DO-IT-YOURSELF : House Renovation Slows While Couple Make Personal Repairs

By now the exterior painting was suppose to be done and the landscaping well underway.

But life would be boring if everything hewed to an unwavering schedule.

And boring it isn’t at the Duggan House, an 86-year-old Colonial Revival residence built by an early Santa Ana businessman and now being restored by new owners after years of neglect.

The owners, Jeff and Rolinda Biscotti, have agreed to let The Times document their efforts as they attempt to complete the first stage of a major renovation of the 3,000-square-foot house in time for the annual Historic French Park home tour in April.

The task they’ve undertaken--and the commitment to share a year of their lives with Times readers--are decisions, the Biscottis say, that sometimes make them question their sanity.

During the past three months, work at the Biscottis’ home has slowed to a relative crawl as the drive to complete a long list of renovating chores has taken a back seat to personal upheavals.

In the spring, as one thing after another went awry while Jeff was roughing in the new upstairs bathroom, the Biscottis discovered the so-called mushroom factor--a rule of old house-refurbishing which holds that the smallest job, once started, will mushroom as it reveals other, more complicated repairs that must be done before the primary task can be completed.

During the summer they discovered that the mushroom factor doesn’t limit itself to household chores.

On June 15, a week after The Times last story on the couple’s progress was published and on his daughter’s third birthday, Jeff Biscotti was laid off by the computer components company that employed him as a printed circuit board designer.

That night, while playing softball with his city recreation league team, Biscotti injured his leg and was benched.

He and Rolinda spent the next day, their eighth wedding anniversary, in the emergency room at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, where doctors discovered that the leg was fractured and would require surgery to repair.

On June 18, an orthopedic surgeon used a steel plate and several large screws to rejoin the shattered bones of Jeff’s lower left leg--and plans to paint the house and finish the bulk of the downstairs interior restoration were laid aside for six weeks.

To help make ends meet while Jeff was on disability and unable to look for work, Rolinda--an office manager--took on a part-time job doing accounting and record-keeping after hours and on weekends for a friend’s small company.

Then, in August, she discovered she was pregnant with the couple’s second child. The news wasn’t unwelcome, but the timing could have been a bit better, the Biscottis say.

Rolinda’s pregnancy has affected the Biscottis’ plans in several ways, focusing Jeff’s attention on finding a new job and altering the couple’s timetable for refinishing the upstairs bedrooms.

“We were going to do all of the upstairs last,” Rolinda said. “But now we are going to finish the back bedroom for the new baby” due in late April.

Since Aug. 1, when his doctors let him get back on his feet, Jeff has been squeezing bursts of refurbishing work in between forays into Orange County’s diminishing computer industry job market.

He has finished the new upstairs bathroom--a room built from scratch in a space carved out of two bedrooms.

That job involved tiling the shower and half-tiling the bathroom walls in a white and rose color scheme, putting in seamless vinyl floor covering and installing the sink into an old oak dresser the Biscottis refinished and converted to a vanity.

Jeff’s mending made the work go slower than planned and forced him to hire help on one occasion--when it was time to lug the bathtub up to the new bathroom.

The tub--no pantywaist modern Fiberglas job--is a 300-pound, cast-iron, claw-footed behemoth that Jeff and Rolinda bought at a garage sale last year and refinished themselves.

It took four men to lug it up the stairs and set it in place in the bathroom, where Jeff connected it to the drain and attached a reproduction brass faucet set.

He also installed a brightly enameled cast-iron grille from an old electric heater--another garage sale trophy--in the tiled back wall of the bathroom. It isn’t hooked up--heat comes from a modern forced-air system--but it complements the period look of the room.

After finishing the bathroom, Jeff moved downstairs and into the kitchen, where he has completed installing tile for the countertop back-splashes and has finished painting the custom-built kitchen cabinets.

When they laid out their plans for The Times nearly eight months ago, the Biscottis’ timetable had all but the finishing work downstairs completed, the house painted and the front yard landscaped by this time.

But the couple is undaunted by the setbacks that have delayed progress.

By the time people start lining up for the French Park tour in six months, Rolinda said, the exterior will be painted and all the refinished trim and moldings for the parlor, living room and dining room that have been collecting dust in the garage since early spring will be installed. The landscaping, at least in the front, might just be done as well.

The oak floors might not be refinished and the fireplace certainly won’t be rebuilt by then--and three of the four upstairs bedrooms will still be raw--including the one with the turret that cants at an alarming angle away from the house proper and needs to be shored up and re-leveled.

But the still-threadbare back bedroom will have been scrubbed and sanded and painted and papered and made ready for the new baby.

And if, for some new reason, some of those things they want to accomplish don’t get done?

Well, that will be all right, too, the Biscottis say.

After all, with nine months and nearly $80,000 invested in their labor of love, they know full well that whatever doesn’t get done today will still be there tomorrow.