Lisa Murray was getting down to the wire. House guests from Australia were expected that afternoon, barely two weeks after she moved her family of four out of their tiny cottage on the back of the property and into their newly remodeled house in Los Gatos.
Unpacked boxes were everywhere. Only the living room and kitchen looked presentable. And she needed a privacy curtain for the front bathroom or her guests would be flashing the neighbors. She had already raced around Indian shops in Sunnyvale looking for fabric that would work in the iridescent blue bathroom and found nothing. As she was unpacking a box full of old clothes she hadn’t seen in a year, she pulled out a sari-like dress.
Hmm, she thought. “Dress or curtain? Dress or curtain?”
She took out the shears, cut it, and began the whirr of the sewing machine.
The entire remodel, which has been a year in construction and chronicled by Lookiloos and the Mercury News, has been a hands-on, nail-biting project from the start. Murray is an artist and wanted the home to reflect her avant-garde style as well as their international roots. Like many Silicon Valley families, they have traveled a circuitous route to get here. Murray’s husband, Craig Hinkley, is an Australia native. She grew up in Canada. With their two children, now 14 and 12, they have traveled the world and the United States, moving every two years or so following Hinkley’s jobs in high tech.
Unlike other homes Murray has transformed to suit their needs and prepare for resale over the years, she designed this one with creative abandon. She isn’t worried about pleasing a potential buyer anymore. After more than two years enjoying the life and climate of Silicon Valley and the town tucked into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, they plan to settle down this time.
So when they moved their family, plus their rambunctious boxer Millie, back into the house just in time for Christmas, they began to feel a whole new sense of home. And with a giant angel on their shoulder — or tucked under the bed until the towering stained-glass window was safely installed in the living room — they have survived rainstorms and mud bogs, accidents and injuries, cramped quarters and a leaking storage unit that left many family keepsakes in ruins.
And now, after all that, Murray said, “We finally stopped moving, stopped renovating, stopped the dirt, stopped the noise and just put on the music.”
They can finally sit back and enjoy the home they built for no one but themselves. The peacock-blue backsplash in the kitchen. The quatrefoil ironwork on the banister. The colorful Moroccan lanterns above the dining table and the industrial pendants over the kitchen island.
And across the room from the stained-glass angel that casts colorful light across the floor is a sensuous portrait of Proserpina, the Roman goddess of spring, that Murray painted on the sliding pocket door.
“By saying to yourself, ‘I am not going to move; this is the house I would like my grandchildren to come to,’ you make it in a way that is incredibly personal,” she said. “You don’t need to answer to neutrality. You can take who you are and run with it.”
All along the way, her contractor, Vinnie Tran of VT Construction, put up with her brainstorms and second-guesses and finished the project within the year he promised.
Murray even changed the size and scale of the house early on, giving up a formal dining room and more interior space when they reined in their budget and decided to better enjoy what the Bay Area has to offer that their former residences of Charlotte, N.C., and Seattle didn’t — great weather. Instead of a formal living room, they now have a covered terrace.
The landscaping will have to wait. Inside, boxes remained unpacked and rooms undecorated. But after a full year of the parents sleeping in the cottage and the kids in bunk beds in the garage, they are all sleeping under the same roof.
Even now, they look back fondly on the past year. Son Cal says his best Christmas was in the cottage when they decorated the Charlie Brown Christmas tree in about 20 minutes and the smell of ham filled every square inch of the 360-square-foot dwelling.
In the new house the other night, Murray lit the outdoor fireplace and called the family to join her.
“I said to everyone, put down the homework, stop the texting, get off the phone. Let’s sit and listen to the crackling fire and the music and the frogs from the creek,” she said. “Everyone stop and be thankful for this moment and where we are.”
And then, for a memorable moment, the four of them sat together and talked.
Contact Julia Prodis Sulek at jsulek@mercurynews.com. Read the previous stories in “This Darned House” saga at www.lookiloos.com.
LESSONS LEARNED
Have a renovation in your future? Here is Lisa Murray’s advice to other homeowners:
Know your style. If you are not confident in your design abilities, hire a designer who can communicate your style to your architect, contractor, stonemason, tiler, painter, etc.
Building green is relatively easy thanks to new state energy efficiency standards. It’s the demolition of the old home that is difficult.
Find a contractor that you like, respect and trust. This choice will affect your experience more than any other one. A good contractor will have good subcontractors and good subs collectively create well-built homes.
Never compromise on your finishes as this is what you will touch and feel every day.
The renovation will seem like it is taking forever. But, upon reflection, it will seem like it went at light speed.
Here’s the complete slideshow:
Lisa Murray thought opening the storage containers that sat idle for a year would be like crossing the finish line of their house remodel. She had looked forward to sifting through family photos and baby quilts made for her two children by her late mother, and uncrating the art books she had built a library for. Murray and her husband, Craig Hinkley, built this house to settle down their vagabond family that had moved every two-and-a-half years for the past 16. The family momentos would help make this house a home.
The house remodel is still going along one step forward two steps back because of the rain. But we are seeing progress and that is very exciting. When I designed the house I had to make a few decisions regarding the floor plan. I could have attached the garage onto the house and used the space over the garage for a formal living room and dining room with a small deck ( this would have reduced the back yard/garden space and increased the driveway/pavement). The option that I decided upon was to detach the garage by approximately 65 feet from the house but connect it via a path that meanders thru a courtyard garden. I re-configured the three existing rooms into a great-room kitchen,dining,and living-room opening up to a giant covered patio. I hope we will not miss the formal, always -perfect, never used rooms (well maybe at Thanksgiving). I look forward to enjoying a morning coffee in my garden or an evening glass of wine on my deck. Ah, a girl can still dream can’t she? Stay dry until next time we chat again.
The cottage / garage living arrangements seem to be working out really well. We have learned to cohabitate in a very small environment. A key issue for us was keeping the mud at bay with all the wet days we had.
The weather has really played havoc with the work schedule as we haven’t been able to lay the footings for the new foundation. We have to wait for the ground to dry out some more. With the dryer weather I am optimistic that this week we will see a burst of energy around the house.
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.
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.
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.
wash in her glory and while the drought stricken earth needed the rain, we personally could have waited a couple of days.
(To follow the rest of the Hinkley Family remodel, go to 
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.
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.)
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!)
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