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

“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.)

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.”

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.

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.

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:

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.

**********

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.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

Here’s the complete slideshow:

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.”

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.

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.

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.”

“

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

This little cottage is so stylish and daring, it’s almost too hard to imagine a rabble rousing family of four with a dog moving into it.   But that’s what Lisa Murray says her family is still planning to do while they are remodeling the front house.

The 360-square-foot cottage is out back and was the first to get attention after they purchased the Los Gatos property a year ago. Lisa is nothing if not whimsical and avante garde. And the cottage reflects that.

The “trophy” over the tiny fireplace is a Lucite deer head illuminated by a string of blue LEDs. The wall above the master bed has a lit arrow that looks like a midway sign at a fair. Even she admits getting a kick out of the “creepy” side of a circus (and has a few framed pictures of circus rides on the wall, too.) But those things are the extras.

And it’s amazing how she pulled the fundamentals together for a beautiful, cohesive mix of modern and vintage, traditional and “circus-y.” Blue and white tiles from Portugal frame the fireplace and the kitchen backsplash. A floral love seat (a hide-a-bed) sits across from small red Ikea barrel-back chairs (with Pierre Deux throw pillows.)

She’s made great use of a very small space, with a tiny dining table in the main room and a Queen size bed with a watermelon-color frame from Anthropology in the bedroom.

Now let’s see how good it looks after the hubby and kids and dog move in. Stay tuned to the family adventures to come. (I can only imagine what the main house will look like! This woman’s got it going on!)

Lookiloos is following the adventures of the Murray-Hinkley family remodel.  Scroll down for a list of Lisa’s splurges, bargains and resources on her cottage remodel. Or click below for  the most recent stories:
Lisa Explains Los Gatos Remodel
Los Gatos Family Takes on Major Remodel

Update:
This post is featured in the San Jose Mercury News Home and Garden section here.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Rick Holden and Sandra Moll have long been known as patrons of the arts here in the South Bay.  Whether they were chairing meetings for The San Jose Repertory’s Board of Directors or opening their home to host a private event benefitting the Institute of Contemporary Art’s or San Jose Jazz, the couple did it with flair.   So when it came time to relandscape their large backyard in San Jose’s Naglee Park, it should be no surprise that it has a distinctly artistic bent, from Thai artifacts to sculptures by local artists, like Marcia Donohue of the Our Own Stuff Gallery in Berkeley.

Entertainers at heart, the couple wanted a backyard space that would be appropriate for hosting a fundraising reception for 100 people, barbecue for 10 or intimate breakfast for two.  They enlisted the help of San Jose-based landscape designer Cevan Forristt, whose penchant for mixing ethnic treasures and reclaimed architectural artifacts  was just what the couple needed to transform their space into an unexpected downtown San Jose oasis.    “Our designer asked us each to write an essay about what we wanted to see in our backyard. I was not sure if Sandy and I would share the same vision or priorities”  Rick said.  “He melded our different points of view, brought his resources and hit the nail on the head.  We are out here year-round and the landscape is lush and constantly evolving.”

From antique Chinese soaking tubs to giant Malaysian prayer beads gracing a keyhole concrete wall, the Holden/Moll backyard is a constant delight.   The concrete table seating 14 guests was poured by Forrist himself who embedded broken ceramic plates and pottery as accents.  The pottery pieces were retrieved before a San Francisco shop owner could throw the lot in a dumpster after the Loma Prieta earthquake.  The custom table is surrounded by antique chairs.

Repurposing ancient items for new uses, they converted an antique Chinese horse trough into a beverage cooler. Dinner is often cooked on the gas powered wok hidden in one of the nooks.  A Chinese gate flanked with potted bamboo graces the driveway entrance, while a reclaimed blue antique Indian gate guards the eastern entrance to the patio. Fishing baskets were turned upside down, filled with white lights and converted into outdoor lamps.  The entire property is peppered with creations like bamboo/golden trumpet plant sculptures, lights imported from Mexico and a Buddah in an unexpected corner.   Adjoining the backyard, they have one of the largest collections of SJSU alum Donald Carlson’s glass art and a contemporary painting by Jenny Do in their downstairs indoor entertainment space.

The hardscape is filled-in with a mix of bamboo, monkey paws, succulents and morning glories to pay homage to their Asian inspiration and create privacy and shade.

Rather than flying half way across the world to see ancient treasures, the Holden’s simply look to their backyard for some zen like relief — Silicon Valley style.

Update:
This post is featured in the San Jose Mercury News Home and Garden section here.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

The stark white house at the end of Plaza Drive in San Jose’s historic Palm Haven neighborhood takes you by surprise. It’s small in scale, a single story on a corner lot. But its domed tower and decorative parapet across the roofline force you to take a second look.

This is Michael Borbely’s mini masterpiece – a recently completed Mission Revival house of stucco and tile that took years of research to create, plus help from San Jose’s Fireclay Tile to reproduce century-old details.

Borbely, 45, is an architectural activist of sorts who spearheaded an effort several years ago to restore the pillars at the entrance to the 1930s Palm Haven in Willow Glen to their original Mission Revival style. So when he was ready for a new project after selling his Prairie style house in the neighborhood, “I looked for the house in the worst condition that had the most impact on the neighborhood.” He decided on a tiny Spanish style house for sale nearby in need of a major remodel. He wanted the house to fit into the streetscape and, taking some cues from the pillars and an original Mission Revival house in the neighborhood, decided to reinvent a scaled-down version.

It still causes a little bewilderment when people walk by.

“When people ask what it is, they have all sorts of strange ideas,” said Borbely, who owns a small design and construction company called Novuspace. “Because Mission Revival is so rarely done anymore — and when it’s done it’s done out of proper context — I think that furthers people’s confusion when they see it.”

In the early 1900s, when the Spanish Colonial Revival style was hitting its stride in the United States, he said, there was no accepted category called Mission Revival. It was all considered Spanish.

“It wasn’t until later that historians in the architectural community agreed that there are pretty clear distinctions that separate real Mission Revival from Spanish mode,” he said. “It comes down to an
espadana – a curvilinear parapet.”

Most examples of Mission Revival style were executed in structures as large as the original Spanish missions, such as libraries and train stations. But here was Borbely with a 1,700 square foot original house that barely fit on its little, long, narrow corner lot.

“It’s a very challenging lot,” he said, “I found that if you scale down the components, Mission style fits quite nicely here. People say they feel it’s on a human scale. It’s got a tower, but not a tower that towers
over you.”

The narrow lot size also meant that Borbely had to forego one of the key features of Mission style – an exterior arched loggia. Instead, Borbely turned the concept “inside out,” he said, resulting in the home’s most stunning attribute: its wide, vaulted, triple-arched entry hall. The new house is barely 2,000 square feet, and the central hallway takes up a sizeable portion of it.

“It’s not a big house, but it’s a flexible house,” he said. “I see this as able to double as a dining space,” or a gracious area for wine receptions. A wainscoting of colorful tile, reproduced by Fireclay Tile, came from a 100-year-old photograph Borbely unearthed.

What used to be a tiny breakfast nook at the front of the old house is now the domed tower room that Borbely uses as a study. The old galley kitchen was turned into a guest room.

The new kitchen at the far end of the entry hall, down a few steps, makes another strong statement. The sanctuary-like ceiling explodes into view, with heavy timbers closely spaced and highly-carved corbels. Nava’s Brothers built the red oak cabinetry, including a pew-like banquet for the kitchen table. The kitchen accents tiles were created by local ceramic artist Babak Daleki at www.dalekiceramicstudio.com.

As much as the house is reminiscent of the old, Borbely integrated modern, environmentally-friendly features, including salvaged materials, LED lighting and solar power that not only heats his house but powers his electric car in the driveway.

Borbely even took pains to ornament the long side of the house – an area often downplayed in design. But since the side faces a sidewalk, Borbely added window hoods that suggest a deep adobe wall, a large, carved false door and a vintage style iron fence with a cross motif.

“I wanted to make it pleasing to look at no matter where you were,” he said.

Judging from the neighbors’ reactions, he seems to have succeeded:

“My neighbors have given me a list of properties they want me to work on.”

Related Stories:

La Estancia – A Los Gatos Mission Revival

Reviving a Spanish Revival

Update:

This post is featured in the San Jose Mercury News Home and Garden section here.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Realtors are well-known for “expanding” the boundaries of popular neighborhoods like San Jose’s Willow Glen and Rose Garden. But the residents of the distinctive Hanchett Park neighborhood, a largely unknown enclave of period California Craftsmen, Italian Revivals and Prairie-style homes, are tired, quite frankly, of being referred to as “the lower Rose Garden.”

Hanchett Park’s graceful streetscape design, including European-like traffic roundabouts and original entrance pillars, was designed in 1907 by John McLaren who designed Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The neighborhood is often referred to in a larger sense as the Shasta Hanchett neighborhood because Shasta Avenue is the main street that runs through it. But the historic name is Hanchett Residence Park and it is nestled between The Alameda and Park Avenue. Several of the Arts and Crafts homes in the neighborhood were once featured in American Bungalow Magazine.

Now, a grass roots group, calling itself the Hanchett Park Heritage Project, hopes to rebuild the historic gateway pillars with pergolas at key entrance points around the neighborhood, including Martin Avenue at The Alameda. They’re hosting their first home tour, featuring five historic houses, on May 30 to raise money for the project.

“Hanchett Park is one of only two residential parks in San Jose. The other is Palm Haven and no one has ever heard of us,” said Hillary Savage, a neighborhood resident who is helping plan the home tour. Residential parks were some of the first “subdivisions” at the turn of the last century that were planned with utility poles running at the back of the lots, decorative lighting and landscaping to “retain a park-like atmosphere.”

One of the most enthusiastic supporters of the project and the neighborhood is Larry Camuso, who has restored his 1926 Italian Revival home into a stunning showplace and earned it a city historical designation. The house, which was originally built as a one-story home in 1908 then radically remodeled in 1926 with a second-story and Palladian windows, echoes the Hollywood glamour and style of its day.

And Camuso, with his partner Kirk Wentland, is getting it ready for the tour. Camuso, 49, is long a fan of the classic “Sunset Boulevard,” where the Hollywood mansion is a much a character as stars Gloria Swanson and William Holden.

“I discovered that movie in my 20s and thought that was what I was all about,” Camuso said. “That whole period of time, the style, design, art and decoration, it created a vision for me.” In fact, the look of the upstairs master suite, including the custom-made water spout in the bathroom, came right out of an Art Deco movie set book. Interior designer Paul Rokovich brought the vision to reality throughout the house.

“I’m stuck in the 1920s living in this house,” said Camuso, who is semi-retired from his antique and collector car parts business. (The house was built with a detached three-car garage, including a repair “pit” in one of the bays. “Sold!”)

Like many homeowners in the neighborhood, Camuso embarked on a historically-correct renovation. Though the house was in good condition when he bought it in 1991, he began five years later to restore its original footprint and fixtures. And he marshaled the memories of one of its original inhabitants, Lucretia Martin Schlueter, who was raised there until 1954.

“By way of old pictures that Lucretia supplied, I was able to put it back the way it was,” he said. Camuso threw an 80th birthday party for the house in 2006, and invited Lucretia, who is in her 90s and lives in Carmel, as the guest of honor.

“The house had great bones, but was never fully realized as far as its aesthetic values.” He removed a bathroom and closet off the main entry hall and returned the space to its original purpose — a rear hallway that separates the living room from the study. He also replaced the replacement windows — in other words, any flat glass that had been installed to fix broken windows over the years was replaced with vintage wavy glass that Camuso tracked down at Anderson C&M Used Building Material on Montgomery Street near downtown San Jose. He had nearly every one reglazed.

“It’s like a shimmering show of wavy glass,” he said.

Along with Camuso’s home, several turn-of-the-century Craftsman bungalows will be on the tour, including one with original stone columns in front. Also on the tour is one of the first homes built in the subdivision, considered the model home of its day. The large, shingled house was designed by the well-known Wilson-McKenzie architecture firm, which designed many homes in Naglee Park near downtown.

Outside the downtown core of Victorians, “this was considered modern, in terms of 1908,” Savage said.

Preparation for the home tour has been a neighborhood preoccupation over the past two years, as several homeowners have hosted cocktail and garden parties to raise money among themselves for the event.

The city of San Jose’s Redevelopment Agency is helping with funding to build the first set of pillars at The Alameda and Martin that were removed in the 1960s, probably because of disrepair. But residents want to rebuild the pillars at other key entry points as well, including at Park and Tillman avenues, with an estimated cost of $40,000 each.

“We have to have a lot of home tours,” Savage said.

Tickets for the Saturday, May 30th tour, may be purchased for $25 the day of the tour at 1265 Sierra Avenue, or $21 in advance through hanchettpark.org.

(Story by Julia Prodis Sulek. Photos by Desiree Northend.)

Update:

This post is featured in the San Jose Mercury News Home and Garden section here.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

For 60 years at Big Sur’s famed Nepenthe restaurant, cameras have been clicking away on the obvious – the cliffside view of the dramatic Pacific coastline, the iconic, mid-century restaurant of glass and wood, the grand terrace where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton filmed the 1965 classic, “The Sandpiper.”

But just above the terrace is a humble, but intriguing dwelling hiding in plain sight from guests awed by the captivating view.

Behind a brick facade is a structure of logs and adobe cement that Hollywood legend Orson Welles and his wife Rita Hayworth bought on a romantic whim in 1944.

This weekend, as Nepenthe celebrates the 60th anniversary of the restaurant’s opening, we turn our lens toward this tiny and surprisingly vibrant place that is still home to members of the same fascinating family that founded Nepenthe and run it today.

The Bohemian aura of Nepenthe, the beatniks, the belly dancing, the poetry, the parties began in this cabin. In those days, the cabin was the first stop for guests.

“The log cabin was the hub of everything that went on,” says Romney “Nani” Steele, who grew up in the cabin with her grandparents and cousins in the 1960s. “The restaurant was built in such a way, it was somewhat added to the cabin,’’ she says. “My grandmother created a whole life behind the restaurant.”

Her grandparents, Bill and Lolly Fassett, moved into the three-room cabin in 1947 with their five children and within two years had built Nepenthe, naming it for the Greek word meaning “no sorrow.”

The cabin and 12 acres had cost them $12,000 after Welles and Hayworth divorced and sold them the property. The Hollywood couple had planned the 1925 cabin as a getaway when they purchased it from a hiking group. The stars even measured for curtains, but never returned.

Renting the cabin at the time was author Henry Miller, who had already written the scandalous “Tropic of Cancer.” He moved out when the Fassetts bought the cabin, but became lifelong friends with Bill Fassett, a gregarious storyteller who ran a magazine in Carmel. Lolly Fassett was a cultured, artistic woman in her own right, having lived her teen years in Europe as the traveling companion of her grandmother, artist Jane Gallatin Powers, who was part of the original Carmel art scene.

The Fassetts were great entertainers and envisioned Nepenthe even though Highway One had been open only a decade and traffic through the area was light. Lolly, influenced by the great piazzas of Capri, insisted that architect Rowan Maiden – a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright – design a great terrace for dancing and a restaurant that opened to the air. It was Lolly who made the adobe bricks and laid them for the giant round fireplace on the terrace. When Nepenthe opened April 24, 1949, about 500 people attended the grand opening. Photographs were shot for architectural magazines.

The guests had traveled 30 miles of winding road from Carmel and beyond. Life in Big Sur, then, as now, was dictated by the ebb and flow of nature. In the winters, the roads washed out and in summers, wildfires whipped through.

“It created tension and upheaval and a dynamic quality of people,” says Kirk Gafill, a Fassett grandson, who grew up in the cabin and runs Nepenthe with his mother, Holly Fassett.

From artists to hippies, his grandmother welcomed them into her living room.

“When we were growing up, nightly 10, 15, 20 people were in the living room visiting with her,” says Steele, whose book “My Nepenthe” will be published this fall (www.mynepenthebook.com). “People came in and napped there.” Some of those wayfarers fell in love with the Fassett daughters, married them, had children, then continued on their journeys. Four of those children spent part of their childhood living in the cabin.

“Our absolutely favorite thing to do was to lie on my grandmother’s long row of beds and look out the window with our hands perched under our chins,” says Steele, 43. “People would get up and dance. Someone would be in the corner reading poetry or playing music. I can remember the sun coming through the window and watching for hours what was going on.”

Every once in a while, her grandmother would say, “Go dance!” “She would wrap scarves around my waist and we’d whirl around,” Steele says. “We’d do that for guests and we would come back up the stairs. She always had plenty of costumes, petticoats, Flamenco costumes, just amazing stuff.”

Erin Gafill, 45, Steele’s cousin who is an artist, says that “the line between fantasy and reality was totally blurred. There was so much magic and glamour around here.” She has a foggy memory of lying on her back as a toddler on the terrace, looking up at the sky between the branches of the old oak tree.

“This man appeared and scooped me up. I couldn’t stop crying,” Gafill recalls. “Years later my mom told me this was Richard Burton, and that Liz Taylor took me from his arms and handed me to my mom, who was sitting on the bleachers in shock at the whole thing.”

It was 1964 and the movie stars were filming “The Sandpiper” on the terrace. Its theme song, “The Shadow of Your Smile” became a classic. When the movie about an artist’s illicit affair with a schoolmaster premiered in 1965, Nepenthe was transformed. The Fassetts opened Nepenthe from seasonally to year-round.

After Lolly died in 1986, Gafill returned to the cabin, raised two children, and still lives there her husband.

“It seemed like an impossible place to live,” she says, recalling her decision to make the move. The cabin “was so psychologically important to us. I had to make sure the change was OK with everybody.”

She’s done her best to preserve the spirit of the cabin. It still has three main rooms, including the kitchen and big stone fireplace. An extra bedroom was added along the way. Behind the door of the log cabin’s kitchen is the industrial prep kitchen for the restaurant. When the adobe cement began to chip away on the side of the cabin facing the terrace, a brick facade was overlaid to protect it from the wind and fog. Inside, she covered the cabin’s redwood walls with her great-great grandmother’s paintings. Family and restaurant crew took them to safety when the wildfires came dangerously close to Nepenthe last summer, closing the restaurant for three weeks.

As the extended family gathers this weekend for the anniversary, the cabin will beckon them in. And as they planned all along, there will be dancing on the terrace.

(Top black and white photograph of Nepenthe taken in1950 by Morley Baer, ©2009 by the Morley Baer Photography Trust, Santa Fe; Lee Harbick Collection, California History Room, Monterey Public Library. Color photo in cabin with Erin Gafill on right and her mother, Holly, by Tom Birmingham.)

Related stories:
Artist Getaway on Big Sur Coast
California Daily Art: Landscape Paintings
Carmel Valley Cabin
Artist in Residence

Update:

This post is featured in the San Jose Mercury News Home and Garden section here.

Update 2:

Here’s the complete slideshow: