Healdsburg house transformed with budget-friendly changes

Except for the brown wood shingles, the outside of Ben Dhong’s house doesn’t look much different from the others on his Healdsburg block, where homes are wedged tightly along a ribbon of sidewalk.

But inside, this plain vanilla 1980s tract home wears an unexpected glamour. As soon as you walk in the door, you forget you’re in a subdivision.

“It was just a box. An ordinary, boring box,” Dhong said of the three-bedroom house. It was built in 1981 with the prominent “garage door” architecture of the era.

Dhong is an interior designer who deftly blends traditional and contemporary elements for looks that withstand the vagaries of time and trends. With his own home, he pulled off this neat magic trick on a modest budget, making small changes with big visual dividends using paint, wood, wallpaper and mirrors.

Most of the furnishings are off-the-shelf finds from West Elm, Ikea, Cost Plus, and even Marshall’s and T.J. Maxx.

“Everyone can live in a beautiful home whether you’re rich or poor,” Dhong maintains.

Although his clients trend toward the privileged class, he is proud to say he’s not a “design snob” who insists on custom-everything.

“I’ve had some extremely wealthy clients who lived in big sterile cold homes. Tacky homes. And I’ve known local people who went to flea markets and have enchanting little cottages,” he said.

Dhong calls the house “Cloud Walk” because of its airiness and heavenly cream, linen, eggshell and gray color scheme.

“This house has an ethereal, dreamy quality to it. You float through it. There’s no dramatic shift from one room to the next.”

A giant Wade Hoefer painting of puffy clouds above a bare slip of landscape consumes a prominent wall in the dining room. A real ICBM missile mold Dhong found at a San Francisco antique store appears poised to blast off into the clouds like a space age rocket from the center of his dining room table.

Above the contemporary fireplace is a cloud panel that only looks expensive. Dhong made it himself by creating a pattern (borrowed by blowing up the cloud logo of Salesforce.com) and cutting it onto a piece of plywood he then covered with leftover wallpaper that had a dramatic cloud design.

The house was featured in the September 2015 edition of “House Beautiful” magazine and described as an “airy Napa House.”

But it’s definitely on the Sonoma side of the ridge and reflects the relaxed Sonoma vibe, with a hint of a rustic farmhouse minus any cutesiness.

People can see for themselves on May 1 when Dhong welcomes visitors as part of the Healdsburg Home Tour put on by the American Association of University Women.

Dhong lives and works much of the week out of a design studio not far from Chez Panisse in Berkeley. But he spends long weekends in Healdsburg, where he was close pals with the late Healdsburg designer Myra Hoefer. The pair shared a love for “the hunt” and often went out together in search of scores.

It was Hoefer who encouraged him to consider buying the 1,700-square-foot house in a development not far from Healdsburg District Hospital. Her friends were selling it and thought it might offer him a comfortable atelier and retreat in the Wine Country.

“I didn’t necessarily want to buy a house that’s in a development. But when I closed the gate - and it’s a very nice development and very quiet - I never heard or saw another person.

I’m thrilled,” he said of the results. “It just shows you don’t have to buy a big estate on West Dry Creek to live nicely. You don’t have to have the most expensive things. You just have to have a little creativity and put a little thought into it.

Dhong stresses that most of the furnishings and improvements he made would be within the budget of the average homeowner. The secret is the “smoke and mirrors” approach advocated by Hoefer, who was known for elegant interiors that mixed chic designer elements with French flea market finds.

Texture is important in good design and to add character. Dhong’s budget didn’t call for fancy moldings and changing out windows and doors. But he had a workaround.

He sheathed a single wall here and there with wide, rough boards he found for next to nothing at lumberyards and painted them in light tones. These accent walls dress up an otherwise boxy room with what Dhong calls “instant architecture.”

He made the most dramatic changes in the kitchen. Before, it was like a long dark tunnel with a bit of light at either end. Working with architect Matthew MacCaul Turner, Dhong opened up the ceiling to the gabled roof, added 12-inch whitewashed planks, popped in a porthole and inserted skylights.

A breakfast nook, kitchen and dining room were incorporated into the only large open area. The focal point is an antique apothecary cabinet that consumes a good portion of a kitchen wall. Even after it was cut down to fit the space, it stands a stately 10 feet tall, offering ample storage on beautiful open shelves, at less cost than conventional kitchen cabinetry and with way more personality.

Among the signature elements Dhong added is a little Scandinavian sleeping nook cut into a closet off the breakfast nook. On full moon nights, he sleeps there and looks up through the skylights.

Dhong also has added architectural interest throughout the house with wall panel mirrors whose wooden mullions make them look like windows.

He loves mirrors of all kinds and looks for dramatic shapes that make big statements while also opening up a room.

Throughout the two-story house, Dhong works in surprises. At the top of the stairs, he removed the doors of a linen closet and turned it into a grand recessed entry point. Above a Chinese lacquered table with elephant feet is a classy looking plaster medallion of a Swedish king.

“I wanted a reward for climbing the stairs,” he says with a wink.

Throughout are cool ideas that didn’t cost a fortune. He found a really plain and inexpensive Japanese tan-sue chest in a resale shop and made it interesting by adding antique hardware he spotted in the same store.

Even the backyard is a trick. He figured out that the view through his back windows is of a nice archway along the driveway to a church above his house. From certain points through the window, it appears that the open space is part of his own estate. He calls it “stealing the view.”

“When you don’t have a lot of money,” he says conspiratorially, “you do what you can.”

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