This new Fountaingrove home offers elevated living

It was never in Tracy and Quinn Donovan’s plan to own a custom-made home. The high cost of building something from the ground up seemed beyond their reach. And with a background in civil engineering, Quinn was all too aware of potential problems and all the headaches that inevitably arise in any construction project.

But after a fruitless quest to buy an existing home in Santa Rosa — they looked at more than 100 properties — the prospect of buying a lot and building from scratch suddenly didn’t seem so crazy.

They’d been biding their time in a rental in Santa Rosa’s Grace Tract after selling a tract home in Windsor they’d bought as a fixer-upper during the economic downturn.

“There were pets and kids (that had lived there). It was trashed. People who looked at it couldn’t get past the pet smell,” Tracy said of the Windsor house. “But it was a nice house, and only five years old.”

Aside from hiring a contractor to remodel a master bathroom, they did all the work themselves, pulling out stinky carpet, sealing the floor and repainting. But by 2016 they were feeling the urge to move, hopefully to a slightly less crowded neighborhood down the road in Santa Rosa. They sold their home for double what they paid.

“Beginning in 2017, we started looking and put in a couple of offers. But every house we looked at was $800,000 and needed at least $200,000 to bring it up to something like this,” said Tracy, gesturing around her new great room with its museum-style white walls, white tile and contrasting black granite counters and fireplace bench.

Then the Tubbs Fire roared through, leaving thousands of displaced people in desperate need of housing. The Donovans decided to stay in their rental and hold off on house hunting while the community recovered. Two years later, they were on the hunt again.

By then, lots had been cleared in the burn zones and fire survivors who decided not to rebuild were ready to move on.

“I began running the numbers and people were motivated now,” Quinn said. “They needed to make themselves whole. The prices were falling. So I started looking at the budget and what it might look like to buy a lot and build, and I thought, ‘OK. This might be doable.’”

Tracy was the first to scope out the 8,000-square-foot lot pressed against the Parker Hill Open Space. The fire had taken the house on the lot, but the hill behind was still dotted with many trees.

“I liked it because it reminds me of being on a trail. We looked at lots up on the hill and there was nothing. Everything burned. This makes me feel comfortable,” said Tracy, a long-distance runner who loves the outdoors and the way the property backs up against open space that can never be developed.

Many problems to solve

At first, Quinn was turned off by the slope and signs of a creek running along an edge of the property. Having worked for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, he knows water can mean expensive trouble. But the price of the lot kept coming down.

Quinn checked city records and discovered the water was coming through a culvert on an easement the city was responsible for maintaining. Still, he made repeated visits to the lot when it rained that wet winter, just to observe the flow of water. He decided it wasn’t bad.

After crunching the numbers again, they decided this was their way back to home ownership. They locked in the property for $180,000, down from nearly $250,000.

They tapped Jason White, a design-build contractor who was building a home for friends down the street. They were thinking $800,000 going into the project. But after nine months of intense collaboration with his office over every detail, the cost had ballooned by half a million.

Quinn “almost threw up and fell on the floor,” Tracy recalled. But they pulled it together and went back to the drawing board, looking at every possible way to trim the cost.

The original house on the lot had two stories and was more horizontal. The Donovans’ home is tall and slender, like a town house. It fits well on the narrow lot.

The main living area is on the second floor, with a loft hangout space and master bedroom suite on the top level. Their original design called for a cool balcony off the bedroom, with a bridge that led to an upper terraced patio, all that remained of the previous home. But at $82,000, that was the first feature to go from the Donovans’ plans.

They cut the price of flooring in half by switching from hardwood to a luxury vinyl, and they went with slightly lower-grade windows. Bit by bit, they whittled several hundred thousand off the estimate to a price they decided they could manage.

A handy elevator

Some features they didn’t want to forego. So they found less expensive ways to incorporate them. An open floating staircase was one of Tracy’s top priorities. But rather than having their builder create one, they bought one online and had it installed for far less.

The same for an elevator. Tracy’s mom, Cookie Moore, now lives with them. Their two flights of steps are steep.

They figured an elevator would allow them all to age in place, although at the moment Moore, an avid pickleball player, still takes the stairs to stay in shape.

The Donovans had their contractor frame out the well for the elevator and hired a local company, Jessie Sisson of Lift & Accessibility Solutions in Rohnert Park, to design, build and install the elevator.

That shaved off a lot of the cost. At $34,000, the elevator was a substantial investment but also, they believe, a wise one. It’s handy when they have groceries because the kitchen is on the second floor. They can enter the elevator through a door in the garage or from the foyer. And it’s wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair and attendant, should that ever be necessary.

“We do big Costco runs and put the groceries in there and hit the button and send them up,” Tracy said. “When we’re traveling, the luggage goes in there. Friends who can’t manage the stairs have used it.”

Added Quinn, “I feel like I don’t have to worry that when I get old, I can’t live here. We won’t have to put a lift in. We had the foresight to plan for it. And I just feel proud we were able to pull it off.”

Many people who are retiring or anticipating retirement, from baby boomers to Gen Xers, are considering other in-home features that will allow them to stay put.

The Donovans designed a room with a fully accessible bath for Moore on the second floor, where the main living area is located, along with a half bath for guests. They opted not to build the elevator up to the third floor, so they could have a more open loft. The sunny second-floor room with picture views where Moore is now ensconced may eventually become their own, giving them peace of mind that this could be their forever home.

Kitchen is the heart

While they had to make some compromises, they wound up with a house that is distinctly their own, designed and built to their tastes and lifestyle. Tracy wanted lots of windows. Now, light pours through on all sides, including the stairway landing.

Both are enthusiastic cooks, so the kitchen is the heart of their at-home life.

“We almost never go out to eat,” Tracy said.

They saved money by using inexpensive white subway tiles and reserved their funds for features they would really use. Tracy, a social worker and baker who heads the local nonprofit chapter of Cakes4Kids, wanted a marble counter on the island. It’s perfect for baking.

And they have two of most major appliances. In addition to a Blue gas range with an oven, they have a smaller oven for warming, twin dishwashers on either side of the sink and a small refrigerator built into the island. Relative to the convenience, and in service to their joy of cooking, it wasn’t that much more to invest in the additional appliances, Quinn said.

They also have two laundry rooms — one on the bottom floor off the foyer and one on the top floor. At first, it seemed like an indulgence. But Tracy said she uses her upper-floor laundry all the time.

They chose not to have upper cabinets in the kitchen, preferring smooth, clutter-free walls with only small shelves for decorative display. A large walk-in pantry offers all the additional space they need for storage.

The bottom floor is Quinn’s lair, with an office and home-winemaking workshop set back into the hillside.

Making a home that is uniquely theirs ultimately was worth the effort and the extra money, they said, because it has everything that matters to them, including room for Mom and security in knowing this truly can be their forever home.

Staff Writer Meg McConahey can be reached at 707-521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story misstated the name of Lift & Accessibility Solutions in Rohnert Park.