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Work hits close to home when architects build their own
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Structural design professionals learn new lessons when they use their skills on their own homes |
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| Sacramento Business Journal - by Michael Shaw Staff writer
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Photo Credit : Dennis McCoy | Sacramento Business Journal
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After designing three homes himself — and more impressively, building them himself — architect Jeff Kennedy started on a 3,500-square-foot house in the Greenstone Country Community near Placerville. The house was in a grand European style that had round rooms, turrets and witch’s cap roofs.
He’d work full days at his job as a commercial architect, then put in long nights and weekends on the home. While his other homes were a strain, this one was a “killer,” he said. It took a full year just to build the frame and two years to complete, he said, the kind of effort that typically would put an end to such ambitions. Still, something drove Kennedy to try it again.
“By the fifth home I was getting older and tired,” said Kennedy, 58, who designs schools for Anova Architects Inc. in Placerville by day. He still went on to completely gut and remodel a sixth home before hanging up the hammer for good.
“I promised my wife I’d never do it again,” he said.
For some architects like Kennedy, work doesn’t end when they leave the office. Do-it-yourselfers with a professional license, they long to put their training to work on their own projects and find the practice both rewarding and taxing.
reclaiming the past
For Rudy Calpo, a principal with Calpo Hom and Dong Architects Inc., and his wife, Janice, an architectural historian with the California Department of Transportation, the decision to renovate their 100-year-old home in Curtis Park sprung partly from what they observed in the neighborhood.
“We see things happening like people tearing down houses and building new ones that would be more appropriate for Granite Bay,” he said. “People come to Curtis Park because they like the atmosphere, but they start changing things without realizing it.”
Calpo has worked largely on commercial projects, but he wanted to restore his home to a design more closely resembling the time period in which it was built to help retain its original character. The craftsman-style bungalow, which Calpo described as the opposite of the ornate Victorian-style homes that populate some areas of Sacramento, had been “modernized” at one point, compromising that character to some extent.
The project also helped bring Calpo and his wife together on a common goal. The couple got started by taking coffee together each morning to hash out ideas and designs. They removed lead paint, restored wood trim around the interior of the house, installed a stained-glass partition, created a wine closet out of a large walk-in closet, and created a courtyard, with an elaborate fountain and earthen oven, for entertaining (see photo, page 14).
They did much of the labor themselves off and on over several years and hope their work has urged others to think about restoring or maintaining the neighborhood’s aesthetic legacy.
“We love it,” Calpo said of the renovation work. “We do a lot of entertaining and have had as many as 100 people in the backyard.”
land park comes to the pocket
Architect David Onodera, a senior associate with Stantec Architecture Inc., typically works on commercial projects, including Stantec’s own office space in downtown Sacramento. But he wanted to live in a “salt box” style home typically found in Land Park, with garages that are detached rather than dominating the front elevation of the home, as has become typical with more modern homes.
At the time, in the mid 1990s, Onodera was just getting his start as a young professional, so the cost of a new home was a big factor. He and his wife decided to build on land in Sacramento’s Pocket area to save on expenses. He dusted off the drawing board and designed the home himself.
“It was a little bit overwhelming,” he said of the project. “I know some people are hesitant to do it or might feel concerned about how the home would be viewed by their peers. You could have 30 other designers questioning why you did something a certain way.”
Designers also have more than aesthetic values in mind when they decide to work on their own homes.
Paul Marcillac, a principal landscape architect with Stantec, saw several advances in water conservation becoming standard practice for commercial construction, so last year he decided the time was right to implement similar technology at his own home.
Marcillac, who lives in Roseville, has a homeowner association requirement to maintain a lawn. He decided to cut water usage through several improvements, including rotary spray nozzles that deliver water more efficiently than the typical spray heads, and a “smart” controller system that adjusts the amount of water according to the temperature, weather, plant needs and soil conditions.
“I looked at our water bill and by switching out that clock we save 30 to 50 percent,” Marcillac said.
Hands on
While architects who moonlight by working on their own homes aren’t a rare breed, few have taken the practice as far as Anova’s Kennedy.
He has supplied the bulk of the labor by building smaller one-man sections of walls and inviting friends over for a beer party when the job required more than one set of hands. On some projects, contractors were brought in only to pour the foundation. On others, he also brought in mechanical or electrical contractors.
He started smaller, with one-level ranch homes in Tucson where he studied architecture at the University of Arizona. Banks were initially wary to lend him the money and only an inside connection allowed him to get a construction loan — and even then he was always behind in the drawdown cycle. But the savings were incredible. He estimated he built his first home in the 1970s for about $10 a square foot.
He moved on to more elaborate designs, spending exhaustive hours. The dedication to build five homes from scratch eventually took a toll. It strained his first marriage; he could easily lose track of time, spending one night installing tile intending to quit around midnight but not realizing that he had worked past 3 a.m.; on the last project, his kids were forced to eat meals from a microwave for nine months while he built the kitchen.
“They used to love Hot Pockets — now they can’t even look at them,” he said.
But as difficult as they were, Kennedy believes these projects helped give him a much more profound sense of his craft.
“I am more of a technical type of architect,” Kennedy said. “It helps a lot to gain an understanding how things work.”
mshaw@bizjournals.com | 916-558-7861
© 2010 American City Business Journals, Inc. and its licensors |
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