Nailing Down Priorities : When Renovations on Their Historic Home Went Awry, the Biscottis Built a Stronger Family Instead
There comes a time in the life of every major remodeling project when one thing becomes abundantly clear: It is not going to get done on time.
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For Jeff and Rolinda Biscotti, the moment of truth arrived during the summer--when Jeff lost his job as a printed circuit board designer and then broke his ankle and Rolinda’s doctor announced that the couple would be having a second child sooner than they had planned.
With their home a featured stop on the Historic French Park Assn.’s neighborhood home tour next weekend, the Biscottis had planned to have the exterior painted, some landscaping in and the major downstairs rooms finished--a task that would have involved refinishing and installing all the window, door, baseboard and picture molding for three large rooms.
And while the deadlines have long passed for those and other chores on the couple’s list of things to do in the ongoing restoration, they did bring one project in on time--a week early, in fact.
Elizabeth Rose Biscotti was born March 17 at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange.
It was a little more than a year ago that the Biscottis agreed to let The Times document their efforts to renovate the 87-year-old Colonial Revival house they’d purchased in Santa Ana’s French Park neighborhood.
The story of their restoration project and of the personal changes and challenges the Biscottis have handled with a remarkable equanimity has been laid out in three previous articles. This is the final installment in the yearlong tale of the Biscottis and their work in progress.
Just three days after her birth, little Elizabeth was sleeping quietly in her mother’s arms in the Biscottis’ formal parlor, lulled by the gentle tap-tap-tapping of a hammer pounding nails in what soon will be the upstairs family room. Her big sister, Victoria, who will be 4 in June, sat nearby, wrapping her baby--a rag doll named Ashley--in a small flannel blanket.
Baby, broken ankle and joblessness aside, the Biscottis say their home will be ready--although in a bit different state of repair than originally planned--for the Historic French Park Assn.’s biennial home tour. “Our projects changed when Ro got pregnant,” Jeff said. “We decided that we were going to focus on our needs, not on the goals we’d set for the tour.”
That means that instead of finishing the downstairs rooms, the Biscottis put their efforts into turning the back bedroom into a nursery.
They completed the new upstairs bathroom and the cabinets in the kitchen that they’d added when they bought the house, and they have all but completed transformation of what was to have been Jeff and Rolinda’s bedroom into an upstairs family room.
There are times, and they have been coming more frequently, Rolinda said, “that I look at this house and I resent it.”
The lack of progress is frustrating, Jeff acknowledges.
“The house is a huge burden, and with so many unexpected things interrupting (the renovation), we get this sense of unaccomplishment. When we started this,” he said, “we had no kids and two very good incomes. Then ‘Torie was born and Ro had to cut back on her work and we had one kid and a lesser income. And now we have two kids and even less income, so sometimes there is resentment.
“But you learn to live with it. There’s a satisfaction in knowing that not everyone could do what we are doing.”
Discussing his hopes a year ago, Biscotti described the task he and Rolinda had set out to accomplish as “something incredibly special. . . . The craftsmanship, the special touches you find--like the 8-foot, 4-inch doors that you can’t replace unless you have them custom-made--just the fact that we basically were starting from scratch, which is something most home-buyers don’t get into. It makes the project ours.”
From the start, the task the couple took on was a daunting one.
Most people would have second thoughts about buying something as comparatively simple as a 15-year-old tract home that needed a moderate amount of the cash and the elbow grease real estate agents euphemistically call TLC.
The Biscottis, with no training in any of the home-building crafts, bought a 1905 structure that had been vacant for several years and had been an ill-treated boarding house for a decade or so before that.
But the Biscottis didn’t see a barren hulk that would take every ounce of their energy and every bit of their cash: They saw a home and a neighborhood and they determined that it was going to be theirs.
To win approval to acquire the house, which had been built by an early Santa Ana insurance executive, William Lee Duggan, the Biscottis had to submit an essay detailing why they wanted it and what they planned to do with it. Their proposal was read by a panel of city officials and representatives of the Historic French Park Assn. and judged against a dozen others.
The couple impressed the selection panel with their financing proposal--in all they have put more than $225,000 into the house, combining proceeds from the sale of their first home with a low-interest refurbishing loan from the city.
It took several years to persuade a bank to issue a conventional mortgage loan on the property, but when that happened last spring, the Biscottis were able to pay the city $75,000 for their lot on Lacy Street as well as repay the $50,000 refurbishing loan and the $50,000 that the Historic French Park Assn. spent to move the house from its original location at 222 S. Sycamore St.
But even more impressive, said architectural historian Diann Marsh, a member of the Historic French Park Assn. board, was the Biscottis’ appreciation for the architectural character of the house and their desire to preserve it.
“People ask why we live in an old house in the middle of Santa Ana,” Jeff Biscotti said in an interview 13 months ago. “It’s because this is a neighborhood. People know each other and are committed to preserving some of the history of the city. And there is a history here, and that’s something you don’t get in Irvine.”
History came home to the Biscottis in 1990 when a neighbor introduced them to Betty Hilligass, granddaughter of William and Clara Duggan.
Hilligass, who says she was “practically raised in that house,” has provided the Biscottis an invaluable reference tool--family pictures that show the interior and exterior of the house when it first was a home.
“They are determined to put it back as nearly original as they can,” said Hilligass, “and I think that what they have done so far is just wonderful.”
The 77-year-old Hilligass and her husband, Frank, live about two miles away in northwest Santa Ana, but visit the Biscottis frequently, she said, and consider the young family more than just the people who are fixing up grandpa’s house. “They’re friends,” she said.
“Betty has just been wonderful,” Rolinda said. “She’s told us stories about the place and helped us understand where things were.”
So far, in addition to adding a new kitchen and downstairs bathroom and laundry area, the Biscottis have installed all new wiring and plumbing and a central heating and air-conditioning system. Jeff removed every one of the more than two dozen large double-hung wooden windows and sent them home with his 76-year-old father, Angelo, who stripped and sanded each frame.
The Biscottis, with help from Rolinda’s parents and brothers, also have patched and papered the walls and painted the 10-foot coved ceilings in the downstairs public rooms--the formal dining room, living room and parlor where guests were entertained and where turn-of-the-century craftsmen lavished their attentions with the carved moldings and other fancy work that seldom made it upstairs to the family rooms.
One new item since The Times last visited the Biscottis is the trio of matched brass light fixtures hanging from ornate plaster medallions in the centers of the living and dining room and parlor ceilings.
The gleaming fixtures, each with five flame-shaped light bulbs, “are original to the house,” Rolinda said. “Someone called the (French Park) association after the house was moved here and said they had these fixtures in a box and would sell them for $500.
“They were with the house when we got it, and I remember looking inside and wondering why they paid that much. They were painted all a really awful avocado green!”
Jeff stripped most of the paint from the light fixtures during the fall and then took them to a local plating company, which finished the cleaning, polished them, and coated them with clear lacquer to keep them from tarnishing.
The Biscottis also have had pieces of wall-to-wall carpeting cut and bound to fit in each of the downstairs rooms as area rugs, “until the budget allows us to get something else,” Rolinda said.
Right after the home tour--perhaps even during it, if the loan comes through in time--the Biscottis also will start painting the outside, a chore that has been delayed by rain and financial constraints.
Jeff, who has been working fairly steadily as a contract circuit board designer since November--doing the same things he used to, but for less pay and no benefits--said he has given up on the idea of doing the painting himself.
It is something of a watermark in the Biscottis’ history with the Duggan house.
“When we started, I felt we could do it all,” he said. “But the more time you spend with your family, the less that gets done. It used to eat at me, but I’ve come to realize that there is satisfaction in just getting done, as well as in doing it myself.”
With the exception of two remaining upstairs bedrooms--one with a turret that needs to be structurally reinforced--the major work on the home is done.
Much of what remains is labor-intensive finish work--some to be done by Jeff and Rolinda and their families and friends, some by hired subcontractors.
The past year, the Biscottis said, has been one in which the house they sought to restore has, through frustration and accomplishment, made them stronger as individuals and as a family.
And although they did not achieve every goal they set for themselves a year ago, the Biscottis are pleased with the progress they have made.
After all, Jeff said--echoing a comment he made three months ago--whatever isn’t done by the time the tour rolls around will still be there, waiting to be done, once it’s over.
“There will be another tour in two years,” he says. “Come back then and show your readers what it looks like.”
