Builder's own

Custom Home, July-August, 2002 by Leslie Ensor

After years of building others' dreams, most custom builders hanker for a dream home of their own. Here are the stories of three custom builders who satisfied that desire. While all three brought the knowledge and skills acquired in a career in building to their projects, they also took away from them invaluable lessons in how it feels to be on the other side of the process.

Sunny Side

Two years after building his family's new home, Terry Wardell still enjoys coming downstairs every morning and seeing the house come alive with light. "It's such a pretty house," he beams. "And pretty is very important." It's a lesson the custom builder learned from a few other houses he's lived in. * When Wardell and his wife, Tracy Weiss, decided to replace their previous house--"It looked like a hideous trailer home," Wardell says--they thought they'd go the remodeling route. That way they'd be able to keep their ocean-view lot and live in a neighborhood they loved. But a dispassionate look at the old house convinced the couple that if they wanted to stay in the neighborhood, they had to tear it down. * Wardell is an architect's builder--he loves the challenge of building complex, highly detailed houses. For his new house, he chose architect Kathleen Hallahan, despite the fact that this would be the first of her house designs to be built. "Her sketches were charming and exciting," Wardell explains. "I'm good at visualizing spaces, and I could see right away what she wanted to accomplish." * The house that Hallahan came up with is complex in its relationship with the outdoors and the site. But it's unpretentious in terms of construction and materials. The project encompasses two buildings: the main house and a garage/guest suite that give shape to the 1/3-acre site. The two-story main house wraps around a courtyard that is the front entry to the house. The intimate outdoor space centers on a fire pit and is the outdoor extension of the family room as well as the family's "front porch." The garage sits along the long street frontage, where it provides privacy for the backyard. * With a plan that's just one room deep, light and fresh air flow freely throughout the warm, contemporary spaces. And everywhere glass doors and windows open to intermingle indoor and outdoor spaces. "I feel like I'm outdoors all the time," Wardell says. * Though the house has interesting materials like concrete and recycled hardwood floors and details such as a floor-to-ceiling window that leans in to open, Wardell says it's not detailed inside as well as the houses he builds for clients. "We take clients' houses to a much higher level," he admits. "But on this house it was a matter of time and company priorities." This house was a stepchild project, he says, with no construction calendar, three different superintendents, and a soft budget. At one point it sat for six weeks waiting for crews to come off other jobs. And the family moved in three weeks before Wardell would have ever allowed a client to move into a house. * That came about because the family was camping out in a dark, cramped rental that made the normally sunny Wardell very unhappy. That's when the builder learned the power of a pretty home to lift one's spirits. His weren't the only spirits lifted by the house; for six months after moving in a half dozen architects would knock on the door each month asking to look around and take photos. Then the house was named a home of the year by San Diego Home & Garden magazine, which ran a major feature on it.--L.E.

Project Credits: builder: Wardell Builders, Solana Beach, Calif.; Architect: Kathleen Hallahan, San Diego; Interior designer: Evie Avinante, San Diego; Lining space: 3,200 square feet; Site size: .33 acre; Construction cost: Withheld; Photographer: Carol Peerce. * Resources: Bathroom/kitchen plumbing fixtures: Grohe, Circle 543 and Moen, Circle 544; Dishwasher: Miele, Circle 545; Fireplace: Kenwall, Circle 546; Oven: Thermador, Circle 547; Refrigerator: GE Appliances, Circle 548; Structural lumber: Trus Joist, Circle 549.

Garden Variety

What really drove custom builder Michael Muscardini to build a new house wasn't so much the need for more living space; he and his wife, Robyn, who is his partner in Oakland, Calif-based Creative Spaces, are empty nesters. The real motivation was his desire for a bigger garden. After spending several decades in a Berkeley, Calif., bungalow on a small, urban lot, "I wanted a large landscape to play with," he says. "I wanted more room just to walk around." * Throughout the '90s that desire grew progressively stronger, so when a friend showed Muscardini a 8.5-acre Sonoma County site in 1998, he knew he'd arrived home. Before he even began to think about building a house, Muscardini planted a vineyard and began improving the soil for a big organic garden. Now he was ready to put ideas collected over a 20-year career building architect-designed projects to work on his own dream home. * Creative Spaces had rebuilt many of the houses destroyed by the 1991 fire in the Oakland Hills, and Muscardini knew that the Sonoma site was equally vulnerable to wildfire. He wanted a defensible landscape plan and building materials that would dampen that risk. * His materials list included some bold choices. The basic building material is Rastra, blocks of 85 percent recycled Styrofoam encapsulated in concrete. When stuccoed on the outside and plastered on the inside, they create four-hour fire walls that will withstand a blaze up to 2,000 degrees F.A sprinkler system adds an extra measure of protection. * With an R-value of 28, the Rastra walls also mitigate daily temperature swings that can be as wide as 50 degrees. Another advantage of lightweight Rastra blocks was that Muscardini and his son, Giancarlo, were able to build the structure themselves. * The crowning glory of the courtyard home is a copper roof. It was one of the few luxuries the Muscardinis allowed themselves, and they paid for it, literally, with the kitchen cabinets. To offset the roof's cost, they chose IKEA cabinets for the kitchen and baths, figuring they could replace them later. The knock-down cabinets had to be assembled on site, but they cost less than $7,000. * Muscardini faced two big challenges on this project. One was putting in all the infrastructure himself. Though he'd built many new homes and remodeled more, he'd never installed sewers, roads, electrical service, and water. The project was a lesson in land development. * The bigger challenge, however, was managing so many decisions. "I have a much deeper appreciation for what our clients go through," he says. One of the epiphanies he had was the realization that nearly all client decisions are "couple decisions," which doubles their difficulty. He and Robyn both worked hard to stay engaged in the decision-making process and to carve out time from running the company to visit showrooms. * The couple built their home during the busiest period their company has known. Oddly enough, Muscardini thinks this was an advantage. "We had so much work, we only had to think about production, not sales," he says. "Now things have slowed and it's gotten a little more cutthroat." Muscardini is thinking about marketing again, with an eye to expanding the business into Sonoma County. He's inviting local architects and potential clients to see the house and is planning a fund-raising event for a local charity there. "It's fun," he says, "to share the house." Now the house that started with a garden promises to help his company plow new territory.--L.E.