Clearing Path in Remodel Jungle

Custom home-building and remodeling was a cinch in the pioneer days.

Let’s say you had finally settled on a site for that little creek-side log hut you’d always wanted, the one with the genuine dirt floor. A little quid pro quo with the neighbors did the trick: If they’d help you lash up the cabin, you’d show them how to make applejack.

And if, a few years later, you wanted to extend a wall and add on an indoor bin to hold firewood and snakes, you offered to brighten the local cavalry regiment’s day by letting them maneuver by the wall and lob a cannonball through it.

A kitchen remodel? Just lock a couple of fresh trout and loganberries in the cabinets and entice a big bear inside. A wider doorway? Same method, only this time you lock the door too.

Yep, life was a breeze before man invented the planning commission and the design review board and the property tax and insurance, not to mention specialized contractors for everything from rock gardens to whisper-flush toilets.

In this convenient age, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf would get dizzy trying to marshal and organize the forces needed for a major piece of custom home construction. Reducing southern Iraq to a smoking rubble pit is nothing compared to adding a second story to your Irvine tract home.

It may be a custom home jungle out there, but today and Sunday a group of Newport Beach home design pros are going to do their best to help you cut a path through it. They’ve organized what they hope will be the first in an annual series of gatherings called Design Traditions Newport, a kind of one-stop shopping center for anyone interested in building a custom home or remodeling an existing one.

Held in the Newport Center Fashion Island courtyard between Atrium Court and the Broadway from 10 a.m. to dusk today and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, the free event will feature 26 exhibit booths and seminars every half hour on topics such as architectural styles, interior design, landscape design, security systems and how to deal with contractors.

And to help you untangle the governmental Gordian Knot, representatives from the Newport Beach planning, building and marine departments, and the Orange County Tax Assessor’s office will be available to answer questions.

“We’ve taken a jigsaw puzzle that’s called custom home building and remodeling, and we’ve taken the pieces apart and laid them out on one site where everyone can talk to each piece of the puzzle,” said Richard Lewis, a Costa Mesa-based architect and one of the four sponsors of the event along with Roger’s Gardens, Lusk Interiors and Kitchens del Mar.

We’re not hardy pioneers anymore, said Lewis. Today, it takes more than a quick whim and a double-bladed ax to put a new face on your dwelling.

“The common denominator I have found in custom home and major remodel clients,” he said, “is a certain amount of fear of the unknown. They’ve learned about problems that their friends and neighbors and relatives have had when they’ve done custom remodels on their houses.”

And then, he said, comes The Fear. Up pops a hydra-headed monster to attack them with bureaucracy, paperwork, chance, ignorance and, possibly, buyer’s remorse. Lewis, the prime mover of Design Traditions Newport ‘92, figured the homeowner could use a break.

“I finally said to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if there could be an event, a one-stop shop that could be made available to the homeowners in my town where they could all mingle in a nice atmosphere and learn everything they need to know from a broad cross-section of people and agencies?’ ”

The answer, apparently, was yes.

“Back in August,” he said, “we conducted a marketing survey in Newport Beach. We sent out 7,000 surveys to homes (asking if they’d be in favor of an event like Design Traditions Newport ‘92). We were told by our marketing consultant that if we had a 2% or greater return we ought to go for it. We had a bit more than 7% mailed back. So we’re expecting a lot of people to show up.”

The show is primarily aimed at the affluent--a custom home, after all, ain’t cheap--and Lewis said that there will be little of real interest or use to, say, the condo owner. But, he said, just about anyone who owns--or wants to own--a single-family detached house will be able to pick up several dozen ideas that will start the creative wanna-be gears whirling.

But no bears, no axes, no cannon, no applejack. Feel free to bring the neighbors and the cavalry, though.