A house's secrets A house's secrets (January 20, 2006)

Remodel reveals special surprises

By Kathy Schrenk

A major home remodel can be filled with agonizing surprises. But for one couple living in Old Palo Alto, reconfiguring their 1920s home for better flow and more light revealed secrets that the house had been hiding for decades -- secrets that drew smiles instead of grimaces.

The retired couple hired Palo Alto architect John Northway to update the house and bring in more natural light while keeping the home's original Mediterranean feel, with its stucco walls and arches defining the facade. The remodel emphasizes that, especially in the patio, with its lion-head fountain, huge terra cotta pots and the way it blurs the lines between inside and outside.

The home was one of five in Palo Alto featured in this spring's Mills College "Charming Cottages" tour, thanks to the quality of the original construction and the remodel's enhancements. It has features such as rounded corners where the ceiling meets the walls in the living room, along with molding that circles the ceiling where the rounded corners leave off, showcasing the fine craftsmanship evident in many Palo Alto homes of this era. "It's very nice detailing," Northway says.

More evidence of the 1920s-builder craftsmanship and the Mediterranean feel can be found in the original, iron-framed windows that circle the living room's cozy front sitting area. The side wall of the living room always featured a brick fireplace, the owner says. Then, remarkably, the remodel revealed two intact windows identical to the front windows, one on either side of the fireplace.

This delightful surprise and the changes to the rest of the house bring in such ample natural light that hardly a lamp needs to be turned on when the sun is shining. "I really have a thing about light," the wife says. "These windows mean so much to me."

Besides simply removing the wallboard that had been hiding the living room windows, Northway had several other strategies for opening things up and improving the flow of the house. He moved the walls of the family room and the main hallway to expand a patio that had been underutilized because of its separation from the rest of the house. He raised the outdoor space so it's just a step down from the kitchen, family room and office. It now forms the heart of the house and is "like another room," the owner says.

The remodel added a mere 361 square feet to the house -- mostly in the powder room and expanded guest bedroom and bath -- but it makes the house seem so much bigger, she says.

Northway made the master bed and bath seem larger by elevating the ceilings from the standard 8 feet to 12 feet. He also put windows just below the new, heightened ceilings. "Volume and light really help make rooms feel more comfortable," he says. An elegant ceiling fan at the peak of the bedroom's cathedral ceiling and glass doors to the rear garden give the room an almost resort-like feel.

Higher ceilings also became possible in the kitchen, which, in another delightful surprise, was found to have nearly three feet of attic space above. The elevated ceilings, custom cabinets and Caesarstone countertops -- ground-up quartz, impervious to stains -- make the kitchen a joy to work and be in, the owner says.

"From all the houses we've lived in, I had specific ideas of how I wanted the kitchen, and [carpenter John Seltzer] did a great job," she says.

The new kitchen also revealed the most whimsical secret the house had kept: a framed clipping of a Saturday Evening Post article from 1927, found behind the house numbers framed under the doorway. It had apparently been wedged in there to keep the numbers flush against their glass frame.

Goal of project: Reconfigure the space for better flow and natural light; upgrade and freshen the look; maintain original feel of house and keep facade as-is.
Unexpected problems: Original plan to add a second story was found to be too unwieldy and expensive.
Year house built: 1920s
Size of house: About 1,900 sq. ft. before the remodel; about 2,260 after
Size of lot: 6,000 sq. ft.
Time to complete: 18 months
Budget: Around $450,000
Resources: Architect: Stoecker and Northway Architects, 437 Lytton Ave., Palo Alto, (650) 327-7070, www.stoeckerandnorthway.com Interior designer: Joella Conover, Antiques and Interiors, 45 W. Main St., Los Gatos, (408) 354-0523 Landscape designer and contractor: Debby Ruskin, Ruskin Garden Design, Palo Alto, (650) 853-1665, www.ruskingardens.com Carpenter: John Seltzer, Perspectives, Palo Alto, (650) 858-2293

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