FIXER-UPPER : A Nationwide TV Audience Will Watch as a House Is Transformed Into Cozy Little Northridge Home

A run-down clapboard cottage in Northridge is about to be transformed into a family home before the eyes of millions of national TV viewers.

The house, at 18134 Chase Street, just west of Balboa Boulevard and north of Roscoe Boulevard, is being prepared for a fix-up on a new ABC morning program, “Home” (which airs daily at 10:30 a.m.).

Over the next few months, “Home” will devote regular segments to “guide the viewer through the steps necessary in finding a home, negotiating a price, choosing a mortgage and renovating the home into your dream house,” according to executive producer Woody Fraser.

“In renovating the house, we will call upon not only experts but folks who have had practical, hands-on experience in remodeling their own homes,” Fraser said. “Some of these people will be asked to come out to the house to lend a hand.”

Like the Real America

The 67-year-old, 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom cottage occupies a large, 100-by-190-foot lot. It was chosen for its universal appeal, said producer Dan Weaver. “We wanted the kind of house that could be found in any small town anywhere in the United States. We didn’t want a place that screamed ‘L.A.’ ”

Indeed, the Chase Street cottage is typical of the kind of house that transplanted Midwesterners built in the Valley in the 1920s and ‘30s. It is a square little wood-frame box with a steep asphalt shingle roof set back on a deep front lawn, with a brick patio, barbecue and garage at the back among orange and lemon trees. The combined living-dining room runs the width of the house behind the front porch. Two smallish bedrooms, a kitchen and utilities room, and a small bathroom complete the plan. Up a steep stair is an attic room with a ceiling too low to stand up in, except at the peak.

“It’s our Cinderella house,” Weaver said.

Purchased for $167,000, with 20% down and a $1,500-a-month mortgage payment, the house has a program budget of $30,000 for the renovations. The idea is to put the fixed-up house back on the market for around $250,000.

“We want to show viewers how they could make around $50,000 profit, and maybe trade up to a bigger home,” Fraser explained. “The family we are looking at would be a young couple with one small child.”

The Chase Street cottage, occupied for the last 50 years by one woman, is badly in need of repair. Its paint is peeling, the wooden sash windows have rotted, and the roof needs shingling. The only heating is provided by two individual gas wall units, and the electrical supply and wiring require must be completely replaced. The bathroom and kitchen are badly in need of modernization, and the timber garage is a near-wreck.

On the face of it, $30,000 worth of renovations will have to stretch to restore a structure that has been neglected for this long.

Situated at the center of the West Valley, the neighborhood is in the midst of a transition from the casual rural-commercial pre-World War II era of small bungalows set on the edges of fields to a contemporary suburban scene.

The Southern Pacific rail corridor runs a few streets north of the property, bordered by a light-industrial zone that includes such operations as the Allied Moving Systems truck station. To the east of Lindley Avenue, the nearest main intersection is Northridge Junior High School, bordering meadows where horses still graze. Van Nuys Airport, University of California, Northridge and Northridge Hospital are in the vicinity. The San Diego Freeway is a mile to the east.

The neighborhood is a mixture of residential types. On Lindley Avenue and Roscoe Boulevard are low-rise apartment blocks built in the 1950s and ‘60s. Lindley Chase, one such complex, is only two doors away from 18134 Chase Street. Farther west are newer and more expensive homes, including some large mock-Elizabethan suburban houses built in a style tagged by one wit as “Stockbroker’s Tudor.”

There is an independent gas station up Lindley Avenue, with a “village” mini-mall across the way. The closest major shopping areas are Northridge Fashion Center, two miles to the northwest, and the Roscoe-Balboa intersection about the same distance east.

The price of homes in the district varies from the low $100,000s on Napa Street near the rail line to the high $300,000s on the pleasant, tree-lined avenues off Roscoe Boulevard to the west. The community is predominantly Anglo, with residents now moving up from lower- to middle-middle class.

Whether to Expand

Given these factors--the rising income levels of the neighborhood, the smallness of the house standing on a large lot, the size of the family for whom it is intended--homeowner-renovators would need to confront a basic decision right away.

Should the homeowners stay within the confining walls of the present cottage? Or should they expand the size of the house itself, to take advantage of both the large lot size and the trend set by the area’s newer and larger homes?

Put another way--is it worth spending $30,000 to renovate the cottage within its present walls? Or would it be more sensible to double the renovation budget to expand the basic floor plan, perhaps adding a big master bedroom and bathroom, and enlarging the dimensions of the cramped living-dining room?

Many a seasoned real estate agent might suggest a more radical approach: Demolish the cottage and build a bigger house from scratch. Agents might argue that the cottage has little architectural distinction and that it is not particularly well built or maintained.

Such hard choices exist in the real world. But although the ABC-TV producers repeatedly insist that they want to involve “real people” in the transformation of the Chase Street house, they obviously feel they have to exclude certain complicated realities in order to keep things clear for their mass audience.

Two levels of strategy must be outlined before the Chase Street cottage can begin to be renovated. How can the basic layout of the house be altered to suit a young family? And what design style should be chosen for the renovation, to best serve the character of the house and the homeowner’s tastes? These are the kinds of difficult decisions that owners of Valley homes face constantly.

Staying within the present structure of the house allows several possibilities for altering the layout to make the cottage more spacious. One could:

Enlarge the living room by enclosing the front porch with a screen of windows while simultaneously breaking open the exterior living-room wall. This would almost double the size of the house’s main communal space. The porch already has a roof and a floor; all it needs, apart from the enclosing wall of windows, is a new ceiling and oak strips laid on the present cement surface, to match the living-room floor level. To replace the porch, a new redwood deck could be built to create a front entry.

Further enhance the spaciousness of the living room by opening up a series of sliding glass doors or French windows in the west wall away from the dining area, connected to a side terrace leading directly into the ample garden.

Create a usable third bedroom in the attic by constructing a wide dormer window in the roof. Though the present attic ceiling level may be too low to meet the city Building and Safety Department’s bylaw standards for habitable rooms, one might be able to apply for a code variance allowing the use of the attic as a bedroom if the dormer runs the width of the space and is placed at the peak of the ceiling.

More minor layout changes might be:

Cut a hatch from the dining area to the kitchen, to make it easier to pass dishes through.

Expand the size and flexibility of the bathroom by turning the back bedroom’s present walk-in cupboard into a separate washroom that would include a toilet and a sink. This half-bathroom could be made to be entered from the bedroom and could include a shower stall.

Replan the layout of the kitchen so that work surfaces would become more convenient and the room less tiring to move around in.

Design styles are a more subjective choice than changes of layout. The options, though, are limited by the character of the cottage and the nature of its proportions.

Room proportions are measured by comparing the dimensions of length, width and height. The living room of the cottage, for instance, has a ceiling that is low for its length, which makes it seem rather cramped. The aim here might be to make the ceiling seem higher by painting it a much lighter color than the walls. As a rule, light colors recede while dark tones seem to come closer.

As the cottage windows are rather small, the homeowner should consider using light colors as much as possible, especially in the bedrooms. Short of actually widening the windows--a choice that the cramped budget might not allow--this is the best way to increase the seeming spaciousness of the house.

The general decorative style of the renovated cottage could be plain or fancy, depending on taste. The homeowner might choose a modern urban style of white walls and sparse furnishings, or floral wallpaper and drapes in a country style. The former would make the cottage seem roomier; the latter might be preferred for its homey qualities.

In a cottage as small as this, the thing to avoid is making the surfaces appear too busy. Bearing in mind that three active people will be living here, they will need some neutral areas where the eye and the soul can rest.

Externally, the renovated cottage could be painted a crisp white, to make it seem more like a New England home. Alternately, a really dedicated homeowner could strip the generations of paint layers off the clapboarding and stain the wood to bring out the natural grain.

Finally, the look of the house could be vastly improved by skillful yet simple landscaping. To integrate the house with the grounds, flower beds and shrubs are needed, and perhaps wooden lattice screens dividing the lot into separate spaces for separate activities. The driveway leading to the garage at the back of the house should be demarcated with gravel or loose paving.

Setting Priorities

All this may seem a lot to achieve for $30,000, even with the homeowners’ do-it-yourself participation. It is useful, therefore, to establish an order of priorities among the things you might like to do to the cottage, considering the limits of your budget.

If the intention is to sell the renovated house, the homeowner should look for the features that most attract prospective buyers. These include a spacious master bedroom, preferably with its own bathroom, a modern kitchen and bathroom, and a decent-sized living room.

Finally, when the homeowner does put the splendidly renovated house on the market, he or she should figure in labor when calculating any profit. Fixing up a house is not an unalloyed joy, and the expenditure of personal sweat and aggravation can be considerable, especially if one is living there during the renovation.