Monday, April 10, 2006
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Making a House a Home . . . again
I’ve inherited Dad’s house—which has seen better days. It’s early 70s California construction with thin walls—but set in the heart of the beautiful Sonoma Valley in the last funky place in wine country, the village Kenwood. This house, a very small and dark suburban-style place with its spider-caked acoustic ceilings and crumbling kitchen cupboards, is beautiful by location. Outside, the leathery Mayacamas beam down on sunny days. When it rains, Hood Mountain glowers with a crown of thunderheads.
Inside, two tiny bedrooms stretch to the heart of darkness itself, the hallway—a lank place with no less than five dark, hollow doors. We finished work on the bitsy bathroom (5x9’). It is beautifully tiled with a tile mural of Monet’s water lilies to remind us of who we are to each other. Off the back, there is a covered deck that is falling apart.
Not much to recommend it?
A gorgeous lot, very large, with a small vineyard and glorious vegetable gardens, year after year. Last fall, we built a yurt out on the back property—a 20’ in diameter on a deck. There are views to a couple of acres of woods behind the yurt, as yet impossible to develop. There is no sewer system in Kenwood. Each villager is on his or her own septic system. Some have their own wells. This year, a stop light will go in on Warm Springs Road, an event that has local padrone Angelino Pedroncelli putting The Kenwood Hotel (not to be confused with the Kenwood Inn, a posh, Tuscan-style spa up the road) up for sale. The hotel is a ramshackle thing, tilting, uninhabited and unadorned for decades. It’s kept Kenwood safe from the expansion of Highway 12, but time (and the voters) have changed the future of Kenwood. Actually, it’s a miracle the hotel hasn’t blown over. This time, Angie is serious, even though the hotel is his birthplace.
Kenwood is Changing
Everything on the village floor is within walking distance: the post office, the gas station, the soccer field and the village park where my father planted the trees. We wonder what it will be like when the sewer is finally voted in. Newcomers from San Francisco (many who bought summer homes now expanded to big, neo-Victorian-style monuments) are willing, but the Kenwood hobos and bohemians aren’t buying it.
Going back down Laurel Avenue to our house, the sheer variety of Kenwoodia staggers the eyes. A greedy, unfathomably lazy developer threw up a few dozen homes in the late 60s and early 70s. Some are flat tops, others are small pensioneer cottages. And that’s where we are, tearing “acoustic” materials (read asbestos-laced cottage cheese) from the little ceilings, pulling up shag carpets and destitute Berbers, laying down ironwood floors and installing new doors occupies our spare hours and those of our contractor, Eric.
In a place like Sonoma County, a contractor is more like the conductor of a poorly tuned, but well-tread orchestra. Eric spends his days sharing the job with “subs” who dash in for three hours here and there to do things he can’t: electrical, tile, sheetrock. Like ghosts of Pompeii, they rise from the dust of the work site and vanish into time.
Inside, two tiny bedrooms stretch to the heart of darkness itself, the hallway—a lank place with no less than five dark, hollow doors. We finished work on the bitsy bathroom (5x9’). It is beautifully tiled with a tile mural of Monet’s water lilies to remind us of who we are to each other. Off the back, there is a covered deck that is falling apart.
Not much to recommend it?
A gorgeous lot, very large, with a small vineyard and glorious vegetable gardens, year after year. Last fall, we built a yurt out on the back property—a 20’ in diameter on a deck. There are views to a couple of acres of woods behind the yurt, as yet impossible to develop. There is no sewer system in Kenwood. Each villager is on his or her own septic system. Some have their own wells. This year, a stop light will go in on Warm Springs Road, an event that has local padrone Angelino Pedroncelli putting The Kenwood Hotel (not to be confused with the Kenwood Inn, a posh, Tuscan-style spa up the road) up for sale. The hotel is a ramshackle thing, tilting, uninhabited and unadorned for decades. It’s kept Kenwood safe from the expansion of Highway 12, but time (and the voters) have changed the future of Kenwood. Actually, it’s a miracle the hotel hasn’t blown over. This time, Angie is serious, even though the hotel is his birthplace.
Kenwood is Changing
Everything on the village floor is within walking distance: the post office, the gas station, the soccer field and the village park where my father planted the trees. We wonder what it will be like when the sewer is finally voted in. Newcomers from San Francisco (many who bought summer homes now expanded to big, neo-Victorian-style monuments) are willing, but the Kenwood hobos and bohemians aren’t buying it.
Going back down Laurel Avenue to our house, the sheer variety of Kenwoodia staggers the eyes. A greedy, unfathomably lazy developer threw up a few dozen homes in the late 60s and early 70s. Some are flat tops, others are small pensioneer cottages. And that’s where we are, tearing “acoustic” materials (read asbestos-laced cottage cheese) from the little ceilings, pulling up shag carpets and destitute Berbers, laying down ironwood floors and installing new doors occupies our spare hours and those of our contractor, Eric.
In a place like Sonoma County, a contractor is more like the conductor of a poorly tuned, but well-tread orchestra. Eric spends his days sharing the job with “subs” who dash in for three hours here and there to do things he can’t: electrical, tile, sheetrock. Like ghosts of Pompeii, they rise from the dust of the work site and vanish into time.
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