When J. Chris Mickartz first laid eyes on the Victorian house at
7446 Rosanna Ave. in Gilroy she was not pleased.
When J. Chris Mickartz first laid eyes on the Victorian house at 7446 Rosanna Ave. in Gilroy she was not pleased.
“I literally cried when I first saw the place,” she said. “It was basically stripped bare inside. It had no porch, no appliances or bathroom facilities.”
Since that time in 1989 Chris, her then-husband Jim Dowell, her father John Albaugh, her now-husband Larry Mickartz and several friends, have turned the place into a showcase the entire family is proud of.
It was Jim, the antique-lover, who insisted on buying the house; he worked to restore it until his death in 1995.
“Jim had an old chandelier in storage when I met him,” Chris said. “One day he pulled it out. ‘There will never be a house that I’ll live in that that will look good in,’ I told him. I really was not an antique-y person; I liked clean lines.” But that all changed over the years.
” Jim put it up (the chandelier) when there was nothing else in the house,” she said. “It is so old looking – but I would never get rid of it now.” It came from an old family in Gilroy who got it from a bordello, she said.
A previous owner, Tom Buntoff, began the remodeling by replacing the roof and windows but lost the house, Larry said, to foreclosure. He also stripped out most of the traditionally heavy Victorian woodwork and much of the Victorian decoration. But the high ceilings and fireplaces remained. And he raised the house by four feet and added a foundation. He planned to live on the first floor and develop the second and third into a bed and breakfast, Larry said.
“It was a little disappointing that Buntoff removed so much (of the original woodwork),” Larry said, “but we did find a few rosettes.”
Chris’ general contractor father helped the couple along.
“They started remodeling the downstairs first,” Larry said, “then moved on to the second floor so they could live there.” Larry said most of the remodeling was complete before he entered the picture two to three years after Jim’s death. “Chris and I had known each other for 20 years,” he said.
“We had friends who helped, too,” Chris said. “A friend did the kitchen tile while Jim and I tiled the fireplace. It’s all uneven but we loved doing it. Actually, we (she and Larry) are still working on it.
“Larry did a lot of the work outside – the landscaping, the porch, arbor and picket fence. When Jim died we had no floorboards in. Larry did them later.”
Finding ideas about where to take the remodeling was not difficult in Gilroy.
“We found some pictures in the city archives,” Larry said. “The house had a picket fence and an arbor out front (which he has since reconstructed). We also got inspiration from a photo from around 1900.”
The Mickartz’s found that Patrick Fitzgerald was the first owner; he built it as a ranch house but no one knows exactly when.
“By the 1880s it had gone through a number of transformations,” Larry said. “There was a single story first, then a second story was added – Victorian in look. Actually there are several different additions to the house.
The downstairs bathroom has reclaimed its Victorian past with a claw-foot tub and pedestal sink.
“The kitchen is a mix,” Larry said, “with cabinets that have an old-fashioned look.”
“The house is painted blues, whites and purple – a slate blue with white trim and rose as accents,” Chris said. “I just liked the colors (she is a graphic designer). I love it.
“Now I have quite a few antiques, myself. They fit and now the house is just so comfortable.
“It’s a good mix of a very old frame and a very livable interior,” she said. “Some houses (of the period) are much smaller and not set up to allow a flow-through of air and traffic. Still, it has the character of an old house.”
The couple runs a business producing newsletters, called InfoPower Communications, from what would be the second-floor parlor.
“We can look out and see people looking up,” Larry said.
They rent out the 1,900-squre-foot first floor. The top two floors are about 2,000-square feet each.
While Chris’ opinion of living in a house torn up for years has changed, so has that of her children.
“At the time, the kids hated it – they were 11 and 12 when we first moved in. They were all in one bedroom and we all shared one bath. Now my daughters are 25 and 26 and this is their home. “What is fun is watching the reactions of Larry’s sons’ friends. They aren’t so used to the house.”
Do the Mickartz’s have advice for prospective restorers?
“It’s always more complicated, more expensive and time consuming than you can ever imagine,” Larry said. “But on the other side you can say ‘I did that.’ ”
Would Chris do it again?
“No, I would never do this again, absolutely not, no.”
