McDonald Mansion shaping up

The Grande Dame of McDonald Avenue is once again looking good enough to carry the title.

Two and a half years into a multi-million-dollar, basement-to-widow's-walk makeover, the 14,000-square-foot Mississippi plantation style mansion appears from the outside nearly complete.

If Mark and Ralphine McDonald were to pull up in their carriage today they wouldn't recoil, although they might be taken aback by the height of the trees, some of which came as saplings from Luther Burbank himself.

All the original Victorian gingerbread — from the two-tiered roof cresting to the icicle-like trim on the overhangs that gave the mansion its distinctive wedding-cake appearance, to the big wrap-around verandah, has been restored. Concealed high-tech lighting hidden within the eaves bring it to life at night, befitting the historic landmark that it is.

But the McDonalds, who built the mansion in 1879 as a summer retreat and promotional centerpiece for the tract of "homesteads" Mark McDonald was developing in the neighborhood, would be startled and disoriented once they walked in the door.

The house is crawling with carpenters armed with buzzing power tools. The layout is essentially the same, a sweeping 15-by-40-foot foyer off of which are four formal public rooms — a library of floor-to-ceiling books, a Turkish room reminiscent of the Victorian era's fascination with exotic travel, a ladies' sitting room and a gentlemen's smoking room, for indulging in a good pipe.

Beyond, orienting out toward the back, is the 480-square-foot dining room where the McDonalds entertained, with its original 10-by-10-foot pocket doors that can close off the room for intimate dining or open it up for glittering affairs.

But a later addition has been removed and replaced with a new kitchen and small family room, as well as a new master suite that looks out on a long reflecting swimming pool and park-like landscaping with boxwood parterres, heritage roses and a greenhouse brought over from England.

It all looks expansive, but inside it is still very plain as the project enters a crucial phase.

Crews, overseen by the Santa Rosa-based Masters Touch general contractors, are now applying the finish work, fixtures and finery that will turn the McDonald Mansion into a completed show-stopper by Christmas. Stacks of wood trim, piled neatly and meticulously marked, fill various rooms, covering up the new white oak floors, some inlaid with walnut designs.

It may be known as the McDonald Mansion, but it is now the new manor of John and Jennifer Webley.

The couple bought the aging monarch of McDonald Avenue for $3.6 million five years ago, with the intent not just to make it into a beautiful and comfortable home for themselves and their brood of four children, but to truly preserve it as a landmark. That means that no expense has or will be spared to maintain its historic and architectural integrity.

Webley, whose latest business venture is Sonoma Cools, which makes "green" air conditioning systems, says the pricetag so far is "north of $10 million."

That isn't to say that they don't look for economy without compromising quality. The exterior stone was selected off a mountain in China, both for its color and because the cost is a fraction of what it would cost to import from Italy — particularly when you're talking about 21, 800-pound containers of stone, said Martin Nelson, one of the principles of Masters Touch.

Webley said he and Jennifer plan to embark on a road trip this summer to Boston, New York and New Orleans in search of period light fixtures for a house that would have had gasoliers — hybrids that ran on both gas and electricity. The task becomes all the more difficult when multiples are needed.

"Obviously, in some areas we're going to have to buy reproduction," Webley said. "The trouble is, you can find two or three that are matching but you can't find 20."

For the period landscape lighting, they enlisted a Los Angeles company that makes all the light fixtures for Disneyland.

Most of the encaustic tile — in which the design is embedded in the tile and not just in the glaze, is coming from England. The wallpaper is being custom designed and manufactured by Bradbury & Bradbury of Benicia, which specializes in high-end antique reproduction wallcoverings.

The Webleys also have yet to furnish a mansion with two suites of bedrooms upstairs in the "attic," family rooms on every floor, and a basement that is a veritable warren of offices and special-purpose rooms, including a wine cellar and a gallery dedicated strictly to displaying photographs documenting the restoration.

Nelson said he and partner John Cake have taken some 2,000 pictures at all phases of the process, which, when all is said and done, will have involved a construction cast of some 200.