Happy to Be Home--at Last : Home Nearly Repaired, the Doyles Leave Motel They’ve Lived in Since October

After five months in a motel, the Doyle family returned home last Sunday, still weary from the effects of the June 28 earthquake but happy to be back in their turn-of-the-century house, which is still undergoing repairs.

Inside the two-story house on Baldwin Avenue, stacks of bulging storage boxes

engulfed the kitchen, where cracks still mar the walls and ceiling.

But in the living and dining rooms, the jagged, earthquake-caused fissures have vanished. The ceiling, walls and woodwork were freshly painted. The floor was refinished and the fireplace rebuilt. The grand piano was back in its rightful place. Japanese prints rested on the mantel. In the master bedroom, new French doors opened to a tiny, new redwood porch.

And upstairs, the three Doyle children had a new bathroom and the two boys each had a room of his own--all thanks to $63,000 in earthquake repairs and renovation that had taken far longer than anyone dreamed.

“It’s such a relief to be back home,” Sharon Doyle, a 43-year-old television scriptwriter, said Monday, the day after the family checked out of the Arcadia Residence Inn where the five Doyles had stayed from Oct. 15 through March 8.

Even though their lives are returning to normal, she said, “we’re going to be

processing the earthquake for at least a year. If someone had said to me, ‘You’re going to be out of your house for five months,’ I would have said, ‘How could that be?’ ”

In the last eight weeks, the delays became agonizing. “We’re losing everything and everybody is sick,” Sharon said one frustrating day in January. “We’ve been hearing every two weeks since December 15 that we were going to move.”

Her husband Bart, a 42-year-old attorney, said: “All the stories are true. It takes twice as long and (costs) a lot more money than you ever plan on.”

For seven weeks after Christmas, what Sharon calls the “SBA ballet” occurred with a $32,000 check from the Doyles’ insurance company. To be cashed, the check had to be delivered to five signatories, including banks and the Small Business Administration, which had lent the Doyles more than $19,000 to cover their earthquake insurance deductible.

But the SBA, which had been cooperative in arranging a loan, was horrible about helping the Doyles cash the insurance check, Bart said.

“It was a constant headache,” he said. “Phone calls every day, faxing letters. . . .”

In another fiasco, days before the Doyles had been scheduled to return last month, the upstairs carpeting--removed while repairs were under way--fell apart when workers attempted to put it back down. At first, it looked as if the Doyles would have to pay for new carpet.

Then Bart made what he refers to as the “$1,300 phone call.” He persuaded the insurance company to replace the old carpeting.

Then came another delay. The carpet Sharon picked had to be sent from Georgia. Furthermore, the walls already had been painted to match the old green carpet. Thus, a color-clash problem arose.

Then there was another painting debacle. The cranberry color Sharon had picked for the cupboard walls clashed noticeably with the rose color that an independent-minded painter chose to use on the woodwork--rather than the off-white that Sharon had selected.

One of the longest delays, Bart said, came last fall when the city of Sierra Madre took more than a month to grant building permits.

Postponements from subcontractors dragged out the repairs too, Bart said. There were subcontractors for painting, masonry, tile, wallboard, floors, wiring, demolition and asbestos removal.

“It’s all a very mysterious process,” Bart said. “The subcontractors come and the subcontractors go. They may or may not return each day.”

Though singing the praises of their general contractor, Roger Rusler of May and Midkill Construction Corp. in Pomona, Sharon said: “I learned not to believe the contractor. It’s not that he is lying (about when he will finish.) But something will come up.”

Although the Doyles have come home, there are more repairs and cleanup to be done. The exterior painting is not yet complete. Paint cans still clutter the front porch.

Because the Doyles decided to have improvements made in some parts of the house--and paid for it with insurance credits for kitchen repair--work still has to be done in the kitchen.

But buoyed by Bart’s taking a new job next month with a downtown Los Angeles law firm and the good prospects for a script Sharon has written, the Doyles are optimistic they will get the kitchen repaired and remodeled.

However, precisely how they will pay for it all and when it will happen is not clear. And, as Bart left for a five-day business trip to Washington, he said that at this point he wasn’t even sure how much had been spent.

The gray, wooden house has undergone noticeable improvement as a result of the repairs.

One unexpected improvement was the electrical wiring. The Doyles’ home insurance company, after inspecting the house, had said it was canceling the policy because of poor wiring. So the Doyles paid to have the house rewired and the insurance was not dropped after all.

“It’s not the same house anymore,” Sharon said, suggesting that some of the changes are both good and bad because some of the character left when wallboard replaced plaster.

Still, Bart said: “There is real water pressure in the upstairs bathroom. The whole place doesn’t rattle. The windows actually go up and down. The heater works a lot better. There are light fixtures in every room.”

But the Doyles say they paid an emotional, as well financial, price for all this. The experience of two adults, two boys and a girl living at the Residence Inn, essentially in one big open space for a long time, had a negative effect, Sharon said.

Bart said, “Did I learn anything of transcendental importance? It’s a bad idea to have two televisions in the same living space.”

The children, Sharon said, watched television excessively. Much to the chagrin of Andrew, 11, Nick, 8, and Felicity, 5, Sharon has decreed that back on Baldwin Avenue there will be no television watching for two months.

Bart seemed to have suffered the most in the confines of the Residence Inn. Sharon said, “There was a lot going on in a small space. He would suddenly just walk out. I stopped taking it personally after about the 100th time.”

And Trotsky, the golden retriever, left the Residence Inn permanently, not long after Christmas. Trotsky was banished to the Doyles’ back yard after he knocked a 78-year-old man onto the pavement. The man, who received cuts and bruises, had done something that anyone who knows Trotsky does not casually do. He called, “Here, boy!”

The Doyles have had to make a few adjustments and endured a few traumas as they returned home.

Before the earthquake, Andrew and Nick lived in a huge upstairs bedroom. As part of the renovation, the room was split into two smaller ones.

Nick, the younger boy, won the coin toss used to determine who would get which room. For several days, there was considerable tension because Nick selected the larger room.

But on Sunday, when Andrew walked into his room, painted the jet-stream blue color he had selected and with a seaweed green carpeting, he shouted a gleeful: “Yes,” closed the door behind him and turned the radio up loud.

And that first night at home in her own bed, Sharon said she “slept better . . . than any night” in a very long time.

The other day, as Bart drove around Sierra Madre and passed a vacant lot where a house had been condemned and later was demolished, he said he felt his family was fortunate to have had no worse damage to their home and to have earthquake insurance to pay for most of it.

He turned onto his street and saw the Episcopal church steeple on the ground, as part of earthquake repairs there. Speaking for more than for just himself and his family, he said: “All is not back to normal . . . yet.”