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Nature’s WayCool mountain colors and warm woodsy accents are a natural for this Del Cerro home

BY JILL ESTERBROOKS PHOTOGRAPHS BY JIM BRADY

A HOLIDAY SKI TRIP TO TAHOE brought an avalanche of remodeling projects for the Stewart family of Del Cerro.

“We returned from Thanksgiving weekend to find the entire downstairs flooded with water,” says Ellen Stewart, a local business attorney who travels extensively. She shares the home with her husband, Dennis, also an attorney, and their son.

That deluge precipitated a nearly year-long process of ripping up floors, gutting to the studs, removing walls and reconfiguring doorways, ultimately yielding a more open and expansive floor plan that takes advantage of the 30-year-old home’s location on a canyon bluff in the shadow of Cowles Mountain. Ellen concedes that what started simply as damage repair “quickly snowballed” into an extensive renovation project—an endeavor further complicated by their young son’s hip surgery and a wildfire evacuation.

In the end, it was well worth the months they lived on a bare slab with nothing more than a small fridge and a hot plate for meals. The Stewarts finally had a “much more livable and attractive home,” thanks to interior designer Carol Spong, ASID, who arrived after the water crisis, quickly sized up the family’s informal lifestyle and developed a bold plan for remodeling the ground floor of the two-story, 3,800-square-foot California contemporary home.

“They have a large family and lots of friends, and wanted a comfortable and welcoming home for casual entertaining,” says Spong. “But there was an awkward flow to the main public rooms, and lots of wasted space.”

She proposed a radical change: Flip-flop the family room and kitchen in order to garner a dining room from a once-narrow space the previous owner had used as a photo gallery. The swap also connected the updated family room to the open and airy living room.

“We had gone through a few other ideas, but when she showed me this one, I let out a whoop,” Ellen says. “It fixed the whole house.”

The front hall is now a central hub for the busy household. Highly trafficked floors are covered with dog- and kid-friendly slate. A built-in closet and sitting bench provide storage for the active Stewart clan, which includes grown children who often drop by.

For Ellen, however, the new kitchen is a master piece—one that caused both satisfaction and trepidation during the renovation. The only must-have item she requested was a Sub-Zero refrigerator, and just after it was delivered, she and the family were forced to evacuate due to wildfires in nearby Mission Trails Regional Park. Fortunately, Mother Nature spared the beloved appliance as well as the home.

Today, cooling tones prevail in the kitchen, where thick slabs of dark granite are rooted to light cabinets with smoked-glass fronts. Stainless-steel appliances and shiny gray accents are in keeping with the sleek minimalist style evident in details from stair railings to cabinet hardware. Numerous recessed lights supplement pendant task lighting above the central island, which has a lowered eating bar where the Stewarts enjoy informal meals.

If there are more than five family members eating together, they spill into the adjacent dining room. Here, wall sconces and a chandelier brighten the once-drab room, while a built-in cabinet displays favorite china and serves as a buffet during frequent gatherings.

By removing awkward partial walls, Spong achieved one big, dramatic living area that boasts vaulted ceilings with cove lighting, a floor-to-ceiling fireplace, massive windows and sliding glass doors that open onto a spacious outdoor deck. In addition to the revised layout, she helped the Stew arts redesign the downstairs rooms.

“It had little more than an early American dorm-room look before that,” says Ellen, who 12 years earlier had merged her single condo dwelling with Dennis’ suburban-dad lifestyle.

For Spong, “One of the project’s wonderful surprises was how interested Dennis was in selecting the artwork.” In a nod to his love of trees, much of the collection reflects a nature theme. Hallelujah Lady, for example, is a brightly painted wood sculpture in the living room.

Shortly after completion of the downstairs renovation, another water-related disaster surfaced.

“Dennis called me one day and said the glass-encased Jacuzzi tub in the upstairs master bedroom was literally falling off the side of the house,” Ellen says.

That prompted a second-floor remodel that included the creation of a home office, an updated bedroom with cobalt-blue carpet and laminated furniture for their elementary school–age son, Evan, and an updating of the master bedroom suite. The Stewarts once again called Spong, who, along with Henry Bertram of San Diego Craftsman Construction, brought the master suite into the 21st century. Heated bathroom floors, remote-controlled skylight and fiber optic lighting are a few of the modern touches they added.

The pink-marble bathroom gave way to refreshing blue-green colored glass, a stone-floor shower and a decorative window that looks to the mountains. The tub and shower were reconfigured, and while some space was sacrificed as a result, the new walk-in closet is still well-heeled with a ceiling-high “shoe shrine” for Ellen.

In the master bedroom, the fireplace was refaced and new-age lighting installed. Other than the rocking chair that Ellen was willing to reupholster but never part with, all-new furnishings make this the Stewarts’ much-needed refuge from the demands of parenthood and legal careers-not to mention wildfires and floods.