each night were ruined.

Cherished Childhood Memories

“My best friend gave them to me when she was a little girl,” Murray said. “I was going to read them when I’m a grandmother to my granddaughter. Ours isn’t a drop in a buck to people who lose everything in a fire. But the feeling is horrible. Maybe its God’s way of saying, ‘You know what? Think of other people who are less fortunate than you.’”

The baby quilts her mother had sewn for the children were covered in mildew. A needlepoint her mother had made of her son’s birth announcement was safe. But she hasn’t found her daughter’s yet. She can only pray it survived, too.The house still needs final inspection. And her husband has already settled on take-out Chinese food for Thanksgiving. House guests from Hinkley’s native Australia are arriving in less than three weeks and the pressure is on to be moved back in.

“It’s our own stupid fault,” she said. “But it’s one of those things you don’t count on. It’s heartbreaking.”

“It’s like a marathon. You want to finish triumphantly,” she said. “But you’re kind of wounded going across the finish line.”

There have been successes along the way, though. Her children have become closer living in the garage, reading by flashlight when the electricity is out. She appreciates more than ever the support of her husband through the chaos. And a giant stained glass window of an angel — a piece she bought through Craig’s List that once adorned a mortuary — was safely installed in the living room.

As she sweeps up dust, she enjoys watching its blue light filter across the barren living room floor. When she feels a little despondent, it gives her a little hope.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Posted in Architecture, Featured, Featured in the San Jose Mercury News, Julia, Los Gatos, Remodel, This Darned House | 3 Comments »

Homeowner Leaves Town:Eichler Gets New Decor

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

Be honest. How many of you would trust a friend to completely redo your home decor while you’re out of town for three weeks, especially when that friend plans to do most of her shopping at thrift shops and consignment stores?

Well, Stephanie Peters did when she invited Linda Marx, an independent-minded bargain-hunting maven, to have at it.

4657894782_ba323b8410_b “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.”

Peters, a Sunnyvale marketing consultant, wanted a home makeover that “shows my personality,” emphasizes comfort and reflects her penchant for all things Asian.

She lives in an Eichler, the 1950s-era, one-story homes with open floor plans, atriums and courtyards. Mid-century modern furnishings are experiencing a resurgence of popularity these days, but Marx was reluctant to shop in that direction: “I lived through that” era of design, Marx said, “and I didn’t particularly like it then.”

And with popularity often comes a big price tag, and that simply is not Marx’s style. Marx promised she could completely swap the decor of the living, dining and family rooms for a grand total of $4,000, which included everything from furniture delivery to moving lighting fixtures. (That would buy mid-century purists one Eames lounge chair and ottoman, thank you very much.)

4657274101_fd417abb06_b 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.

“All right, enough,” Peters told herself. “I entertain a lot. I’m sick and tired of people coming over and I’m embarrassed.”

She called Marx, who calls her fledgling redecorating business “Shoestring Design.” The women became friends through Marx’s son, who worked with Peters years ago. Peters had been to parties at Marx’s house and while there, couldn’t help but admire her home. She asked for help on hers.

“I said I wanted modern and Asian,” Peters said.

“I wanted the house to feel warm and nice,” Marx said.

“I wanted chrome bar stools,” Peters said.

“I didn’t bother with it,” Marx said.

“Never mind,” Peters conceded. “Do it.”

4657893570_5c3ed01637_b 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.

“I had never done Asian before,” Marx confessed.

She began her thrift store circuit up and down the Peninsula, stopping in the Salvation Army on Winchester Boulevard in San Jose, where she found a dining room table and chairs for $149; to the Consignment Store in Westgate Mall in Saratoga, where she landed a living room sofa, and the Goodwill on Almaden Expressway in San Jose for the Asian bar for $89. She bought a bamboo wall hanging at Cost Plus World Market for $49, Asian coin wall hooks for $3 from Savers in Redwood City for the entryway, a coffee table from Not Too Shabby in San Jose for $49. A large Persian rug ($120) that covers the cold marble floor came from D.G.W. Auctioneers and Appraisers in Sunnyvale.

4657891864_02b7972476_b 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.

Then she waited. “I was sweating bullets when she came home,” Marx said.

“I stood in awe in the entryway for 30 seconds,” Peters said. She barely recognized the place. “I walked back in three or four times. There was so much and it had changed so drastically.”

Peters loves her new decor and “everyone who comes to my house is flabbergasted. I’ve had wonderful feedback.”

Now on to the bedrooms! As soon as Peters leaves town, Marx will be ready. Julia Looking Left - Lookiloos

If you like bargains and didn’t see the story Desiree and I wrote about the Asian fretwork chairs we bought for a bargain price at Not Too Shabby, read this:

Smackdown:Lookiloos-style

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Posted in Antiques, Decorating, Dining Room, DIY, Eichler, Family Room, Featured, Featured in the San Jose Mercury News, Furniture, Home Decor, Inside Stories, Interior Design, Julia, Kitchen, Modern, Not Too Shabby | 2 Comments »

Smackdown! Lookiloos Style

Friday, April 30th, 2010

Amazing Fretwork Iron Chair

Are you ready for a Lookiloos smackdown? We’d love you to weigh in on this good-natured competition between two Lookiloos founders, Julia Prodis Sulek and Desiree Northend, who had a Lucy-and-Ethel tug-of-war over a set of very hip, very vintage chairs. The coolest part? They each paid under $40 per chair, but spotted a nearly identical reproduction at a chic Carmel shop for $625. Using their own sense of style and bargain shopping, Julia and Desiree made their chairs their own. Which do you like best? (You won’t hurt their feelings, really.)

By Julia Prodis Sulek

When Desiree told me she had just purchased four Asian fretwork chairs, I was happy for her. Really. It didn’t matter to me — that much — that I considered myself the fretwork girl. I so adored the geometric, intersecting lines of the Asian style, whether on the back of a chair or along a balcony railing, that I made a file of fretwork photos just to gaze at longingly. Trendy interior designer Kelly Whearstler was making wallpaper with the motif. Surely, Desiree must have known my inner obsession! And now, with one grand purchase, she would luxuriate in … well … what should have been mine, mine, all mine?

My mouth went dry as she described the 1960s-era high-backed chairs. They were made of sturdy iron for the outdoors and rolled on casters. I felt faint when she told me she got them for the bargain price of $39 each at Not Too Shabby, a home and garden shop on South Bascom Avenue. It’s one of those places you just never know what treasure you might find. Desiree bought four chairs. Three were left. I desperately wanted them. But would I be breaking some friendship code by adorning my backyard with the same spectacular chairs? I flashed back to an episode of I Love Lucy, where Lucy and Ethel fell in love with the same dress to wear to their “show,” and each promised the other that neither would buy it. Well, they both did, and while singing “Friendship” in the identical dresses on stage, they began plucking each other’s dresses apart! Well, call me Ethel to Desiree’s Lucy.
In our case, with Desiree’s gracious permission, I bought the remaining three. Since one of them had lost a caster and the odd-number of three remained, I bargained with Not Too Shabby owner Vikki Graham and purchased each for $29 a piece — a $30 savings compared to Desiree’s bargain.
Not only did a Carmel shop called Partington Ridge sell a reproduction for $625 a piece, but Val Perez-Ibardolasa, who owns Retro At Home in Emeryville, a chic mid-century modern shop, figured that a vintage set like the one we bought could fetch upwards of $5,000!
The only problem with our chairs? They needed cushions, the somewhat unusual size of 19 inches square. I priced custom cushions at an upholstery shop at $100 — and that didn’t even count the fabric. Determined to find a cheaper solution, I was amazed to find fabulous, retro-style cushions in orange and brown floral at JC Penny for a sale price of $19.99 a piece! I bought a second set to keep in reserve. I kept the chairs in their bronze-green patina, set them under my orange tree and admired the scene. Perfect for a spring afternoon with a glass or lemonade or an evening glass with a glass of wine.
Well, Desiree, you’ve seen mine. Now show me yours! And let our readers decide whose they like best. Don’t worry. We can handle it. Like Lucy and Ethel, they remained great friends, no matter what.

Julia Looking Left - Lookiloos

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By Desiree Northend

The gauntlet has been thrown–a challenge. Well, this girl never backs down from a challenge. Slightly competitive–you betcha! (Please no Sarah Palin references). It’s a family trait I’ve passed down for better or worse. Just ask any kid of mine.
Now, Julia — my wonderful partner in crime at Looikiloos — seems to think she is the only one who can appreciate fretwork. I didn’t realize I had broken the cardinal rule “Thou shalt not admire fretwork, if your Lookiloos partner has already claimed it.” That was my faux pas. Besides, as you can see, there was plenty of fretwork to go around and I was only too happy to share in the bounty. Take a deep cleansing breath, Julia.
As soon as I saw the chairs, I knew I had to have them. I have wanted outdoor iron furniture since my boys were in their fort-building phase and demolished those old, nylon folding lawn chairs. I wanted something substantial, something that could really take a beating and still look fabulous when not in use as the corners of a castle. What really drew me to these particular chairs was the high wing back shape as well as that fretwork. But I wasn’t wild about the color — a muddy bronze. And they needed cushions. I consider myself a crafty type, so to complement the wrought iron fence in my backyard, I pulled out a can of gloss black spray paint and went for it. I first considered sewing my own cushions, top and bottom, with fabric I purchased years ago from reprodepot.com. But when Julia told me she found the perfect size bottom cushions in a variety of colors at JC Penny, that was too good to pass up. I bought the last four poppy-colored ones. (I hated to tell her that when I went, the cushions were on close-out and I got them for 40 percent less than what she paid. But, she did get the chairs at a cheaper price, so we’re even right?) I made my own top cushions with my own favorite fabric, fluffed them up a bit, and now admire the whole set from my kitchen window. At the end of the day, I think we both did pretty darn well. Don’t you? Please leave a comment and let us know your opinion.

Desiree Looking Left - Lookiloos

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Posted in Antiques, Desiree, Featured, Featured in the San Jose Mercury News, Furniture, Garden, Home and Garden, Home Decor, Julia, Looki What I Found, San Jose, Uncategorized | 41 Comments »

Growing Family Downsizing with Style

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

Desk in Breakfast nook

Meg Picanco has quite a home decor pedigree. For years, she and her late mother, Nancy Biagini, owned and ran the highly-regarded Casa Casa store on San Jose’s Lincoln Avenue. And until last fall, she was a partner in Willow Glen Home and Garden just down the street.

So you would expect the home she shares with her husband and two young children to be well appointed. But several life-changing events over the past few years have forced her to rethink the importance of belongings and what it truly means to make a house a home.

The top of a bookcase serves as a spot for special things

Like many families in these tough economic times, the growing Picanco family has downsized to half the space they were used to. And leave it to 41-year-old Picanco to do it with style.

She has turned the 1,400 square-foot cottage she rents in Willow Glen into a charming oasis filled — sparingly — with carefully chosen, quality furnishings from her retail days as well as the family heirlooms she cherishes most.

From her grandmother’s spice cabinet with a needlepoint inset to her mother’s glass-topped coffee table, the house has a feeling of warmth and deep roots no matter how temporary the rental may be.

“Bringing things into your home that have history give it a special aura,” Picanco said.

Her journey to the rental house has taken a circuitous path. Picanco, her husband, Mario, and their two young children, Gabrielle and Giancarlo, were living in a 2,800 square-foot home in Boise, Idaho — “in search of a calmer life where we could live on one income.” But less than a year into their lives there, she was confronted at the same time with two frightening realities: her mother was diagnosed with colon cancer and her 19-month-old son was confirmed deaf.

Not only did she want to be close to her mother in San Jose as she fought the disease, but Picanco and her husband discovered that a top preschool for the deaf was located just up the peninsula in Redwood City.
“We knew we had to return to California,” she said. San Jose is where she studied interior design from San Jose State University and when she was 23, opened Casa Casa with her mother. Her sister joined later. When children came along for the sisters, the trio decided to sell the business. Picanco stayed on as a buyer for the new owners for a year before moving to Idaho in 2006.

They had been homeowners in San Jose before they moved and her husband holds a solid job in high tech, “but we could not afford to buy back into the market when we returned.”

So what did she do? She did what any woman would do: she held a garage sale. And she was compelled to sell “all the things that were wonderful, beautiful things I loved.”
But she kept a painted chest that her grandmother had left to her (and had tucked a note addressed to her inside for posterity,) a pair of her mother’s table lamps, a set of nesting tables her aunt brought back from Florence, and a delicate, bamboo-style chandelier that has stayed with the family through their moves and is decorated with holly berries at Christmas and streamers for birthdays.

After a stint in one Willow Glen rental distinguished by a pink tile kitchen with a butterfly motif, she found the house her family now calls home, a place she hopes to stay in for at least the next several years.

It is the simplest of floorplans: small living and dining rooms, a newly-remodeled kitchen with a tiny breakfast nook, and three small bedrooms and one bath off the back hallway. No family room. No walk-in closets. The only extra is a quarter-basement that is just big enough for the washer and dryer and Picanco’s hanging clothes, folded sweaters, and neatly stacked shoes.

She maximizes every inch with function and style. She has turned the breakfast nook, that was practically too small for a table and chairs, into an office with one elegant, oversized desk topped with a computer. When the kids come home with backbacks and school papers, “everything gets filed immediately,” she said.

clock collection

Perhaps the most surprising personal touch is her decision to invest in shutters for the dining room and bathroom. “I knew when we rented it , we would be here for at least several years, so why not make it our own home?” she said, “and I couldn’t live with metal mini blinds.”

She painted every room a separate color — coating the master bedroom with the same heathery hue she has used for her bedroom in every house. She filled her dining room hutch with her sterling silver and blue and white china as well as a pair of rhinestone-studded starfish. One had been her mother’s, and when she died in 2008, Picanco nestled it in a bowl with her own.

The Picanco family has lived in this house for just a year and in that time, their daughter has adjusted beautifully to her new school and their son has excelled at his. With cochlear implants, he can carry on conversations. “Every five minutes is a miracle,” Picanco said.
Their neighbors have become some of their best friends.
“I can’t deny I wouldn’t love to own my own house,” she said, “but we’re so happy here.” Julia Looking Left - Lookiloos

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Posted in Bungalow, Decorating, Dining Room, Featured, Featured in the San Jose Mercury News, Furniture, Garden, Home and Garden, Home Decor, Inside Stories, Inside Story, Interior Design, Julia, Kitchen, Lighting, Living Room, Willow Glen | 16 Comments »

Darned House:Stained Glass Adds Drama to Remodel

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

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Lisa Murray logged onto Craigslist for the first time looking for a small stained glass window for the master bathroom part of her renovation. As with all things about the remodel of her Los Gatos home, she wasn’t looking for something ordinary. She was looking for something “that makes my heart beat faster.”

P1010687 Then she saw it, an eight foot angel with golden wings, a long white robe and bursts of cobalt blue. Translucent. Brilliant. Mesmerizing. Once the adornment for a San Francisco mortuary, it was now stored in a Richmond warehouse. Lisa quickly realized it was too big for the bathroom, and, quite frankly, almost too beautiful for it.

Despite its mortuary provenance, “it’s not creepy to me,” Lisa said. “The angel represents a hope of something.”

But where could she put it and could she get it home in one piece? What followed would become a lesson in flexiblity, creativity, and nail-biting drama for Lisa and her husband, Craig Hinkley. The couple, along with their two children and dog Millie are living in the tiny backyard cottage they just restored as well as the newly built garage while undergoing a full renovation of their circa-1940 Los Gatos home. Lookiloos and the Mercury News are chronicling their design decisions and family adventures in the “This Darned House” series.

3642719406_53920d2df1 After 15 years of marriage, Craig has learned to trust the fantastical vision of his artist wife. As usual, however, the vision would come with a price. The new home for the angel would be the south-facing bay window in the great room — and that would not only mean a new design concept for the room, but a major re-engineering of the bay window to hold its weight.
“I’m sure Vinnie can make it all work,” Craig told his wife of their contractor, Vinnie Tran, who had already completed the garage under budget.

But first, could they get the angel home safely?

After renting a U-Haul and wrapping the stained glass in blankets, the precious cargo bumped and lurched in the back of a truck all the way from Richmond to Los Gatos. When Craig rolled up the back door of the truck to inspect it, his heart skipped a beat. The window had dropped out of its wooden frame. But he couldn’t tell whether it landed intact or had shattered.

“Lisa, go inside,” he said. “You don’t want to see this.”

When he peeled back the blankets, he was amazed to see it had survived, thanks to the extra cushioning they had put down first. The window had been mounted in three sections. They stored each under their iron bedframe in the cottage until the house was ready for it.

In the meantime, though, Lisa went back to the drawing board — again. She had already undergone a major redesign when she and Craig realized they wanted less interior square footage and more outdoor living. This couple had lived through the hot buggie summers of North Carolina and the rainy winters of Seattle following Craig’s finance jobs and had spent most of their time inside. Only after living in California for six months did they realize that for nearly every beautiful weekend, another one followed. The first major change was to swap out the formal dining room for a vast outdoor terrace off the great room.

Angel-room-sketch But Lisa had originally designed the great room that opens to the kitchen to have a retro David Hicks style with a geometric circle motif. And that would no longer work with the leaded glass window. So she has ditched the idea of using Kraftmaid kitchen cabinets that had a circular overlay as well as the splashes of hot pink she was planning in the family room furnishings.

Instead, to complement the dramatic angel, she is opening up to a new style, with “a tinge of Gothic.”

And that means tufted, deep blue velvet sofas in the living room, for instance, and finding new seeded glass pendant lamps over the kitchen island she plans to paint herself. She is also reconsidering making her backsplash more linear and adding blue glass inserts.

She’s looking forward to the colored light that will splay across her great room. Now she’s just crossing her fingers that the installation of the giant window will go smoothly.

As Lisa puts it, “the drama is half the fun.” Julia Looking Left - Lookiloos

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Posted in Antiques, Art, Decorating, Dining Room, Family Room, Featured, Featured in the San Jose Mercury News, Furniture, Historic, Home and Garden, Home Decor, Interior Design, Julia, Kitchen, Lighting, Los Gatos, Remodel, This Darned House | 10 Comments »

Lionel Train Set in Living Room: What to Do?

Friday, December 18th, 2009

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When my husband’s old Lionel train set arrived by UPS from his brother in Michigan, it was as though Santa himself appeared in a big brown truck. It was five years ago, Christmas Eve. I was standing in the driveway with our two children, who were 5 and 7 at the time, when the driver headed our way with a large cardboard box.

Carefully packed inside was the electric model train set that my husband, Chris, and his three brothers used to play with each winter in the basement of their home outside Detroit. It had been his father’s before that. And now, on the most magical night of all, it had arrived in San Jose for the next generation, just in time. I choked back tears as I wished the driver a Merry Christmas. 4189164464_63d0d386bb_b

Sounds like the end of a heartwarming story, doesn’t it? This was the part when the parents are supposed to embrace and the children open the box with eyes filled with wonder. Can’t cha hear the whistle blowing?

Funny how nostalgia can turn to exasperation and a midnight argument last week that almost woke up the kids. Where in the world can we set up this thing?
Unlike my husband’s boyhood home in the 1960s and ’70s, our home doesn’t have a giant basement rec room with a snooker table big enough for two full sheets of plywood on top to serve as a platform for this Michigan-made train set.

4188401331_ca73499522_b Without it, the track never really found a home in our house. That first Christmas, the engine that had been boxed up for 30 years was too worn out to pull cars behind it. The next two years, when the track was laid on the living-room floor, the kids kept tripping over it, knocking down the cars and disconnecting the track. In 2007, Chris placed a piece of plywood on top of the dining table on the screened porch. But it was chilly, few ventured outside to play with it and the track started to rust. Last year, it didn’t even make it out of the boxes.

This year, though, Chris insisted the train and the plywood come back in the house and into the living room. And it had to be elevated, he said. That’s when the discord began.
I’m sorry, but am I out of line to protest when my husband wants to squeeze in the equivalent of a table set for 12 in the middle of our cramped living room that is barely big enough for a Christmas tree? Must this be a shrine to Lionel?

I already had holiday decorating insecurities. As much as I envision our house as an enchanted space filled with our hand-carved nativity scene, nutcrackers, Christmas candelabras and poinsettias, it more often than not feels like a mismatched montage.
To make matters worse, we were planning a Christmas cocktail party, plus Christmas dinner for 18. We needed more room, not less, for entertaining.

4188400775_9539e15bc0_b “Hmm, an 8-foot-by-4-foot sheet of plywood in your living room,” mused my friend Carolyn. “Sounds like a dance floor.”
One friend suggested that if we really wanted to show off the train set, we should deconstruct it and arrange the engine and cars artfully on the mantel. Another suggested building a catwalk around the ceiling like they do at pizza parlors. All we needed was sawdust and peanut shells on the floor. Great.

But the tradition of this train set was important to Chris and I understood why. The train set was sent a few years after Chris’ father died. It wasn’t an elaborate model with mountains and tunnels, but it included some special vintage pieces: a 1940s O gauge track with a pressed-tin signal house and a man with a swinging lantern who pops through the door when the train passes; a foot-tall light tower; three pieces of die-cast rolling stock; a 1975 Illinois Central GP9 engine that blows smoke and a matching caboose that lights up. It came with a bag of miniature pedestrians, benches and trees. Inside the GP9 engine box was the original handwritten note the boys found that Christmas morning when they unwrapped it for the first time: “Merry Christmas, Joey, Chris, Paul and Ed.” It was signed S. Claus.

Still, did it have to be mounted full scale, table height, smack in the middle of the living room? Couldn’t it be, maybe, half the size, in a corner somewhere? Midnight is the wrong time to have a conversation like this. When I imagined Chris pulling out the sheet of dirty white felt he used under the track to look like snow two years ago, I marched upstairs.

4188400611_7d76b12642_b As we got ready for bed, though, Chris said one more thing: “I want the kids to have memories of this train.”
“I do, too,” I said.

The next morning, Chris said that the train didn’t have to be table height. It could sit on milk crates just a foot off the floor. But something would still have to be moved out for it to fit in. I volunteered that my writing desk be moved to the shed.
We could still sit a 6-foot Christmas tree on top of the platform in the middle of the track. I would replace the white felt with chocolate brown burlap.
And to convince myself that I could salvage some sense of style, I would sew a string of silky brown pom-poms to finish the bottom edge. (Chris objected at first, worried they would distract from the track, but relented.)

Last weekend, Daniel, who is 10 now, helped his father assemble the track. Claire, 12, set up a station vignette around the signal house. It was a rainy afternoon and I took in the scene as Chris plugged in the twinkling tree lights and turned on the Christmas music. Daniel blew the whistle.
As the train came around the bend, I approached the platform, knelt down before it, and fluffed the pompom skirt.
Julia Looking Left - Lookiloos

Posted in Antiques, Decorating, Family Room, Featured, Featured in the San Jose Mercury News, Home Decor, Inside Stories, Inside Story, Julia, Living Room, Rose Garden, San Jose | 5 Comments »