Petaluma couple turns former hoarder house into stunning vintage Victorian

When Madeline Backman first walked into the old Victorian house in Petaluma, she was overcome by the same feeling she had when she first met her husband, Daniel. Some would call it love at first sight, or a sixth sense that this was The One.

“It just felt like this is where we were supposed to be. This is our house,” she said about the 1600-square-foot house on B Street, a mysterious diamond in the rough almost completely hidden behind overgrowth. “It felt immediately perfect even though it wasn’t at all perfect.”

Imperfect would be putting it delicately.

The house was crammed with furniture and other stuff, only a tiny fraction of what had been in the house before it went on the market, the seller’s agent told them. The previous owner was a hoarder and had 13 cats that had left calling cards everywhere.

But the Backmans, maybe two months away from their wedding, were blind to the flaws.

“We saw high ceilings. And we saw an awesome, huge kitchen and three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and it was like, ‘This is it,’” Daniel said.

When the Backmans set out to find their first nest, they knew several things for sure. They wanted it to be in Petaluma. They wanted it to be old. They wanted it to be on the west side, within walking distance of downtown. And they wanted it to have three bedrooms, two baths and a light and open feeling.

It took imagination, will and more than 18 months of hard work and discomfort to turn their new house into the comfortable family home it is today. And while the restoration was underway, son Levi, now 1, was born.

Although the house, built in 1895 on the desirable west side, had been priced to sell at $500,000, a bidding war fueled by investors looking to clean it up and flip it bumped it up to $601,000. But the owner, who had lived there for 26 years, took a liking to the Backmans, who promised to love, honor and cherish her house. They even wrote a clause into their contract promising not to disturb a large black spider that had taken up residence in the kitchen and that the owner had implored the new occupant to care for in a note they found.

They established a rapport with the owner from the first day, stopping by to meet with her personally.

“She knew the flippers would be after the place. She liked the idea of knowing the people and knowing that what she added would be preserved,” Daniel said.

They also bonded with the owner over their mutual attraction to all things tropical. The large kitchen in the back of the house had tropical details, like a tin ceiling with a palm front design that Madeline loved.

They wound up having to replace the ceiling with something similar, but kept and added to the marble counters and papered the walls with a reproduction of the hip-again bold green banana leaf “Martinique” wallpaper designed by Don Loper for The Beverly Hills Hotel in 1942.

The Blackmans moved in to chaos less than two weeks before their wedding in October 2013.

“We knew it would be competitive,” said Daniel, an architect who recently joined TLCD Architecture in Santa Rosa. “But it was also funny to watch other young people like us walk in and then walk out in less than five minutes thinking, ‘No way.’ It was not for everybody.”

If it weren’t for the miracle of the heater they never could have qualified for a loan.

“The listing ad said it had a new heater. But it was a rooftop commercial unit that wasn’t meant to sit on dirt underneath the house,” Daniel said. The heater had never been hooked up or used. So they got their contractor to rig it up just to meet the bank requirements and close escrow.

“Miraculously it worked one day,” Daniel said, “and then never worked again. It was harrowing trying to work through stuff just to get a loan.”

Once the house was theirs, they put in a whole new heating system, shivering with space heaters through the notorious cold snap of December 2013.

Even after they moved in, they were smacked with the reality of how much had to be done. The previous owner had been using the lower part of the house to store furniture, and she had regular estate sales, but the house was so full she was living in the attic. Daniel spent his first day clearing that out.

“And I spent my first day crying in the back closet while I cleaned cat pee off the floor,” Madeline said, now able to laugh at the memory.

Since the house had no functioning toilet, remodeling a bathroom was the first order of business.

“It was the first thing we did, so everything was top of the line. It felt so funny,” Daniel said .

Madeline added, “We were walking into that bathroom on cardboard because the floors were all disgusting.”

The couple’s transformative efforts earned them a recent honorable mention during the bi-annual Heritage Homes of Petaluma awards, which singles out property owners and projects that preserve the city’s architectural heritage.

Despite its appearance, the house had a distinguished pedigree. It was designed by Brainerd Jones, an architect responsible for many of the grand homes in the early part of the last century. The Backman house is one of his earliest efforts and is in the Folk Victorian style.

Unlike the high-style Victorians such as Queen Annes and Second Empire, the Folk Victorian was designed for the masses, a simple house with a little trimming grafted on.

Both the Backmans love mid-century modern furnishings and outfitted their house in 1960s style. But architecturally, they find mid-century homes rather plain. They are drawn to the detailing of older homes. Both grew up in Victorians - Daniel, 34, in Massachusetts, and Madeline, 32, in Ukiah, where her parents once owned the Sanford House Bed and Breakfast.

They were determined with the B Street house to maintain its architectural integrity.

“The remarkable thing is we kept all the original floors, trims, windows and doors. Nothing has been replaced but everything had to be redone and we were committed to that,” Daniel said. One of his favorite features is the built-in butler’s cabinet between the kitchen and dining room where Daniel keeps his cocktail-making equipment.

But because the roof had leaked for years and heavy items hung from them, all of the walls were cracked and in need of repair or replastering onto the original lathe. The electrical wiring was funky, much of it old knob and tube with some scary do-it-yourself additions.

“There was a socket behind the bed where clearly there had been a fire,” Daniel said. “I had constant anxiety it would spontaneously combust during the night.”

As work progressed under the direction of builder Manny Cervantes and Structural Engineer Eric Spletzer, the beauty of the old house began to emerge and shine. A previous owner had removed the wall between the front parlor and dining room, creating one large open room with 10-foot ceilings and a picture window looking out onto the street, giving it a brighter and more spacious feeling than many Victorians. But the room had been so full of furniture you couldn’t even see it its charms.

The Backmans did most of their work within the existing footprint and walls, although they did add a wall in the kitchen to create a laundry room.

On the outside, the front porch and back deck had to be replaced. For years, water had drained from the street down a ramp to a garage carved beneath the house, leading to water and termite damage. That was repaired and the garage walled off and turned back into storage.

“Our contractor said it was being held together by termites holding hands,” Daniel said, laughing.

The Backmans scraped together every penny they could get, with help from his parents, wedding money and every spare dollar earned for two years. They also were thrifty, buying many supplies on Amazon, including tile and marble, and fixtures off eBay, including a prized antique pineapple chandelier for the entryway.

The last piece was the yard. They cut down huge and messy eucalyptus, hauled out trash and removed overgrowth up to 20 feet high. They also planted succulents and citrus and added raised beds for vegetable gardening.

No part of the job was easy, they said. One cement patio had been built onto another, requiring them to remove 35 tons of cement.

Madeline left a job as a corporate brander and was home to oversee much of the work, which both believe really helped move the project along. She could make quick change decisions and even helped out with sanding, painting and other small, easy tasks.

Now comfortably nested in their new old house, outfitted in mid-century furnishings that include a record player for spinning platters, they have no regrets but acknowledge they learned a lot. Madeline even grew so fond of old houses that she became a real estate agent, drawing upon her own experience to help other home buyers figure out if and how to rehabilitate one.

“My favorite show as a kid was Bob Vila and ‘This Old House,’” Madeline said. “Since I was a 5-year-old, I would watch that, so this is my dream come true to be able to experience it. Now if we do ever move and get a bigger house, we’ll have a much better idea of what we’re doing.”

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