About Us: the Renovators and the House
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About the House
According to the experts at the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, our house was built in 1908 and it is an example of a Colonial Revival Cottage. Popular during around 1895-1910, there are a lot of houses of this style in Berkeley. The distinguishing characterstics include:
- modest boxy structure, with shallow 3-sided bays
- leaded glass in diamond patterns
- hip roof, often with a purely ornamental front dormer
- wide overhanging eaves, often with decorative brackets
- classical detailings, such as dentil molding and columns
If you don't know what the above means, here's a photo of our front porch, with some of it's distinctive features labeled:
The information we found at the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association told us that the house was commissioned by Thomas Webster, who kept the house until 1947. It changed hands about five times before we bought it in December 2003. The photo on the home page was taken around 1969, when the street we live on was still called Grove Street (it has since changed to Martin Luther King Jr. Way).
Hi, my name is Diane, and I'm a graduate student in Library and Information Sciences at San Jose State University. This website is the final project for a technology class I took in Fall 2005. After I graduate (hopefully in Fall 2006!), I want to find a librarian position with a local public library.
Insofar as home renovation, I prefer the simple jobs that don't involve power saws or climbing on the roof. I've done a whole bunch of sanding, painting, and demolition work. The picture shows me doing a slightly more complex job– connecting the wires to a light switch.
This here is Wayne. He's got a Ph.D. in Mathematics, but decided he'd rather work on our house for a while instead of working in academia. It all started when he took a woodworking class at a local community college. He loved it so much he bought a table saw and proceeded to make a pair of matching nigthstands. He also began watching lots of shows like This Old House, Hometime, and my personal favorite, The Woodwright's Shop, where no power tools are used!
Wayne has done all the work on our house except for the shower tiles (his uncle is a professional tiler) and a few other miscellaneous jobs. He teaches himself everything through checking out books from the library, asking questions on the alt.home.repair usenet group, and researching things on the internet. I'm always amazed at the care and planning he puts into each and every job.