DIY personal touch evident in Petaluma Heritage Home

It’s never easy for a young couple to land their first home in the California housing market. Even back in 2010, when prices had plummeted in the wake of a global economic collapse, Caroline Hall and Brad Villegiante found themselves bidding against people with a lot more money than two 20-somethings not long out of college.

But the couple lucked into a foreclosure - a 1920s cottage in Petaluma - after the top bidder fell through. The two-bedroom, one-bath house across from Petaluma High School wasn’t much to look at. And the bitter former owner managed to strip all the doors and hardware in one last act of revenge.

A small, farmhouse-style home from the late 1920s, it was, said Hall, showing signs of long-term neglect - “shoddy patchwork fixes,” a succession of tenants, deferred maintenance and then foreclosure.

But at $365,000, it was something they could afford. And structurally, it was sound. The cast-iron plumbing was in good shape, and the foundation had been rebuilt in 1989.

“It just has good, strong bones,” Villegiante said. “Even when we bought the place, our house inspector said it was all old-growth redwood. No termites ever. This place was built really well.”

What it needed was a cosmetic makeover. So the couple started saving their money and making plans. Five years later, the weathered old house with no doors is showing true curb appeal.

In September, the preservation organization Heritage Homes of Petaluma awarded the couple and their modest, 950-square-foot house, at 416 English St., with an Award of Great Merit for their efforts to bring it back to life.

When the organization was founded in the 1960s, it was all about rescuing the aging Victorians, built with grandeur for the city’s 19th-century power elite, and most of them have been lovingly remodeled and priced to reflect their stature.

“Ten to 15 years ago, people began to reevaluate the charms of Craftsman homes,” said Kit Schlich, a spokeswoman for Heritage Homes.

“Now we’re moving into the 1920s. Buildings from that decade were still well-made with individual craftsmanship.”

The Villegiante/Hall house is at the far end of English Street and was built on land that at one time held the stables for a horse-racing track for the old fairgrounds.

According to Villegiante, county records say it was built in 1932, but he found evidence in city directories that a house was on the property in the late 1920s.

Schlich said the restoration of these cute, working-class homes is something Heritage Homes wants to encourage and honor, both for affordable housing and to preserve the charm of the old west side.

“Petaluma has many neighborhoods of modest, early-20th-century homes that have this one-of-a-kind vintage charm. Because they aren’t as opulent as Victorians, prior owners and landlords often neglected them. Many of these properties are affordable for young couples but need restoration of varying degrees,” Schlich said.

“A few of the buildings that were recognized this year were in such dire straights,” she added, “that they were sold for their lots only, assuming the buildings would be razed. That sort of redevelopment can disrupt the fabric of neighborhoods.”

The young couple did a lot of the interior cosmetic work themselves, like painting.

One of the first things Villegiante had to deal with was the lack of doors. The former owner had left just one. So Villegiante measured all the door openings and then went to Ray’s Trading Station, a salvage store in Sebastopol, and picked out doors that looked just like it.

“Actually, they had all the sizes I needed,” he said. “But literally two days later, I came home from work and all the original doors were sitting on the front porch.”

Villegiante surmises that the former owner might have driven by, seen him working on the house late into the night and felt a moment of remorse.

Hall and Villegiante did not make any changes to the footprint of the original 1,200-square-foot house. But what transformed it was taking off all the old rotting siding that was starting to fall off.

As their contractor told them, it was being held on by “paint and good intentions.”

“We decided to use individually milled pieces of redwood, which would then be nailed up one at a time, as they would have done when the home was originally built,” said Hall, who manages the advertising photography for Cost Plus World Market.

“You can see all the nail heads, which was an important historical detail to us.”

They also replaced the garage door with a handmade barn-style garage door, installed a front door to match, painted the entire house a bold green with white trim and stained the doors to look like weathered gray wood.

All of the old aluminum windows installed in the 1960s were replaced with triple-pane fiberglass windows that are wood clad on the inside to evoke the period.

The show-stopper, however, is a large mural done in the style of an old fruit box label with Petaluma farm images like a cow and chicken. Hall and Villegiante’s stepmother painted it onto the side of the garage.

“It really is the crown jewel of our house,” said Hall, “and the biggest statement we’ve made about our love of this community.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204. On Twitter @megmcconahey.