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

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Bedrooms: 3
Baths: 1
Asking: $585,000

She was born in 1970 with a name that means “earth” in Czech on a commune in Palo Alto called “The Land.”
Zem Joaquin was a dark-haired pixie with patchwork pants who played with chickens, danced in the central longhouse and sang with Joan Baez in the squatters camp off Page Mill Road.
The darling of the draft resisters back then, she became the subject of their illustrated fairy tale about  “Zem, the little queen” who unites a strife-torn world. Even Baez, who founded the commune and lived there for a time, included “Zem Zem” in her 1975 song, “Children and All That Jazz.”
Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that she was destined to make a name for herself in the environmental movement. Unlike her parents’ generation that reveled in the counterculture fringe, though, she is helping create a modern movement in the mainstream.
And she’s doing so with her own sense of rebellion: She’s making green glamorous.
Founder of Ecofabulous, she created a Web site that gives readers eco-friendly lifestyle options, from modular furniture made from recycled paper to chic throws made of hemp and flax. Going green needs to be less about sacrifice, she realized, and more about motivation. (The site’s motto: “sexy.sustainable.style.”) After all, she muses, “People weren’t too interested when organic cotton looked like oatmeal and felt like a burlap sack.”
Step inside the 1960s-era home in Marin County that she remodeled for her family and you’ll see what she means.
At 39 years old and just 5 feet tall, she opens the front door with bare feet and a big smile. Behind her, vintage black-and-white curtains she found at the Alameda Point Antiques Faire frame a pair of chairs she recovered in remnant lime green silk. Sleek kitchen counters are made from newspaper wood pulp and fly ash. Her vintage Laszlo dining room chairs are refilled with natural rubber.
“Being fabulous is feeling like you’re getting what you really want,” she says. “At the same time, you’re not taking more than you need and you’re giving back.”
So how did this commune kid become such a design diva?
She may have been raised on granola, but she came of age living in London for two-and-a-half years in her early 20s with her godmother – a stylish critic for the Evening Standard who took her to theaters, boutiques and Paris for weekends and “taught me everything I know about design.” Joaquin (then Spire, her maiden name) finished her degree in organizational communications at Pepperdine, where she started a recycling program. And after a stint managing male models in Italy (she followed a boyfriend there), she returned to San Francisco in the late 1990s to help her best friend, Gina Pell, start Pell’s fledgling fashion and beauty Web site, Splendora.
“She was my VP of business development because she’s so good with people. She has a way of developing and nurturing connections,” Pell says. “I always told her that if she was a superhero, that would be her superpower – the ultimate connector.”
It was Pell, though, who connected Zem with her husband, tech entrepreneur James Joaquin.
They met at a cocktail party in 1999 in San Francisco, married and had two children. She was volunteering for homeless causes and political campaigns when her children were diagnosed with severe asthma. The family was living in an old Craftsman in San Francisco at the time, spending many a night in the emergency room when she decided she had to “save my children and create a healthy home.”
The Marin County house, tucked among blackberry bushes and towering trees, became her eco-incubator. Old painted beams were stripped with beeswax, wall-to-wall carpeting was replaced with recycled wine-cork flooring and solar panels were added to the roof.
But finding sustainable products, and stylish ones at that, wasn’t easy. “I realized there was this enormous gap,” she says. “There were no resources for eco-design and people interested in design.”
It was her husband who handed her a copy of “Cradle to Cradle,” the environmental manifesto of architect William McDonough, whom James Joaquin had heard speak at the 2004 TED conference for technology, entertainment and design in Monterey.
“This is what you’ve been talking about,” he said at the time to his wife, “what you’ve been spiraling in towards.”
She was so enthralled by the book, which professes ecologically intelligent design, that she invited McDonough to lunch with “some of my friends that I think can change the world.”
The guest list included her husband’s good friend, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar; Segway inventor Dean Kamen, whom she had met at a dinner party; and inventor, entrepreneur and Disney “imagineer” Danny Hillis.
This time, it was McDonough’s turn to be impressed. He invited her to attend his annual eco-summit in Iceland the following year with some 20 “thought leaders” and activists.
Unlike some in the environmental movement who preach doom and gloom, he says, Joaquin takes a positive approach.
“It’s a big dark world out there, and we need brightness,” he says in a phone interview from Abu Dhabi where he was talking to real estate developers about green design. “Zem is a sparkle.”
And she knows how to throw a party. Over the past several years, she has raised nearly $1 million dollars for Global Green, an L.A.-based nonprofit that activates its Hollywood base to bring attention to green issues, including the sustainable rebuilding of New Orleans and Haiti. At her first party she threw at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco several years ago, Leonardo DiCaprio showed up. Salma Hayek and Orlando Bloom came to the second.
“She actually seduces people into doing the right thing,” Ariana Huffington of the Huffington Post said when she presented Joaquin with Global Green’s Founder’s Award last year. “She always makes people feel that the right thing is the fun thing.”
Plus, she added, “she’s adorable.”
While Joaquin founded Ecofabulous in 2006 to chronicle her environmentally friendly remodeling resources, she has since expanded it to include organic beauty, fashion and lifestyle choices. She consults with such companies as eBay and Safeway and has been a frequent “green” guest on radio and TV shows. She raises chickens in her side yard, grows tomatoes and herbs, and even has her 6-year-old daughter weighing in with her opinion about kids’ green products. And over the past few years, she’s convinced every one of her closest friends to drive a hybrid.
So what’s next?
“I never thought in a million years I would want to have a commune,” she says.
But lately, she’s thinking about it, maybe bringing her closest friends together, living sustainably off the grid. She doesn’t have the details worked out yet, but one thing is certain: Unlike the A-frames and outhouses she grew up with, she says, “this commune would be stylized.”

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When floral designer Jose Ibarra stepped into Tina and David Sheffler’s Asian-inspired home, he knew just what he needed to set a smashing dining room table for her. The house was featured on the Rose Garden Homes Tour in October and needed a designer’s touch. As always, you can count on Jose to turn up the creativity a notch.

For the Shefflers’ table, while he celebrated the Asian inspiration by using wooden Geisha statuettes and delicate orchids, he honed in on a  simple yet whimsical concept: Chinese take-out.

“Just because you have a party doesn’t mean it has to be catered,” Jose said. “It can be fun with what you have and at the same time look good.”

Next time you order Chinese takeout with friends and want to make some simple, but special touches, here are some of Jose’s ideas:

1. Use the white take-out containers as vessels for creativity: insert a small cup with water and add red roses; or fill with moss to give a “bok choy” effect. Jose stuck a pair of chopsticks in the moss and crinkled the paper chopsticks wrapper at the top to play with the color and texture. Wrap colored string around the boxes for extra color.

2. Add tall, wispy orchids in clear glass or simple vases to add height.

3. Keep the rest of the table minimalistic to showcase your special touches.

You might also enjoy these stories:

Asian-inspired backyard

Zen-like courtyard on Home Tour

Tract Home Extraordinaire

Leku Eder-A Beautiful Danville Place for Asian Inspiration

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The best thing about home tours is finally getting into those homes you’ve always ogled. Well, lucky me, I got an advance peek of the homes on the Rose Garden Homes Tour coming up this weekend (Oct. 17-18) in San Jose and snapped this shot of the surprise behind a front gate.

This contemporary, Zen-like garden makes you want to sit back and watch the rocks grow. Or maybe read “Eat, Pray, Love” while listening to the gurgling fountain.  Wispy bamboo balances the travertine tiles. A Buddha is nestled in the greenery.  As lovely as it is now, it will be transformed for the home tour by floral designer Jose Ibarra, whom we love to feature on Lookiloos for his inspired holiday decor.

Behind this courtyard is a lovely, remodeled ranch home that carries the Asian inspiration inside. (It was also once the home of the Langendorf bread family.)

Another surprise on the tour is a last-minute addition –  a DeMattei Construction remodel in the neighborhood that features a Sunset Magazine idea house kitchen that is already staged to perfection. Sunset readers got the chance to vote online to choose the layout and finishes.

As for the other homes, they all have a story.

*The owner of a classic Monterey Colonial with a beautifully remodeled kitchen and new landscaping walks to the dining room window and looks out every time her grown children pull out of the driveway. She does it because that’s what the previous owner did, and does it out of gratitude and respect;

*The couple that owns a lovely Cape Cod with an enclosed porch bought it to be close to their children and grandchildren, and fell in love with the history of the house along the way — and that includes a family of pear growers;

*The woman who owns a two-story Mediterranean with wrought-iron detailing and a remodeled kitchen used to walk down the street as a teen-ager and dream that one day this home would be hers;

*A spectacular garden where the tea party will take place has a walking labynth, plus a lovely holiday boutique.

Tickets are $30 in advance or $35 at the door and benefit St. Martin of Tours School. If you want to see the third courtyard, and the gorgeous house behind it, you can attend the gala on Saturday (Oct. 17) night for $100 (which also gains you admittance to the rest of the home tour). For more information on tickets, go to www.rosegardenhomestour.com.

You might also enjoy these other stories, including a peak at the Sunset kitchen:
Sunset Magazine’s Ultimate Kitchen
Wabi Sabi: Where the Imperfect is Beautiful
Floral Chic Mother’s Day
Going Green on a Budget for St. Patrick’s Day
How to Make Paper Roses for Valentine’s Day

For years, the old structure in the back yard was known as the “haunted shed.” When Rebecca Sweet was a girl growing up in her parents’ Los Altos ranch-style house in the 1970s, even her bravest friends couldn’t make it through a slumber party there.

The roof was caving in. The floorboards creaked. Cobwebs covered old storage boxes. Spiders had taken over every inch. When Rebecca returned to her childhood home 11 years ago and moved in with her own family, the wood shed had only deteriorated further. Her daughter and friends would have Halloween parties and terrify each other over stories of the the eerie presence of the “shed monster.”

But over the last few years, with her husband, Tom Urban, taking the lead, the old shed has been given a new life and new purpose. Gone are the cobwebs and creaks. The structure is now a charming cottage and work studio for Rebecca, who is a landscape designer. As with the rest of the backyard garden once tended by her mother, who comes from a maternal line of avid gardeners, the shed was restored and decorated to maintain the family’s gardening legacy.

The roof on the 18-by-12-foot shed was pitched and decorative wood beams added to create an airy feeling and rustic charm. Her husband replaced the old aluminum windows with vintage cottage windows. He plastered the walls and painted them a buttery yellow. A long counter was built on the far end, stretching across the back, to lay out design plans. The shelves underneath store the family’s earthquake supplies, but are hidden by lovely linen curtains.

A wicker sofa dominates the seating area. Above it hangs a decorative screen made of branches from one of Rebecca’s favorite shops in Los Altos, Cottage Green. One of her most cherished possessions is a dainty painting of pansies done by her great-great grandmother.

Rebecca also likes to point out the old piece of wood siding that bears the carved named of Rebecca’s brother, Tim. He had been punished for defacing the shed at the time. But Rebecca made sure her husband kept it in its rightful place, next to the front door.

Sitting on nearly a third of an acre in a 1950s development of classic ranch-style houses, the shed was an ever-present backdrop to the garden, which was first tended by her mother and now her. Rebecca remembers expeditions to Lake Tahoe to collect rocks along the roadsides that had tumbled down from avalanches. Together, they would choose the prettiest and haul them back to San Jose where her mother would build curving borders for raised garden beds.

“I would watch her build this wall and tear it out because it wasn’t perfect,” Rebecca said. “It was her release.”

While she loves her mother’s stone walls, she has also made the garden her own by adding several sitting areas, curving pathways, fountains and an aviary. She writes about her garden and gardening tips on her blog www.gossipinthegarden.com.

When her mother visits, “she doesn’t come in the house. She goes around the garden first,” Rebecca said.

“We wander the garden and see what’s new. It’s a huge bond. It’s a personal garden, and I think it shows.”

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From the steep driveway, Lisa Rissetto’s home on a Woodside hilltop looks like an unassuming California ranch style spread, with a curving driveway and a taupe facade. But the inside is a surprising mid-century modern masterpiece.

The same is true at her design studio in San Francisco, where she worked her way up from merchandizing at Esprit de Corps in the 1980s to become president of her own leather handbag and accessory business. Outside, the three-story cement building is plain and austere. But inside is something else entirely — a vibrant, light-filled work space that has such a cool vibe and views of the bay that it’s been used for advertising photo shoots.

If design is a sensibility, perhaps it is no wonder that Lisa has surrounded herself with some of the best of it at her office in town and her home in the country.

Growing up in Bergen County, New Jersey, in the 1960s and ’70s, her influences were strong and clear. Her father was an architect and professor at Columbia University in New York and designed the family’s modern home that neighbors called “The Jetsons’ House” after the space-age cartoon family. Her mother was a style maven, uninhibited to wear a Bonnie Cashin-designed bright orange leather coat with brass toggles.

“That’s all I ever knew,” said Lisa, now 49. “It was different from what everyone else grew up with.” (There were no La-Z-Boy recliners with upholstered American eagles at her house.)

And it’s probably fair to say her home she shares with her husband and three children doesn’t quite conform to those of her neighbors in the horse country of Woodside. Sure, she has an acre, two horses and a rustic old barn that would be an ideal setting for a Ralph Lauren brochure.

But this is a woman who knows a Mies van der Rohe, Jean Prouve and Serge Mouille when she sees it. And a walk through her front door proves it. When she and her husband bought the house in 1995, they quickly tore down the interior walls of the main rooms to open up the floor plan, pulling in light from the back wall of windows deep into the dining and living rooms.

Once inside, you are greeted with a gallery-like space that’s spare and sleek, with pops of lime green and zebra. An extremely rare spider-like industrial lamp by Mouille, who was a mid-century French goldsmith and industrial designer, hangs like a mobile over the dining room table. The table chairs are Aalto, covered in vintage green linen.

In the living room, a low-slung avocado couch and oblong coffee table were designed by T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, a British-born architect and furniture designer who worked in the United States from the 1930s through the ’50s. Lisa acquired three of Van de Rohe’s famous leather Barcelona chairs at auction in Chicago — two a matched pair from the 1960s and the third produced in 1970. A slatted bench in the living room and a bubble lamp over the kitchen table are both classics by George Nelson. Some of her favorites, though, are pieces from the house she grew up in, including the bright red Bertoia chair in the corner.

Bringing depth and personality into the modern space, Lisa’s collection of female portraits picked up at flea markets from Paris to Alameda rest atop a wall unit she had manufactured in the wood-and-metal industrial style of Prouve.

Her sense of style extends up Highway 280 to Bryant Street in San Francisco, where the interior of the concrete building is illuminated by a wall of industrial windows. More than a dozen designers sketching spring fashions and mulling over leather samples and metal buckles collaborate in the bright natural light.

It’s a business she helped build with former Esprit executive George Hensler, who started the company that designs and manufactures accessories for major retailers. When he retired in 2004 and Lisa took over, she fulfilled her dream of designing her own line of handbags. Her company still bears the G.Hensler name, but she labeled the California-casual line of supple Italian leather bags “49 Sq.Mi.,” an ode to the geography of San Francisco.

And while many are in the versatile blacks and browns and burgundies, some of her favorites are in the color of her mother — the bright oranges, soft yellows and rich greens.

When her mother died, Lisa went through her closet and found 12 leather coats — all Bonnie Cashin originals. She reconditioned the leather, and still wears the bright orange one with brass toggles. And it looks fabulous with a sumptuous “49 Sq.Mi.” bag slung over the shoulder.

Like her mother before her, she wears it well.

Update:

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

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The Christmas platter was a gift from my mom _ a platter that will likely never be soiled by turkey or roast beef. It’s large enough for either, with handles to carry the weight. But it seems destined to stand. On it is grand cursive script, whose message makes my mom choke up every time she says it: “Through the Years We All will be Together.”

She bought it at the Lazy K House in Lafayette, a century-old Spanish ranch house-turned-home-and-garden-boutique set behind the Orchard Nursery on Mount Diablo Boulevard. It is run by Anne Mercer, the daughter of my mother’s best friend, Muriel Schlichting. For years, the two have been making a trip together from San Jose to the shop at Christmas time, where it is festooned with all the glitter and gold of the holidays.

The shop is filled with great gifts from sophisticated $27 cashmere scarves, to whimsical $69 bobble-headed Christmas-themed garden stakes. The Lazy K has a great selection of glass ornaments from Eric Cortina, as well as Christopher Radko, who also shows his line of cookie jars and snowglobes ranging from $35 to $70. Wander through the old rooms of the Lazy K house, including the living room with the fireplace, and out into the garden where you may find some statuary or urns on sale.

The two-story house was once the main residence of a cattle operation in the Lafayette hills that used the Lazy K as its brand. When Highway 24 was built, the house was moved to its present location behind the Orchard Nursery. It’s been run as a gift shop for at least 25 years.

My Christmas platter is already perched on my dining room credenza, the first sign of Christmas in our house before we even have a tree. The Lazy K carries it each year and is priced at $60. In my house, it is destined to become an heirloom. It will provide the backdrop for Christmas Eve where, in fact, we all will be together.

To get to the Lazy K from the South Bay, take Highway 680 to Highway 24 toward Oakland. Take the Acalanes exit into Lafayette, turning right on Acalanes. Turn left on Mount Diablo Boulevard. It’s on the left behind the nursery at 4010 Mount Diablo Boulevard.

The Lazy K House
behind the Orchard Nursery & Florist
4010 Mt. Diablo Blvd.
Lafayette, CA 94549

   David Edwards’s house in Santa Clara may have the distinction of being the "Greenest House in California," but he wants to be clear about one thing: "a guy living in a mud hut is greener."

   Thank you for that clarification, David.

   He still has real bragging rights.

   His house near Lawrence Expressway and El Camino Real has been ranked by Build It Green, a Berkeley-based nonprofit, as the top rated green house in the state. It will be featured Sunday, Sept. 28, on the Build It Green Home Tour.

   Edwards, 38, owns Earthbound Homes, a green construction company whose business has increased 200 percent a year since he founded it seven years ago.

   "We’ve taken the greenest of everything we can find and tested it here," said Edwards. "This house has every bell and whistle for green except geothermal."

   To Edwards, green means three things: conserving resources, including water, wood and electricity; caring for the healthiness of the house by using low- or non-toxic materials; and being socially responsible by not exploiting the earth or regions and cultures that provide building materials.

   Case in point, Edwards refused to install a new mahogany door for a client because "mahogany is illegally overharvested."

   To look at it, Edwards’s blue, two-story ranch house he shares with his wife and three children doesn’t necessarily appear to be the epitome of green architecture. But a guided tour by Edwards reveals its true color.

   Start with the wooden front porch: all made from sustainably harvested wood, as certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. The beams on the front porch and throughout the house are salvaged. The exterior siding of the house is fiber cement, which is resistant to fungus and rot _ and that means low maintenance and durability, a tenet of green building. All the trim pieces around doors and windows are salvaged redwood from the siding of a demolished Palo Alto house (the errant nail holes are evidence of re-use).

   A central skylight illuminates the stairwell and downstairs living areas to reduce the amount of electricity needed. The roof and second-floor walls are made of structural insulated panels. He added a solar hot water system and a hot water recirculation system.

   On the outside, he irrigates the yard of mostly California native plants by capturing rain water into a 1,400-gallon underground cistern and using "graywater" from excess shower and dishwashing water.

   In 2006, Edwards’s home was named "best new large custom home" by Build It Green. Ever since, he’s been giving building industry professionals, students and clients tours of his house.

   "I’m not your mother and I’m not your priest," Edwards said. "I just want to build the greenest and most energy efficient houses I can.”

   For more information about the Build It Green home tour and green building resources, go to www.builditgreen.org.

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