Peek of the Week « Lookiloos

Peek of the Week

Thanksgiving Tabletop Tips

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

Let’s face it. With all the panic about cooking the perfect turkey (“it won’t be juicy!“), thinking about setting the perfect table often comes a bit late.

“They pull out a funky sheet from the hallway closet and say, ‘I can iron this for the table,’” said Kren Rasmussen of Bloomsters in San Jose’s Almaden Valley. “‘Or the table expands and my tablecloth is half that size.’ At one point or another we’ve all been there.”

It’s time to plan ahead, said Rasmussen, whose floral and decor shop has been beautifying Bay Area homes for the past 20 years.

Here’s is a list of tips from Rasmussen and his staff to set a gorgeous Thanksgiving table, spending little or no money.

1. Don’t have fancy chargers to put your plates on? Take a walk and gather colorful fall leaves, arrange in a wreath-like shape, and voila! Arrange a few days ahead and _here’s Kren’s secret _ spray the leaves with Mop and Glow floor cleaner so they don’t curl. Make a long arrangement as a runner through the table.

2. Need to dress up a drab white tablecloth? Gather up your silk scarves and puddle down the center of the table as a runner. Or if you have one, a beautiful sari, obi or shawl. (One of Kren’s staff members is weaving together men’s ties from thrift shops as a colorful runner.) Three yards of fabric will do nicely.

3. Want Uncle Leo and Aunt Marilyn to sit on opposite ends of the table? Instead of place cards, buy little pumpkins and either write their names on the pumpkin with a black Sharpie, or put the name on a leaf and tie to the pumpkin stem with dental floss or bailing wire.

4. Never liked your chandelier? Weave delicate leafy branches from Japanese maples or other trees, then with bailing wire circling the glass, hang votive candles.

5. Use martini glasses for the soup course. Use soup tureen for a floral centerpiece.

6. Use terracotta saucers as plate chargers filled with seeds or legumes.

7. Use three smaller centerpieces spread across the table instead of one. (Sometimes florals should be on the buffet rather than the table.)

8. Are you chairs mismatched? Pull the look together by picking up pretty pillow cases at a discount store, slip over the back of the chairs, and finish off with a ribbon tie.

9. Take your own containers to your favorite florist for a custom look.

10. Consider moving your dining room into your living room, and moving some living room furniture into the dining room. Store the rest in the garage.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Posted in Decorating, Dining Room, Food and Drink, Home Decor, Interior Design, Peek of the Week, San Jose | 1 Comment »

Craftsman in Los Gatos

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

Bob Flury and Bob Bryant of Flury Bryant Design didn’t set out to be “specialists” in craftsman architecture, but their clients Alison Brunner and Andrew Coven think otherwise. The Brunner-Coven home is the second craftsman remodel on the same charming street in Los Gatos done by Flury Bryant Design.

Then, the original home was simple and plain. Now, this strong looking craftsman attracts
all the well-deserved attention, with the warmth of the stone and wood columns that welcome you to the front porch. The footprint of the original home didn’t change drastically. “We bumped out 3 feet on one side,” Flury said, but he augmented the square footage by building a second story and adding a basement. So the house went from 901 to 3200 square feet.

This is no ordinary basement either. It is filled with light and height. Yes, height.

The ceilings are 9 feet tall. It feels so open — not the dark, damp, dungeon- like basements you remember. The basement is also home to a music room, a wonderful open space for crafts and lots and lots of storage. It boasts a whopping 1259 square feet.

The main floor has a wonderful open feel. The kitchen, living and dining room are open to each other. The ceilings for the main level have beams tying all the rooms together. In true craftsman style, the home office (also located on the first floor) has wonderful built in cabinetry and beautiful pocket doors. The second story addition is home to 3 bedrooms, including the master and 2 full bathrooms. De Mattei Construction brought the blueprints to life. Alison worked with Lynn Moore of Lynn Moore Design for the interior. The color palette chosen for the walls accentuates the tile in the kitchen as well as the fireplace.

Every level of this home has a “secret hiding spot”. The basement has the closet under the stairs, reminiscent of Harry Potter’s living space. “Our nieces and nephews love it,” Coven said. The second floor has a hidden room in one of the bedrooms, where all the kids gravitated to at the recent housewarming party. And lastly, the kitchen has a hide-away drawer built into the island that houses the dog dish. A slight touch of your foot and there’s the bowl and one more touch and it’s gone. How many times have you kicked your own pet’s food or water bowl? Now that’s a great design.

Alison said she loves the design of her home because “it’s thoughtful”. She’s right too. This craftsman design is truly a work of art. Flury Bryant Design put the “craft” in craftsman.

Does this Craftsman remind you of a great home you’ve seen? Let me know. I’d love to hear more. Post a comment below and I’ll get back to you.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Posted in Architecture, Craftsman, Desiree, Home Decor, Interior Design, Peek of the Week, Remodel | 15 Comments »

Gentle Remodel on Spanish Bungalow

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

It’s almost what the builders didn’t do to this Spanish bungalow that makes it so appealing. They didn’t put on a towering second story. They didn’t blow out the kitchen into a giant great room. They didn’t take a sledgehammer to the vintage yellow tile bathroom.

Instead, Jim Gold and Linda Sutton made smaller, but meticulous improvements to this charming home on Shasta Avenue near San Jose’s Rose Garden. And in the midst of a housing crisis, when flipping homes seems like a recipe for disaster, they sold it in seven days for nearly asking price.

The main changes to this 2,000 square-foot house include a 150-square-foot master bedroom suite addition at the back of the house and an updated kitchen.

“We try to do understated,” Gold said, “but understated and sophisticated.”

Keeping in the style of the 1930s bungalow, he and Sutton replicated the detailed archway leading into the living into the kitchen as well. They cleaned up the mahogany window casements in the living room and copied them in the master bedroom. They left the original, built-in window screens. And while they removed a wall separating the kitchen from the breakfast nook to open up the space, they retained the old-fashioned milk door.

They found antique light fixtures at the Antiques Colony on W. San Carlos Street. Ralph Joins of The Joinery, who has done restoration work at Yosemite’s Ahwahnee Hotel, built the kitchen’s custom cabinetry.

As a finishing touch, a mosaic tiled medallion was laid in the front entry walk, making a graceful entry to a lovely gem.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Posted in Architecture, Bungalow, Home and Garden, Interior Design, Julia, Kitchen, Lighting, Peek of the Week, Rose Garden, San Jose | 3 Comments »

Estate Garden Makeover

Friday, October 17th, 2008

When David and Marti Martz bought the 1912 “Four-square” house in San Jose’s Rose Garden neighborhood, the backyard “was a disaster,” Marti said. Concrete covered the entire area between the house and the garage and the pool was surrounded by an eight-foot tall cinder block wall. The landscape was dead.

“Our family looked at us and said, ‘Thank God you’re young.’”

And so in late 2004, they began a major project to bring back the grandeur of this estate lot. The gardens will be the setting of an elegant luncheon and tea this weekend (Oct. 18-19) as part of the Autumn in the Rose Garden Homes Tour. Three other homes will also be showcased.

Marti wanted the space to be “park-like” and simple and elegant for entertaining. She ripped out the concrete and planted grass and a flower and vegetable garden. What once had been a bank of garage doors facing the house got a new life with windows the couple salvaged from an exterior porch that once had been enclosed. Concrete walking stones were poured leading up to a graceful fountain.

To make the sprawling grounds more intimate, San Jose interior designer Paul Rokovich is taking his talents for home decor into the garden. With sustantial furnishings provided by Smith and Hawkin, he is placing sofas, lounges and ottomans around the pool and garden for the home tour. He is bringing in flowers and plants and banana trees and wrought iron trellises.

The Martzes also restored the house to nearly original condition. Their main modification was converting the rear laundry porch, with its row of windows, into an informal eating area. Now the family can enjoy their new garden over breakfast.

When: Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 18-19, 2008. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Tour begins at 1262 University Ave, San Jose
Tickets: $30 in advance. $35 at the door. Lunch tickets, $13.
Benefiting St. Martin of Tours School, San Jose.

Posted in Before and After, Garage, Garden, Historic, Home and Garden, House Tours, Julia, Landscape, Peek of the Week, Rose Garden, San Jose, Yard | No Comments »

Downtown San Jose Bachelor Pad

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

Jack Wimberly, a young hipster, would be the first to tell you that life in downtown San Jose IS all that it is cracked up to be. From his work/live loft, Jack runs a bustling communications firm and a bachelor pad fit for a king.

Located on First Street, just north of downtown San Jose between the old city hall and Trial’s Pub, Wimberly’s loft houses a ground floor 330 sq. ft. office (enough for 4 work stations), spacious living space on the second floor and a third floor bedroom / loft overlooking the main floor and patio. The unit has exposed duct work and concrete floors, but Wimberly’s eclectic mix of grandma’s 8 foot hand me down sofa and Asian touches create a warm environment that instantly makes you feel relaxed and ready for a martini. He balances his low Japanese and Korean furnishings with bistro height tables and chairs, filling the cavernous space with a modern style that you could not find at a mass produced furniture store.

Having grown up in the upscale suburb Los Gatos, Jack was surprised to find that downtown San Jose had so many housing options for bargain hunters who want to live close to downtown amenities. His home is often a gathering spot before he and his friends hit downtown’s nightlife, whether it be dinner out or a show at the Rep. Often skateboarding is his transportation of choice to travel through downtown.

He commented that “Living downtown has a nice pulse. People make eye contact and know each other. There are all sorts of creative types here – an opera voice coach lives upstairs and a painter lives next door. It’s like Melrose Place in San Jose without the pool.”

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Posted in Condos, Decorating, Downtown Living, Lofts, Peek of the Week, Sheila | 2 Comments »

A Decorator’s Daughter

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

When Vicki Petulla was little, her mother would pick her and her sister up from school and take them to her interior design office for a couple of hours before heading home. The girls would pull out their Barbies and play in the room filled with fabric and carpet samples. (No wonder their friends were impressed when they saw their doll house!)

While Vicki’s sister followed her mother’s footsteps into the design world, Vicki became a kindergarten teacher. But her sense of design runs deep. And it’s reflected in her home in San Jose’s Rose Garden neighborhood, where burlap, silk and fringe mingle harmoniously with seagrass, corral and stone.

“When you grow up that way, it’s a passion _ a pretty home,” Vicki said.

Her honeymoon set the tone for her decor _ and who wouldn’t be inspired by a trip to Napa then Italy? The exterior of the stucco bungalow _ _along a Sycamore lined street _ is covered with creeping fig and Boston Ivy. The front garden of hydrangeas and impatience are exuberant, and brimming urns welcome you to the front door.

When Vicki and her husband, Jeff, bought the 1,600 square-foot house in 1998, it had three bedrooms and a tiny galley kitchen. Believing that living and entertaining space was more important than an extra bedroom, they opened the kitchen into the spare bedroom, turning it into a casual dining room. But you’ll find no dinette set here. Try a long, narrow harvest table with clean-lined wicker chairs at the ready for a party of 10.

The original dining room at the front of the house became, as Vicki likes to call it, “a room of her own.” Here, she relaxes in her favorite chair with a cup of coffee or glass of wine and a good book. From the coffee table to a petite desk and end tables, Vicki has assembled perfect vignettes that she replaces seasonally. For the fall, she brings in antlers and flea market paintings she found at the Alameda Antiques fair with warm rich colors.

The original formal living room is now her 5-year-old son’s playroom. The entrance into it is gracefully lined by smocked burlap curtains from Wisteria, a home and garden shop in Aptos.

She has decorated her home on her own, but on occasional martini nights with her friends Linda McFalone and Laura Ziffer who own lulu Pom Interior Design in Los Gatos, she occasionally asks for advice to make sure her vignettes don’t look too “staged.”

Each one sets a mood, a tone, whether it’s a stack of books or a silver trophy collection.

“This is my space,” she said, “and I love my house.”

For more great homes check out Hooked on Houses Autumn Tour. There are some great ones and it shouldn’t be missed.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Posted in Bungalow, Decorating, Dining Room, Family Room, Garden, Home and Garden, Home Decor, Interior Design, Julia, Kitchen, Landscape, Peek of the Week, Rose Garden, San Jose, Yard | 20 Comments »

Willow Glen Outdoor Sanctuary

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

What do you do when you want a sanctuary space in your small backyard, but your neighbors’ towering two-stories are looming down from all three sides?

Call a landscape architect, for starters. These Willow Glen homeowners did just that and, with the design of Teri Ravel Kane, came up with not only a solution, but a little solace.

“I always start with what’s wrong with the space,” said Kane, a San Jose landscape architect.

And there was plenty. Along with the lack of privacy from the neighbors, the driveway leading to the detached garage took up almost half the backyard, and the summer sun baked the space.

Since the homeowner loved Asian design from her business travels abroad, Kane’s suggestion of bamboo screening was an easy sell. At $99 a linear foot from Bamboo Giant in Aptos (installed with barriers to prevent its spread), they planted the bamboo along the back and side to get it growing before they even finalized the design for the rest of the yard.

And the homeowner wanted it all: an outdoor kitchen and eating area, a fireplace and sitting area, and a pool. Big order in a small space? Not for Kane, who looks at it this way: “If you had an indoor family room the size of that yard, it would be cavernous. It’s like a great room.”

The yard was basically a blank slate. The house was brand new, and the backyard was little more than a small patio and a lawn stretching to the back fence. The one tree in the yard was kept and designed around _ a simple kumquat.

The back of the lot, along the fence, was the natural spot for the small plunge pool, but with a raised ledge and a spillway, “it gives you the feeling of a reflecting pond.”

Working toward the house from there, Kane designed a fireplace with sitting area, then separate dining area, then outdoor kitchen closest to the back door that leads to the kitchen.

To provide both shade and privacy, Kane designed a huge trellis that steps higher over each separate space until it reaches the house.

The driveway was stained to minimize its stark impact. Sections were removed and a more flowing edge was poured. Outside the kitchen window, birch trees and tall grasses were planted that provided both a transition from the house and entertaining space to the driveway, but also made the view appear like “you’re looking through a little forest,” Kane said.

To embrace this “indoor-outdoor” feel of a great room, Kane designed a patterned walkway from the driveway to the back door that looks like an entry hall rug. San Jose landscape contractor Laura Livingstone built the project.

The homeowner, who often travels the world, is thrilled with the results. “When I go on holiday,” she said, “unless it can be better than this, I’m not interested.”

Kane said the homeowner was the perfect client because she had a vision of what she wanted to accomplish.

“That’s the ideal client,” Kane said. “You’re there to help them discover it.”

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Posted in Before and After, Garden, Home and Garden, Julia, Kitchen, Landscape, Peek of the Week, San Jose, Willow Glen, Yard | 1 Comment »

Modern Prairie Style

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

When general contractor John L. Fox set out to build a spec house on a charming street in Willow Glen, he first considered a crowd-pleasing Tudor style.

But the intimacy of a Tudor didn’t work with what he really wanted in the house _ high ceilings.

So he consulted with his designers, Monty Lucas and Laura Winter.

“What this neighborhood could use is a prairie style,” Lucas said, the style popularized by architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

But Fox was reluctant at first.

“It was going to limit who would buy this house,” Fox said. “Not everyone understands prairie style, not everyone gets it.”

He needn’t have worried. A young Cisco executive riding her bike through the neighborhood got one glimpse of it and put in an offer. She not only got prairie style, she embraced it _ with a modern twist.

“The true prairie craftsman,” she said, “can be very dark. For me, that would be hard to live in.”

She hired San Francisco interior designer Carol Grier, who often works with her architect husband Jerry Kler, to complete the vision.

Grier usually sticks to strictly modern projects. But she knew well the architecture of Wright and had toured many of his homes in the midwest. At the same time, she found some of the furniture that Wright designed to be “clunky and heavy.”

For the living room, Grier directed her client, who prefers not to be named, to the furnishings of DeSousa Hughes shown at the San Francisco Design Center, which were “reminiscent of prairie furniture, but a modern version.”

That means softer cushions, more interesting fabrics, a variety of woods, she said. When she showed the homeowner, “she just clicked right into it.”

It also worked with her client’s collection of Asian furnishings and textiles she had collected from her travels, her father’s wood-turned vessels, and her boyfriend’s collection of hunting trophies that fill the upper stairwell.

For the dining room, Grier suggested a substantial table and chairs by Armani, the fashion designer. For the buffet, they chose a toad skin piece by Robert Kuo for McGuire.

With windows in the main rooms that reach eight feet high _ instead of the standard 6-foot-8 _ light penetrates deep into the rooms. That’s a trick, contractor John Fox said, he picked up from the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Posted in Architecture, Craftsman, Decorating, Dining Room, Interior Design, Julia, Peek of the Week, San Jose, Willow Glen | 1 Comment »

Tract Home Extraordinaire

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

What happens when a former buyer for Asian-inspired Gump’s in San Francisco, who manages a French-inspired home and garden shop in Aptos, buys a nondescript tract home in Freedom?

Something special, you can be sure.

With the orange and blue colors of Imari porcelain, personal collections of mother of peal compacts, a French end table, and a room painted in none other than “Gump’s red,” Temia Demakopoulos has created a unique sanctuary in an ordinary box.

She loves her Greek Orthodox heritage, and has adorned a wall in her master bedroom with religious icons. But when it comes to her overall decor, Asian wins every time.

“Once the Asian bug bites you,” Temia said, “you can never get beyond it.”

She fell in love with all things Asian as a child growing up in Palo Alto next to a Japanese family. She served tea to her family and collected wooden Kokeshi dolls _ the kind that open to reveal a series of smaller dolls.

She studied art history at U.C. Berkeley, then got a job at Gump’s in San Francisco as a buyer of Asian antiques, where she stayed for 15 years. She still catches her breath when she remembers the loads of colorful Japanese porcelain piled high across the Gump’s work table at 250 Post Street. “That was it,” she said. “That was it.”

She has collected antiques for 30 years. So when it came time for her to buy a house in 2002 not far from her job at Wisteria in Aptos, “I bought the house to fit my furniture.”

With collections from Gump’s, street fairs, flea markets and dealer sources, she turned the 1,600 square-foot, white-walled house into an elegant, interesting, colorful space.

While she has large Asian pieces, like old Tansu chests and table lamps, most of her collections are smaller and easy to rotate and fit into her small space.

She enjoys her etchings of Ryohei Tanaka, her dolls and compacts, and for the fall, her collection of artistic persimmons.

Other than painting the walls, she hasn’t modified the interiors much. But she did swap out the carpeting for wood floors. Oak, you might ask? Guess again. Temia chose bamboo.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Posted in Aptos, Condos, Decorating, Home Decor, Interior Design, Julia, Peek of the Week, Santa Cruz | 5 Comments »

Neighbor-friendly Cape Cod

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

So you’re building a new house in an old neighborhood _ and the last thing you want is for neighbors to complain about another Monster House _ what do you do?

Well, builders Jim Gold and Linda Sutton and designer Lynn Miller teamed up to create a house of transitions in Willow Glen. First, the Cape Cod style of the new home on Lupton Avenue transitions between a Craftsman on one side and a Colonial on the other. Then, the L-shape footprint of the new house meets the Craftsman’s forward garage on one side and steps back to be even with the Colonial’s deeper entrance.

"I always build to fit into the neighborhood so no one will gasp at the size of the house or at the style,” said Gold, who lives with Sutton in the home he finished last year. The 4,400 square-foot home sits on a half acre and still includes part of an old fruit orchard. "We chose American Cape Cod knowing that Italianate, a French chateau or a German castle would look absolutely out of place.”

Designer Lynn Miller of San Jose called upon her childhood memories at her great aunt’s house in Maine. The old house had started small, with a barn out back, and over time the two buildings were connected by a "summer kitchen," she said.

At the Gold house, the white marble-countered kitchen connects to a barn-like family room, where the walls are wooden board and batten and the vaulted ceilings are tongue and groove. A giant Palladian window facing the interior yard lets in morning sunshine while a bay window at the back shows off the mature orchard.

"Growing up in Maine, there are homes that are adjoining pieces, going in a linear way back. It’s a long house, not a broad house," Miller said. "That works beautifully on those deep lots in Willow Glen and the Rose Garden."

The exterior is shingled, with porches tucked into the spaces connecting the garage to the house, and again at the back of the house where a green metal roof covers a Vermont blue flagstone porch.

Nautical hurricane light fixtures, from Wright Lighting on San Carlos Street, complete the look.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Posted in Peek of the Week | 2 Comments »