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Pardon Our Dust
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A bright idea, it turns out
It was a bold move, but knocking out an upstairs bedroom added space and light to a couple's lakeside retreat.
Lori Petitti was horrified when her husband, Scott Sakamoto,
made an offer on a gloomy vacation home in Lake Arrowhead.
"I almost divorced him," recalled Petitti, a television producer.
"I said, 'No way.' I hated this house."
And who wouldn't? The dismal 1940s cabin suffered from a poor floor plan,
and Petitti felt claustrophobic in the dark kitchen with its brown tile,
brown Formica counter tops, brown appliances, brown shag carpeting and
"the smell of too much air freshener."
Sakamoto, a motion-picture camera operator, acknowledged all that was
true.
But he had visions of modernizing the $250,000 cabin and, most important,
expanding its views of the alpine lake that stretches out below it and
the setting sun, which drops over the North Shore, directly across the
lake.
"He said, 'Trust me,' and I did," Petitti said. At the end of
a three-month, $127,000 remodel, she decided to keep the house and the
spouse. "Now it's the most lovely and comfortable house ever."
The biggest challenge for Sakamoto was brightening and enlarging the lake-facing
kitchen. The kitchen's lone window was barely 3 feet tall, not exactly
an elegant frame for the blue views, and the kitchen's ceiling with exposed
beams was oppressively low. Because there was a second-floor bedroom directly
above the kitchen, bumping up the ceiling or adding skylights wasn't an
option.
Then Sakamoto had an epiphany: Why not knock out the bedroom above the
kitchen altogether? That would allow for a 16-foot ceiling in the kitchen
and wall space for a tall, oversized picture window.
It also would relieve the gloom upstairs if the dark hallway to the other
two bedrooms were opened up and turned into a "bridge" that
looked down on the kitchen and out to the lake through the new window.
The plan to sacrifice one of the cabin's bedrooms made sense, Petitti
said, because the house would still have three bedrooms for resale value,
and they didn't need more than two guest rooms.
Excited about his idea, Sakamoto approached Ken Anderson, whom he considered
one of the most respected contractors in the Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear
areas. Anderson is known for building and remodeling high-end homes in
the 4,000-to-6,000-square-foot range, and Petitti doubted he would take
on their musty, 1,200-square-foot cabin. "I was embarrassed,"
she said.
But Anderson liked Sakamoto's ideas and took the couple on a tour of mountain
homes he had built. There they saw alder cabinets and hardwood floors
they liked for their own remodel. "That's how we shopped," Sakamoto
said.
Unfortunately, Sakamoto was called out of the country to work on a movie
just as the work was starting. Petitti, the reluctant remodeler, became
the homeowner in charge.
While the three-month remodel was in process, Petitti drove from their
Santa Monica home every weekend to take photos, and she left disposable
cameras for workers to document the work during the week. By e-mailing
photos to her husband, she was able to get his input on various decisions
that needed to be made.
"I went from not wanting to be involved to being really involved,"
Petitti said. "I really enjoyed it."
On location in Montreal, Sakamoto sketched the layout for the kitchen
cabinets, the electrical outlets and heater vents.
It was Petitti's job to shop for appliances, and she argued with Sakamoto
to get the white Viking stove she wanted, rather than the stainless-steel
stove he wanted. "I was adamant about it," she said.
For his part, Sakamoto felt strongly about a low-voltage, cable-type lighting
system strung across the kitchen, even though the contractor asked several
times if he wanted a socket in the ceiling for a lighting fixture. Sakamoto,
who liked the aesthetics of the lighting system, did not. "That's
what I was adamant about," he said.
He also wanted the stove's stainless-steel exhaust flue to be exposed
all the way to the second-floor ceiling, rather than boxed in and hidden.
He did have to settle for a square flue rather than the round one he had
envisioned.
Sakamoto flew back to the States on a holiday weekend to help Petitti
choose the granite for their counters: Juparana Vyara from India, with
swirling veins of blacks, browns and pinkish tans.
The project — which also included new hardwood floors downstairs,
carpeting upstairs, a new stone fireplace surround and all new windows
— was completed on time and on budget.
Since the remodel, summer weekends at the cabin have taken on a regular
routine: Mornings are spent skiing on the lake while the water is glassy;
afternoons mean jogging the trail around the lake or watching sailboat
races; and evenings bring time on the deck.
Winter weekends, the couple hike local mountains too hot to tackle in
summer, snowshoe on the jogging trail and warm themselves at the hearth
of their updated fireplace.
The cabin, 99 miles from the couple's Santa Monica residence, has become
a favorite gathering place for them and four other friends with second
homes in the same neighborhood.
"On Saturday nights, this is the place," Petitti said. "We
feel like we've been on vacation in a weekend."
*
At a glance
Project: Update a 1940s cabin.
Location: Lake Arrowhead
Designer: Scott Sakamoto
Contractor: Ken Anderson Construction (License No. 334614), Big Bear Lake, (909) 337-7282.
Duration: three months
Cost: $127,000