Updating of 1929 French Tudor Only Builds on Its Charm
Thirty years ago, when David and Carolyn Kipp were newly married, they liked to drive around, look at old homes and dream about someday buying one, fixing it up and living happily ever after.
One house in Claremont--a 1929 Tudor accented with French windows and steeply pitched roofs and surrounded by acres of lemon groves--caught the couple’s imagination.
“Someday,” said David, a toolmaker, “we’ll live in a house like that.”
In 1996, that day came.
Bolstered with three decades of personal and business success--raising a son and a daughter and creating a $27-million, 200-employee manufacturing company--the couple decided to find the home of their dreams. Recalling the Claremont Tudor, which they had passed by once or twice in the ensuing 30 years, they set out to find it.
By then, the lemon groves had been replaced with upscale homes set on several acres each; the Tudor was in decline, having sat vacant for several years. But a sweet sight greeted the Kipps: a “For Sale” sign in the front yard.
They looked at each other and said: “It’s fate.”
After escrow closed, the Kipps searched about for a remodeling contractor. Their goals were to retain the Tudor’s sense of history and charm while elevating its quality (i.e. replacing original hollow-core doors with custom-made solid oak doors) to a level it had never known.
Plus, and perhaps this was the main point, David longed to build a large workshop-garage to enjoy more tinkering time, which the demands of his company had gradually taken away.
“I want to work with my hands again,” said David, whose projects tend toward street rods and Craftsman furniture. “I have to have a shop so I can make things.”
In talks with acquaintances and building professionals, one design-build firm came up again and again: Hartman Baldwin in Claremont.
“They’re the best,” Carolyn and David were told, with always the same caveat : “But they’re the most expensive.”
Saving money, however, wasn’t David’s biggest concern. Indeed, the yearlong renovation in 1996 and 1997 ended up costing the Kipps $900,000, a price they don’t begrudge.
Ending up with an impeccable remodel to satisfy David’s “Type A” personality was a major issue. After asking Hartman Baldwin to look over the house and sketch some ideas, David hired the firm with this agreement: You give me a superb renovation, and I’ll write big checks without complaint.
“He wanted someone else to be responsible,” recalled Maureen Cunningham, the project manager who worked on the design with Devon Hartman, the firm’s co-owner. “David didn’t want to have a lot of headaches. That was a big deal to him.”
In the beginning, the biggest question was the positioning of David’s workshop-garage.
At first, he imagined that it would be set apart from the two-story house. But the design team came up with an idea to give the workshop a complete Tudor treatment--rock facings, timber trim, steeply pitched roof lines--and attach it to the house in such a way that satisfied another of the couple’s desires: to make it look like one big, balanced home.
Once the design was agreed upon, building was begun by construction supervisor Jim Johnson and overseen by Bill Baldwin, the firm’s other co-owner.
“There was no finger pointing,” David said, explaining that contracting one reputable company to accomplish both the design and the construction brings harmony, eliminating the customary friction between architect and builder.
The renovation begins at the street, where a low rock wall, made of locally quarried stone, matches others along the road. During heavy construction, the mortarless wall eventually crumbled into rock piles. When the project was finished, the rocks were simply restacked by stonemasons--without mortar, to maintain the wall’s original form. That attitude permeated the project: Keep the original details intact whenever possible.
The circular driveway, a massive arch of green concrete, did not, however, exude any charm.
“It looked ugly as heck,” said David, who imagined a cobblestone driveway in its place. That idea was nixed when the stonemason, Daven Gray, pointed out that cobblestone would compete with the home’s stone facade.
In the end, the concrete was taken out, broken up into irregular slabs and reinstalled with grout to present a subtle, flagstone-like appearance. And, David said, “It didn’t go to the landfill.”
On the front of the house, the designers and builders changed little, retaining the rock facade, roof lines and metal French windows. While the windows can’t compete in efficiency with the dual-glazed windows of today, their value comes from their age.
“You can’t buy windows like that anymore,” David said, explaining that layers of paint had to be removed from the window latches to make them once again functional.
Inside the front door, the original living room and library are to the left, the kitchen and family room to the right, and beyond is a wide, windowed hall leading to the workshop. Straight ahead from the entry is the stairway to the second floor and bedrooms.
Carolyn knew exactly what she wanted in her dream home, which she classifies as “a little bit of French country, a little bit of English country.”
For inspiration, she had read hundreds of magazines over the years. Favorites include Renovation Style and Traditional Home. To show the builders what she wanted, she simply handed over her favorite glossy images. Original features include the home’s random-width oak flooring and the stairway with its metal railings. Added features, besides the workshop, include a new family room that opens to the revamped kitchen.
Actually, the kitchen in the house the Kipps bought was perfectly good, with masses of white cabinets and white tile counters. “But it just wasn’t us,” David said.
The new cabinets were designed by Maureen Cunningham to look like separate pieces of furniture, as kitchen cabinets did 100 years ago. To give the pieces a more aged look, they were beaten, chiseled and distressed, which took one company 80 hours to accomplish.
In the family room, distressed beams installed in the ceiling help the new room match the original part of the home. A perfect melding of Old World style with modern technology is embodied in a large wooden armoire built by Craig Johnson of Bausman & Co. in Ontario.
Looking like a century-old piece, it conceals the television, VCR, laser movie player, stereo tuner, cassette deck, speakers and other entertainment equipment. And most impressive to David, all equipment is controlled by one remote clicker.
In the end, perhaps the most striking view of the home is from the backyard, which was previously covered with concrete (now recycled as pool decking).
Several hundred feet behind the house, the edge of the property is rimmed with new rock walls where Carolyn and gardeners have tucked hundreds of tufted grasses, mosses and flowering plants. Across a sweeping lawn, the house has evolved gracefully from a modest-size Tudor cottage to a near-mansion, with the workshop to the left and living areas to the right.
Thanks to the stonemason’s skill, the new rock walls and stone facings on the home identically match the old. “This is old, this is new,” David explained, running his hand across a wall.
Although the massive remodel wasn’t without conflict--David Kipp and Bill Baldwin often butted heads--the final outcome is overwhelmingly positive.
“We got what we wanted. It’s everything we hoped for and more,” David said. “We’re already talking about Phase 2. I think we have a passion for it.”
Kathy Price-Robinson has written about remodeling for nine years. Her e-mail address is kathyprice@aol.com.
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The Project
Objective: Remodel 1929 Tudor, and add large workshop
Architect/Builders: Hartman Baldwin, Claremont, (909) 621-6296
Project Manager: Maureen Cunningham
Stonemason: Daven Gray Rockwork, Claremont, (909) 981-6048
Cost: $900,000
Duration of job: one year
