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The Right Stuff

A Home in a St. Charles Craftsman

Stephanie and Robert Doud weren’t seriously considering buying a new place in Alameda when they stopped by a Sunday open house on St. Charles Street in summer 2002. They owned a home they liked in the Fernside District and had already drawn up plans for a major remodel to accommodate their expanding family.

Then they walked through the front door of the 1913 Gold Coast home designed by William Hays, a former professor at the UC Berkeley School of Architecture.

“Right away we loved the strong architecture,” says Stephanie Doud. “It was warm and simple without being ornate.” Crossing the threshold, they stepped into a foyer large enough to hold a grand piano. Behind it, a classic Craftsman staircase beckoned them upstairs, while to the right and left generously proportioned living and dining rooms offered gracious entertainment spaces.

Moving toward the back of the house, they transitioned from old to new with a dramatically reconfigured floor plan that combined a kitchen, family room and laundry room into a flowing kitchen-dining-family area. The award-winning redesign includes the modern—an island kitchen with ash cabinetry and granite counters—but remains loyal to the home’s original architecture— a box beam ceiling, Craftsman-styled windows and backsplash tiles identical to those used by Julia Morgan.

Upstairs were four bedrooms, each set into a different corner of the home. Nearly all had a triple set of windows overlooking a garden setting or leafy street scene. The two baths were large and remodeled with vintage-styled fixtures and marble floors. Stephanie Doud was also taken by the closet space, which was ample enough to accommodate a 21st-century wardrobe.

By now, a recurring chant had begun in their heads. “We kept thinking, ‘Remodel or buy new? Remodel or buy new?’ ” says Stephanie Doud. “Then we saw the backyard.”

Accessed by French doors in the family area, the backyard revealed a lush green lawn framed by ancient camellia bushes and cherry and magnolia trees. Shrubs filled with nooks and crannies and a 1930s potters shed evoked visions of garden parties and games of hide and seek. The mature plantings also afforded a level of privacy so complete that no window treatments were required on the rear of the house.

Beyond the back fence, there was the added bonus of a private swimming pool shared and maintained by four adjacent properties. Built in 1950, the pool was the vision of one of the home’s former owners, Frank Weeden, who maintained that since Alameda was an island, every child living there should learn how to swim. Passionate about his cause, he used the pool to initiate the town’s first island-wide swimming program for children.

The pool was a nifty extra, but it was the emotional appeal of the yard that clinched it for the Douds. In short order, they abandoned their current remodeling project and became the proud owners of the St. Charles Street home six short weeks later.

Because the home needed no major work, the Douds were able to concentrate on small, but significant cosmetic changes. Dramatic color choices made by the previous owner (orange-yellow in the foyer and retro lime green in the dining room) were swapped for softer hues of sand and silver gray—an ideal backdrop for the Douds’ collection of plein-air paintings done by local artists, including San Francisco’s Laura Williams and Alameda’s Patrick Erwin.

Save for some unusual gumwood detail in the dining room, nearly all of the trim had been painted over. Instead of undertaking the onerous task of stripping down the trim entirely, the Douds chose to play up the home’s woodwork by refinishing certain details, such as the stairway banister and the dining room fireplace and built-ins.

When choosing furniture for their new home, they relied on assistance from decorator Jim Kennedy of High Cotton Living in Berkeley, along with help from Stephanie Doud’s brother, interior designer Garth Oldershaw. Oldershaw, who had just completed a remodel of the Ritz Carlton in Singapore, was able to deliver some yummy leftovers from that project, including a television console and matching mirror made of exotic Peroba Rosa wood. Another Oldershaw find was an antique pine armoire with brass fittings, which was refinished and buffed into a deep mahogany color.

The Douds say that the home’s floor plan and its interior updates made buying the home an easy, practical decision. But for their children, Madeleine, Emma and Ian, the property’s biggest boon is its backyard amenities. “Bigger is not always better,” Madeleine, then 5, advised her parents when visiting the home for the first time. “But I sure do like the pool.”