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Homes

Old-style charm meets 21st century

A 1925 bungalow gets an update with a larger porch, a new kitchen and even some modern art.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published September 23, 2005

SOUTHEAST SEMINOLE HEIGHTS - The first time Claude Maggi drove by the 1925 bungalow on a spacious corner lot in this historic neighborhood, he knew it had star potential.

The exterior bones were good, the interior ideal for a home office and the wrap-around front porch a plus on hot Florida days.

"We weren't even looking to buy," he recalls of the 2,740-square-foot house on McBerry Street. "But the minute we walked through, we knew there was something about it."

Maggi, 45, and his partner in real estate investment, Rich Guagliardo, 43, bought the four-bedroom, two-bath home in December and began massive restoration in March.

The idea, explains Maggi, who has long nurtured an interest in architecture and landscape design, was "to bring it into the 21st century," while still retaining its historic integrity. He doubled the size of the 700-square-foot porch. He managed to preserve an 80-year-old crepe myrtle by allowing it to grow through a cleverly designed opening in the patio, while maximizing the view of the yard, which will eventually include a swimming pool.

On the other side of the house, a modern outdoor kitchen will pay homage to the past, thanks to a large, refurbished 1920s sink and washboard.

With its two grand oaks, camphor tree, Norfolk pine, Florida orchid tree and exotic fruit trees, the yard still feels like an oasis in the middle of the city.

Now the craftsman-style house and garden has been selected as the designer showcase home on the second annual Southeast Seminole Heights House Tour on Dec. 4. It will be one of about a dozen houses featured on the holiday tour and Maggi and Guagliardo hope that the home will promote a neighborhood that they love dearly.

To get the home looking top-notch for the tour, they enlisted the help of interior designer Jennifer Winchell of Winchell Interiors in Lutz.

Her goal? Blend old and new in a unique way, incorporating art and furnishings belonging to the owners and adding luscious fabrics for window treatments and upholstery.

"I want to tell the story of the house as well as unique expression of the owners," she says. "This house is not just something that happened in the past, but about the personalities of who lives in it now."

For example, she plans to cover a worn Bergere chair and ottoman with a Ralph Lauren tapestry fabric, chocolate brown fabric and leather. She hung Maggi's $50 garage sale deer head over the fireplace next to a painting of a voluptuous woman by an artist she jokingly calls a "Botero wannabe," a reference to the work of well-known artist Fernando Botero.

Winchell, who will collaborate with a team of other designers, including a muralist and floral designer, also selected the interior's masculine but sensual color palette using a modern painting that hangs in the living room as a guide.

"I like the idea of incorporating something so contemporary in an old house," she explains of the browns, taupes, burgundies and reds that give the house a richness and warmth.

Built by a once-prominent Tampa land surveying family - whose descendants continued to occupy it into the early 1990s - the house is constructed entirely of terracotta block, probably intended to withstand hurricanes. Its interior framing was built entirely of wood cleared from the surrounding area, including oak and pine.

The buyers were attracted to many features of the house, which they bought for $210,000, according to county records. Those features include a window-wrapped upstairs room that they are converting to a movie and entertainment center.

The kitchen is an ode to Maggi's love of cooking, with its commercial appliances including a built-in Miele coffee machine. The cabinetry design, the work of local kitchen designer Roman Baezana, harkens back to craftsman-style interior of an original bungalow kitchen. And the travertine marble mosaic floor, which Maggi laid himself, is subtlely beautiful, lending the kitchen a truly custom look.

Inside, a room dedicated to Maggi's home office can be accessed from the exterior of the house and closed off for complete privacy.

"That was a feature I really liked about the house," says Maggi, a senior investment adviser for Sperry Van Ness, a commercial real estate company.

Maggi was able to convert an existing coat closet into a control room for computers, sound and other systems integral to the dedicated office as well as the living spaces. A state-of-the-art generator was recently installed to get the house up and running on natural gas within seconds of a power outage.

Plans are in the works to refurbish the master bedroom and bath, creating a suite that will open to the terrace. Work on the house will be largely completed by the date of the holiday tour. Both Maggi and Guagliardo hope visitors will take away inspiration for their own homes, not to mention a strong interest in Southeast Seminole Heights.

"The passion in this neighborhood is unbelievable," says Guagliardo, a real estate consultant for Keller Williams Realty, of the area that is a five-minute drive from downtown Tampa. "You can drive down the street and feel it. With the investment dollars we're putting into this house, we're showing that we believe in this place."

[Last modified September 22, 2005, 09:00:09]