The Scoop: Christina Flores, Designer + Evan Hart, Contractor

Let’s be honest, everyone loves a home-rehab story; HGTV has based a whole business model on our obsession with ‘before & afters’. But don’t let those shows fool you, it takes a special kinda human to see the beauty in an old home and invest in respecting its history while bringing it back to life. 

That’s why I sat down with Christina Flores and Evan Hart, a designer and contractor, who fell deep for a Maybeck in Oakland. This dynamic duo has spent the last several years carefully restoring (often by hand) this Bay Area gem. I’ve been itching to get a peek inside their eclectic, charming home and thanks to this Q&A I have succeeded! Christina & Evan go deep with me on design, provide a snack-able history lesson, and share their experiences with home renovation. And hold on tight, this is a long one (!!), but I simply couldn’t resist giving you their full story. 

Let’s dive in….

Q: How’d you get into design? Share a bit about your journey. 

C: My dad is a contractor and built both of my family’s homes in the Monterey Bay Area and Azores islands. When I was five, we moved to the Azores while he built our home there and those are some of my earliest memories. All I drew were pictures of houses at the time. Flash forward to my first semester at UC Berkeley, I lost when it came to my major and my friend convinced me to take an environmental design course. I was hooked. After college I worked for two East Bay architecture firms, but felt unfulfilled so took an interior design course through UC Berkeley Extension, which led to a job in high ender interiors in San Francisco. I’m now at  architecture, landscape and interiors firms Tierney Conner in Oakland and pursuing my architectural license. 

E: My dad and brother work in remodeling construction in the Bay Area. When I graduated college in 2009, the housing market had just crashed and there weren’t a lot of jobs, so my dad suggested buying a fixer upper. For whatever reason, the first three houses I fixed up weren’t quite right for me, and I was getting burned out, so I was looking for a forever home when I saw our house and put all resources towards buying it. Now I do remodeling construction for smaller jobs like kitchens and bathrooms and work on my house on the side. I have no formal design education — it’s all been family business and hands on experience that got me here.

Q: How has your career influenced renovations in your home?

E: Like I said, I had rehabbed three houses prior to this one. They were huge projects — almost completely trashed. When you start with almost nothing, you need something to anchor the design. I try to be inspired by what little original details are left. For example, my first house was a 1915 craftsman house, with a steep A-frame like roof. The 3/2 single family home was subdivided poorly into a triplex. The only original details inside were a fireplace and a box beam ceiling in the living room. Using what I imagined the house used to look like was my guide for the renovations. It was draining for me artistically to try and inject joy and charm into these sad houses. You could see how things for the previous owners went down hill over time and it was depressing. For my fourth (and current) house I wanted something with a lot of original details to inspire me rather than drain me of energy trying to fill in the gaps.

Q: You got your hands on a real Bay Area gem. Can you provide some context around Bernard Maybeck, why you’re a fan?

E: Before buying the house, we went to an estate sale at a Carr Jones house and loved it. It was whimsical and storybook style. Our house is not the storybook style, but it has a handcrafted magic to it that we fell in love with immediately. Since I had been looking for a real restoration, I wrote the owners a love letter promising to take good care of her and keep the original spirit intact. I put everything I had towards getting the house.

Most houses on the market are not made by visionary architects. Some older houses from the ‘20 are home designs from Sears Catalog. Others might be made by architects or developers using expected formulas for home design in the ‘40s or ‘50s or whatever. Honestly, I didn’t think I would have the opportunity to own something by a real architect. The previous owners believed it to be designed by Bernard Maybeck, but were unable to prove it. After doing a lot of research, I am now convinced it is a Maybeck. I was all-in on this house even in the state of “Maybeck inspired” or “rumored to be a Maybeck”. As a kid I was familiar with Maybeck’s Palace of Fine Arts, but getting this house is what truly drew me into his work. I am definitely not the kind of baller that just goes around buying architectural fixer uppers. It’s honestly a miracle that we are here.

C: Having studied architecture in Berkeley, learning about Maybeck was critical and being a fan came naturally. He taught architecture at UC Berkeley at the turn of the 20th century and acted as a mentor to other famous architects such as Julia Morgan. While he is most famously known for the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, he designed many homes in Berkeley along with the Faculty Club on campus and the First Church of Christ Scientist just a few blocks from campus. His designs evoke a magical feeling and that is something I felt the moment I walked into our house when we first visited it. 

Q: How has knowing it’s *likely* a Maybeck influenced your design decisions?

C: We are very careful in trying to be inspired by the original design as much as possible. Our main focus is trying to adjust the design to meet our needs without going in a completely new direction.

E: The exterior appearance and floorplans we think are designed by Maybeck, but a lot of the woodwork was likely the contractor’s design and the Tunisian tiles in the bathrooms was probably the client’s choice. It has elements of Swiss Chalet and Moorish, but has rustic carpentry for the woodwork — in some ways it’s impossible to even understand the logic of it all, but it definitely “works”. It’s an eclectic mix that few people could pull off as well as Maybeck. But with the muddled provenance of the house, we can only take it as a singular work of art and architecture — so in that way we are designing for what works with the house as a whole — mostly taking inspiration from the original details while trying to modernize in subtle ways.

Q: You’ve done some research into the original owners — how has that impacted your design choices? 

C: Yes, the original owner was a single older woman named Mary Kingsley who had moved to California from the East Coast. I can’t say that knowing about her has impacted our design choices, but we do have an homage to her and her daughter in our living room. Her daughter, Mayra Kingley, was a famous Hollywood astrologer and we have magazines with articles that feature her on display as well as a photo of her in a silk robe on the front porch.

E: The original owner was a very eccentric spiritualist and we know that she had some impact on the design which makes the house absolutely one of a kind. The unofficial Maybeck designs I have been researching are all from the ‘20s and connected through Maybeck’s friend and contractor-collaborator of the time, Volney Rowland. There is another “lost Maybeck” design in Berkeley from the year before our house, 1926, also built by Rowland. The house was very specifically designed for Mrs. Kingsley, a single woman who probably had a servant. She brought Rowland out of retirement in 1939 to add a couple rooms onto the house. Rowland, Maybeck and Kingsley all had an effect on the house so I try to learn as much about all of them as I can to try and understand how everything came together.

Q: What’s been the biggest challenge in renovating?

C: Since the renovation will be a multi decade process, the biggest challenge for me is not getting ahead of myself with planning exact layouts and design. I often tell myself to slow down, live with the space and let it tell me what it needs instead of instantly populating it in my head. 

E: Almost the entire electrical and plumbing systems needed to be redone when I purchased the house. I couldn’t put it off  even if I wanted to; it was absolutely necessary for safety and functionality. I have also done some sections of foundation and retaining walls but the entire foundation will need to be done eventually and that is a huge amount of work. The roof is about 3000 sq. ft. —  it was a big job — I outsourced that one.

The biggest challenge is that Maybeck houses from the ‘20s are handcrafted in a way that is impossible to reproduce. The hand carved redwood trim for example — modern redwood doesn’t have the same dense, rich grain. If you bought some salvage redwood you could maybe get the same grain, but it wouldn’t be the same color because after it is cut it’s pinkish; then it would have to oxidize for 90 years to get the same brown color as the other wood. You can’t stain it to match because even if it matches perfectly now, it wouldn’t match in 10 years. 

Maybeck didn’t like paint during this time so almost nothing (besides the steel windows) originally had paint on them. Instead there are plaster and stucco stains and textures that are also impossible to reproduce. The exterior of our house still has an original finish that was unique to Maybeck’s work in the ‘20s. Various pigments were flung with a whisk broom at the raw stucco exterior to give it a mottled, almost camouflage look. How do you fix the cracks and holes in the stucco without painting over the repairs (which won’t match) and betraying the original design… I still haven’t figured out what to do.

Q: You’ve done a lot of the work yourselves. What should people know when renovating an older home?

E: DIY is often glorified on television with unrealistic expectations, time frames, and budgets. Find a good builder that you can trust and hire them for consulting. Most people who go to Home Depot to DIY a house project would be better suited to hiring someone unless it’s really simple like paint or basic gardening. I see people in Ace Hardware all the time looking for some gasket for leaky plumbing in their house. There are a million different gaskets and specialty tools used for plumbing. It’s surprisingly complicated and takes lots of experience and knowledge to do it correctly! I want to tell these people — please hire a plumber! 

For us it seems DIY but this is actually our job. There’s a pretty big unseen learning curve for every aspect of a house. You can make a whole career in home electrical; there is a surprising depth to it. As a beginner, with most little projects you might think, “how bad could it be?” You don’t really know how much there is to know until you start to dig into a project — and you won’t really know you did a bad job until your fence or whatever fails in a few years. In my opinion, you aren’t actually good at something until you’ve done it maybe three times at least. So don’t invest in tools and materials unless painting the interior of your house or something like that is going to become a hobby of yours. It might pay off if you do it enough — to get the experience so you can be efficient and pay off the equipment overhead in money saved.

I have been remodeling full time since 2010 and am still learning things. I even look at things I’ve done a year ago and sometimes think ‘hmm’ — it’s not exactly how I would do it now. A moderately experienced and priced builder is usually cheaper than doing it yourself unless you are OK working for $5 an hour. It sounds funny coming from someone who does almost everything himself, but I’ve done it all and I can say in hindsight — pay someone.

Q: What’s your personal aesthetic and how do you bring it into your home?

C: I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot lately and don’t have a definitive answer. Ever since I started thrifting my freshman year of college, my personal aesthetic has been evolving. I buy things that make me smile and deserve a second life. These things tend to be colorful, cat-related (we have two), floral and shiny. I’m not sure that this aesthetic would work well in a brand new modern home and I’m happy it works perfectly with this one. 

Q: How did you go about furnishing? How did the bones of the house impact furniture selections?

C: At first, we just moved in our existing furniture in order to get a feel for what we really needed and honestly, it’s still a work in progress.. We knew that we wouldn’t be able to afford era appropriate antique furniture and we also didn’t think we would want to fill the house with a bunch of wood furniture since so much of the architecture includes dark wood. Instead of a sea of wood, we have selected pieces that either contrast with their surroundings with bright colors, or disappear a bit more by being painted black. 

Q: Do you have tips for bringing out a home’s natural character? 

C: When replacing more permanent elements such as lighting and plumbing fixtures, select items either from the era of your home or that nod to the era of your home. When we moved in, the majority of light fixtures were missing and we slowly scrounged estate sales, antique shops and Craigslist for replacements instead of purchasing something brand new. The lights look as if they belong and definitely help bring out the home’s natural character. 

Q: Do you have any furniture layout advice for making the most of quirky spaces in older homes where open space planning wasn’t a thing that people did? 

C: The first thing is to measure the space carefully and consider how you plan to use it. Our living room is fairly spacious, but it is an odd cross shape with a lot of corners. When we first moved in, we bought a beautiful gold velvet sofa that was about 9’ long. At first it seemed perfect since the room is so wide, but then as we started living in the space and having more guests visit, we realized that it was a bit awkward to have everyone sitting facing the same direction. We eventually got rid of that sofa, bought a much smaller one and now we have 3 additional lounge chairs surrounding a round coffee table. The layout is much more conducive to conversation and allows for better circulation through the room. 

I also think it’s important to not get attached to certain design rules, such as allowing for plenty of clearance around a dining table. If we had left a 30”-36” clearance surrounding our dining table, we would have a 14” wide table.. Instead, we used an old narrow door we found under the house, added legs and a glass top and built benches that sit on the long sides of the table and chairs on either end. Sure, it’s a bit tight, but it works. 

Q: How did you bring your unique personalities into the home? 

C/E: We’re both into sustainability and old things and are trying to find an eclectic charm through furniture, art and found objects. It is pretty difficult though — when you see an interesting object in an antique shop or estate sale, it may speak to you — something about it charms you and you must buy it. And when you aggregate these objects into your home, you hope that your personality will shine through them. But sometimes, it just just doesn’t click and you need to do the best with what you have and live with it for a while as a rough draft. Then you keep buying things that bring you joy, instead of something to fill a void. It’s a difficult process, realizing your antique candelabra or whatever isn’t going to work in the space and then you don’t know what to do with it or what to put in its place. These vintage items can often be worthless besides the five dollars you’ve spent on them. It takes 4 or 5 revisions of a space before it really feels right and we’re still working on revisions 1 and 2..