Jane Powell's how-to books on the historic homes have made her a restoration expert.
By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published October 23, 2004
TAMPA - Jane Powell bought her first bungalow in 1987 and never looked back.
"It was a slow seduction," Powell said of her romance with the style.
Her book, Bungalow: The Ultimate Arts and Crafts Home (Gibbs Smith, $50), was published this month, and will be followed next month by Bungalow Details: Exterior.
"I realized that I liked fixing them up and that I could do it for a living."
A former window display designer for Macy's and Bullock's department stores, Powell was already handy with a drill and hammer.
"I always wanted an old house. I looked at Spanish revival, Tudors, Victorians, anything built before World War II. But the Oakland-Berkeley area where I was looking was a hotbed of bungalows."
Powell got so good at fixing up fixer-uppers that she began writing about the process. Among bungalow groupies, her richly detailed and beautifully photographed books are much more than coffee table props. In her books Bungalow Bathrooms and Bungalow Kitchens she offers homeowners both "obsessive restoration" and "compromise solutions" such as using expanded metal lath instead of wooden lath in a bathroom when plaster is too far gone.
"I tend to be on the obsessive side," Powell explains, saying that she understands when someone bypasses a dishwasher in favor of washing dishes by hand because it's more authentic (though, it must be said, less energy-efficient).
After restoring nine bungalows, the Oakland, Calif., preservationist and restoration expert is still at it, though she's moved up a bit in the world to what she jokingly calls a "bunga-mansion": a 3,800-square-foot cross between a Japanese bungalow and a Viking ship.
Powell owns House Dressing, a business dedicated to preserving old homes, particularly bungalows. She will speak Nov. 3 at the Seminole Garden Center in Old Seminole Heights in Tampa and Nov. 5 at the Friday Morning Musicale in Hyde Park, also in Tampa. The free lectures are sponsored by Tampa Preservation Inc. and the Old Seminole Heights Preservation Association.
Powell's topic?
Restoring bungalow and old-house kitchens.
"It's the issue I get asked about the most," she explains.
Aficionados ask about kitchen design, countertops, appliances and floors, but mostly about how to artfully blend technology with history.
"Powell is extremely well-known and respected in California, a bungalow guru," says Old Seminole Heights resident Suzanne Prieur, a California transplant whose exquisite 1910 historic bungalow is featured in Powell's book, Bungalow: The Ultimate Arts and Crafts Home.
Prieur, a real estate agent and passionate preservationist, moved to Tampa, in part, because of its bungalows.
Although the definition of a bungalow is ultimately complicated, thick with nuances that keep old-house types up at night arguing, Powell loosely defines an American bungalow as a "one or 11/2 story house built between 1900 and 1930, usually for middle- and working-class people."
Bungalows are typically simple in design with an expressed structure of exposed rafter tails so that "it's obvious how the house was constructed."
Prieur's newly purchased 1930 bungalow has an almost identical floor plan to her former bungalow in California, a happy coincidence that allowed her to sleep tight from the first night she moved in. Already active in Old Seminole Heights preservation education efforts - she was instrumental in bringing Powell to Tampa - she has great plans to restore her current bungalow.
And bigger plans for Tampa.
She and other preservationists hope Powell's talks will generate a lecture series on related topics.
"I want Tampa's bungalows to be famous," Prieur said.
Bungalow talks
Author Jane Powell will speak at 7 p.m. Nov. 3 at the Seminole Garden Center in Old Seminole Heights, 5800 Central Ave., and at 7 p.m. Nov. 5 at the Friday Morning Musicale, 809 Horatio St. in Hyde Park, both in Tampa. The talks are free. Information: (813) 610-5255.
