When contractor Mitchell McDaniel, owner of McDaniel Contractors in Jacksonville, Fla., was searching for a home to feature on Today's Classic Homes, the television show he hosts, he proposed to remodel a Mediterranean Revival. More accurately, it was the ghost of one.
Unsympathetic remodels -- one as recently as two years ago -- added to the sense of vanished glamour. The question the clients posed was whether to tear it down and start again, or renovate?
Photo Credit: Lans Stout
The house was structurally sound and occupied a much-coveted location on the St. Johns River. "It had unique stone work," McDaniel says, "with cast stone ornament on the facade. It also had a basement, which is unusual for Florida. It wasn't that large a home and I thought it could be changed in a way that would be an asset to both the place and its location, without altering its appearance." Contractor and clients agreed that a renovation would take longer than tearing it down and starting over, but it would be the better investment.
After a year's worth of planning, McDaniel proposed renovating the three-bedroom, 3,700-square-foot building into a fully landscaped 10,000-square-foot compound that would include the house, restored as much as possible to its original condition, with an addition atop a porte cochere (a roofed entrance over the driveway) and a detached three-car garage. Behind the house McDaniel would build a courtyard with a cabana and new swimming pool. The project would take a year. Neither the cost nor the client has been disclosed.
Careful cosmetics
McDaniel's idea was to make the exterior of the house look as much like it did when it was first built as possible, without the exacting and expensive work of complete restoration. He'd keep what was intact and replicate items such as columns, arches, and stonework. "The structure's here," he says. "You're covering it with a new fabric. We reupholster, to give the house a new look."
Raise the roof. The roof posed a typical dilemma. Tile is a hallmark of the Mediterranean Revival style and the house still sported the original green, glazed clay tiles made by Ludowici Roof Tile of New Lexington, Ohio. The tiles were in remarkably good shape, but the roof structure and felt membrane beneath were not. The tiles could easily be removed to make repairs, but a decision had to be made whether to put the tiles back on.
The addition of a porte cochere -- a roofed entrance over the driveway -- jazzed up the front facade of this Mediterranean Revival home without altering its essential appearance.
Photo Credit: Lans Stout
The problem wasn't availability. (The tiles are still made.) The problem was expense. Putting the tiles back on meant committing to use clay tiles on the soon-to-be-built addition and cabana. Material-only cost for glazed clay tiles is $400 per square, compared with concrete tiles at $60 per square. In the end, the decision was made to roof the house, addition, and cabana in green tile. It was "one of the unique characteristics we wanted to maintain," says McDaniel. "It lasted 75 years and it'll last another 75 years."
Interior distinction. From the outside, with its fresh stucco and restored stonework, the house looks much as it did when it was built. Inside is something else. There, the idea was to give every room its own distinction. From the master bedroom, with its television built in to the wall and concealed by a paneled painting, to the sunroom opening onto the pool courtyard out back, the overall sense is of richness and taste.
The living room, a showpiece, was stripped of the flooring, walls, ceiling trim, and fireplace, all added by the previous owner. The room has been re-created as a space more in keeping with the original spirit of the house. The ceiling is a combination of walnut beams and inlaid coffered plaster. Both beams and plaster have been hand-rubbed and aged to take on an old patina. On the room's walls, a walnut-base chair rail made by White River Hardwoods divides yellow-tinted stucco walls from the lincrusta beneath it, which is finished to resemble tooled leather. A cast stone fireplace surround completes the sense of sumptuousness.
Pecky cypress. One of the hallmarks of the Mediterranean style, at least in Florida, was cypress. A slow-growing tree with a dense, straight grain, cypress once grew abundantly in Southeastern swamps. One variety has a distressed surface -- it looks like ant or woodpecker damage -- which caused it to be dubbed "pecky cypress." The distressed look is believed to be caused by a fungal infection in the heartwood of the tree, though no one knows for sure.
In the '20s, the rusticated surface of pecky cypress appealed to designers, who found a variety of uses for it: sills, ceiling beams, sashes, cabinetry. "If you have a Mediterranean Revival house, you have to have pecky cypress," McDaniel says. So for the sake of authenticity, pecky cypress became the wood of choice throughout the remodeled house.
The living room ceiling features cross beams of walnut framing coffered plaster panels, one of several features designed to make the room look distinct.
Photo Credit: Lans Stout
Cast in stone
Even more critical to recreating the original look and feel was replicating the stonework. The first-floor walls are made of two different kinds of concrete block that no one makes any longer. McDaniel had to find a source.
Craig Garcia, division manager of K&T Stone Works in Laxahatchee, says getting the cast stone to match the size, color, and texture of pieces on the existing house was tricky. The Miami marble was easier because it uses ground colored glass as a cement additive. But the other block uses ground seashells. K&T had to find just the right mix so that the poured block and ornament of the addition would match that of the existing house.
"The color was the biggest thing," says Garcia, "because you're talking about a house built in the '20s, and the material's had 80 years to weather." Once a shell quarry was found, the trick was finding the right additive proportions. After months of research, K&T Stone Works produced about 800 blocks and decorative ornament pieces for the project.
Brains of the house
Central to this project was the idea of re-building a 1920s house chock-full of 21st century technology. The clients, McDaniel says, wanted a house that would "run itself. It should be comfortable when you're there and secure when you're not." Adding technology to a new house is a "walk in the park," McDaniel points out. "But with this house, we had to incorporate all the new technology and make it look old."
Photo Credit: Lans Stout
The solution was to transform a part of the unfinished basement -- now remodeled into a suite including a wine cellar, playroom, bath, bar, and media room -- into the "brains of the house." The phone system, HVAC, lights, closed-circuit television, and security gates are all controlled from a box containing the Honeywell "Home and Away" telecommunications system. Even personal computers are networked in. Any system can be operated from any remote location by phone.
"The contractor is the liaison from the technology to the homeowner," McDaniel says. "If he doesn't understand it, how is he going to explain it?" McDaniel likes the Honeywell system because it's simple for homeowners to use. "Most people today are trying to simplify their lifestyle," he says. "So we look for the great gadgets, but ones that are simple to understand."
Stay tuned
McDaniel says his company's next project--and the next subject for Today's Classic Homes--is a two-story beach house in the Florida vernacular style. His next television subject, though, is more than just one house; it's really vacation homes as a genre, what he calls "adult playhouses." The beach house he'll work on is one of a half dozen residences owned by the client. It is, he says, the client's least favorite. "It's our job," says McDaniel, "to turn it into his favorite."
Business MattersMcDaniel sells and plans a project in a way that's different from most remodeling companies. Everything is a line item and everything's on an allowance budget. Plus, his clients know all about the profit he intends to make. "We will work together to establish a budget," he says. "We don't have estimates. We don't have change orders. Instead, we find out what they're willing to spend and, based on past experience, we determine whether we can do that. We spell everything out. It doesn't matter if the job is $100,000 or $5 million, the question is, can you do what they expect?"
The centerpiece of the courtyarded back lot is the pool, with its hand-painted tiles of Sicilian lava.
Photo Credit: Lans Stout
In most cases, the clients have cash in hand and those funds are deposited in an escrow account.
Undivided attention. In a project the size of this one, it wouldn't be uncommon to use 25 or more different subcontractors. McDaniel holds it to a minimum -- about 15 on this job, he guesses -- and uses his own personnel for as many different jobs as he can in an effort to limit subcontractor-caused delays. In this case, for example, the painting, plastering, and tile work were all done by his employees.
Subcontractors, he says, are rarely willing or able to give him the undivided attention his projects require. "It's not that they're incompetent; it's that they're busy," he says. Because McDaniel Contractors only does one or two jobs a year, sticking to the schedule is critical.
It's important that McDaniel Contractors personnel have as many skills as possible. When new hires come to work for the company, they're asked to indicate on a standard form which construction skills they have experience with. Ninety days later, they get a second evaluation that helps the company match employees to specific tasks.
Hurricane ProofTo protect against damage from hurricanes, which are common in northern Florida, the house features electrically-operated hurricane shutters that slide over windows at the touch of a button. The shutters withstand winds of up to 140 mph.
To provide for emergencies, the cabana area shelters a CAT generator that feeds off a 1000-gallon propane tank buried in the yard. The generator powers on automatically if the electricity goes off and provides 168 continuous amps of power.
"We're designing a home they can live in after the power goes off," McDaniel says, because "we've had hurricanes that left people without power for several weeks."