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Homes

House takes her back to her roots

Restoring a home can be daunting. But when your great-grandparents settled in the neighborhood a century ago, it can be a labor of love.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published February 18, 2005

YBOR CITY - At 34, Monica Barbie knew it was about time to buy a place of her own.

Solo.

No kids or significant other.

No wealthy parents forking over a down payment.

Just her, with the money she earns working two jobs, as a waiter at the Palm Restaurant and as a host at local wine-tasting events.

A fourth-generation Ybor City resident whose great-grandparents - both cigarmakers - immigrated to the neighborhood in 1904 from Key West, Barbie really didn't look anywhere else.

Didn't have to.

She found just what she was looking for in a $49,000, four-room, 750-square-foot shotgun-style house built in 1920 on 16th Street near 19th Avenue.

"It's all original all right," Monica mused, laughing, yanking weeds from the flower beds late one afternoon last week.

Hours after closing on the house, the electricity had yet to be turned on.

Ditto for the water.

Minutes before, she had just pulled the blue and red "For Sale" sign from the ribbon of dirt in front. An overhaul loomed.

"Original floors, pilings and asbestos front," she noted, pointing to the siding around the front door, once meant to insulate. "Bathroom updated sometime in the 1950s. There's a lot of work to be done."

The thought doesn't scare her. She's roamed the world on a shoestring, camped out on strangers' floors, achieved the impossible. Once, she sold so many Elizabeth Arden cosmetics that she won a vacation to Hawaii.

"Sunflowers (perfume) paid for my trip," she said.

She bought the house with the help of a bartender at the Palm who just got his real estate license. The seller was a classmate from Villa Madonna, a Catholic school she went to as a child.

The closing took a mere 45 minutes.

She tallied her mortgage payment at $448, far cheaper than rent.

She's going to do most of the remodeling herself, a job she expects will take a good year and a half.

The back patio, a swatch of concrete slab poured over old city brick, she plans to tackle with gusto.

"I want a Mediterranean look," she explained. "Put up a pergola, some partial decking, urns, a fountain - it will remind me of my Sicilian roots."

Barbie, whose ancestors from Italy and Cuba settled in turn-of-the-century Ybor, is the daughter of a botanical painter, known for his depictions of bromeliads. Relatives are buried in an old cemetery in Ybor where their names are inscribed on the immigrant memorial.

Her grandparents owned grocery stores and lots not far from where she lives now. Her great-grandparents worked in the Ybor cigar factories. Cuesta Ray and Perfecto Garcia Bros. stand within a short walk of her house.

Though she is not an artist herself, she follows her strong visual instincts.

She will refurbish the old heart pine floors and drop a beautiful black sink into the bathroom.

First on her list: a new mailbox and porch light.

"I'm deciding between contemporary and traditional," she said. "I think I'm going to go traditional."

Coaxing the exterior of the house back into shape is the first step in making a neighborhood bloom again, said Monica's brother, John Barbie, 30, who stopped by to check out his sister's new digs.

"Anybody can live in a box," he said. "But fix it up, make it look nice, spruce up the yard, and it becomes a home."

A former chef at PF Chang's and Macaroni Grill who is going to business school on the side, he points to neighbors who have painted their homes in a palette of tropical pastels. One woman sweeps her driveway and speaks Spanish to a neighbor who stops by to chat. Another neighbor, a single mother with small children, already has offered Monica her homemade corn bread - right out of the oven.

It's the texture of the neighborhood that gets Monica, the stuff of the heart, the visceral amalgam of food, smells, language and history that takes her back to childhood.

"In the morning, the air smells of cafe con leche and Cuban bread baking," she said. "What else could I ask for?"

In fact, there is nowhere else she'd rather live.

On this narrow street of tin-roofed shotgun and Key West-style houses, urban energy pulses. Across the street, three young men sit on the front porch of a house with their dog, soaking in the late-day light.

Teenage boys careen by on bicycles and shout greetings; a young mother pushes a baby in a stroller.

All the while, Monica's cell phone rings and rings, throngs of her big Cuban-Italian family, excited by her home purchase, calling to see what's up.

Their historic ties to the old neighborhood are further strengthened by family business ventures.

Monica and her brother, John, recently launched a small, gourmet sausagemaking company, based on her Nano (grandfather) Joe Tambuzzo's recipe. He once sold them at his old Ybor grocery, the Tip Top.

The recipe - a blending of lean pork, fennel seed, parsley, marsala wine and a secret ingredient "that makes it taste like no one else's" - has proved a hit so far among family members and friends.

"We're working on getting a license," Monica explained. "We've given out samples, and people are hearing about us by word of mouth."

At the moment, though, her primary focus is her new house.

A walk-through reveals a chain of four no-nonsense rooms, one after the other like a row of children's blocks. The front room will serve as a living room, the next a study, the next her bedroom and, finally, the kitchen. She's planning built-in shelving, a pantry, even a linen closet, because "there's only one closet in the whole house," she said with wonder in her voice.

Also on her wish list: stainless steel appliances, a new countertop - Formica that looks like granite, since she's on a budget.

She plans to keep the wrought iron bars on the windows, at least for now. The neighborhood is still in transition, and she wants to sleep with the windows open. The house has no central air or heat, and she doesn't intend to install any.

"Feel that breeze," she raved, throwing open the front door to the balmy, February twilight. "I grew up in Tampa; I don't need air conditioning or heat."

She will pay for projects as she has the money, she explains, a little at a time. No rush.

"One good weekend at the Palm," she said happily, "and I can start fixing up the patio."

[Last modified February 17, 2005, 10:50:08]