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Trading in size for satisfaction

For this couple, choosing family meant downsizing from a four-bedroom home in Citrus Park to onein Seminole Heights needingrestoration.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published May 21, 2006

Their four-bedroom, two-bath, three-car-garage house on a half-acre corner lot in Citrus Park came with a bigger price tag than just a hefty mortgage payment.

Long commutes.

"It was such a waste of my life," said Sherri, a nurse manager in the newborn labor/delivery department at Tampa General Hospital.

"I would get off at 5 p.m. and spend at least an hour in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Now I can use the time to take my daughter to the park instead."

The Badias, who last year bought a small, historically unique bungalow on a quiet street in Seminole Heights, acknowledge that they opted for quality of life over square footage.

"We were running a rat race with a too-big place, lots of stuff, and a yard I had to mow all the time," said Alan, who's the creative coordinator for Suncoast Roofers Supply in Tampa.

Now Alan has more time for his family and his serious hobby: amateur competitive bike racing, a sport that often demands a grueling practice schedule of 250 miles of weekly pedaling.

The Badias looked in Seminole Heights for several years before settling on a house to buy. Alan, who grew up in Tampa, is extremely familiar with this historically significant neighborhood teeming with early 20th century bungalows - just 10 minutes from downtown Tampa.

"My grandmother lives just a few blocks away," says Alan, who drove through the neighborhood frequently, specifically looking for a historic bungalow to restore.

"I love Frank Lloyd Wright and the architects Greene and Greene (the Pasadena, Calif., firm known for its 'Ultimate' bungalows)," Alan explained. "We've always wanted a craftsman-style house."

The couple found just what they were looking for in a 1914 "airplane" bungalow fully skirted in cedar-shake siding.

"We think there is only one other house like it in the Tampa area," Alan said, referring to the cedar-shake siding, an unusual detail on an old bungalow.

The house features an upstairs room wrapped in windows, which gives it the feeling of being in an airplane cockpit. It also has its own well that supplies the family's water as well as a pump house, probably as old as the bungalow itself.

The front porch, with its mosaic tile floors and view of a variety of historic bungalows on their cul-de-sac off Hillsborough Avenue, makes for a great place for their wooden rocking chairs and impromptu al fresco dinners.

The couple, who have a 5-year-old daughter, Victoria, have worked hard to restore the house to its original luster, including having the heart pine floors restored, painting much of the interior and the exterior columns, cleaning a very dirty (but good) fireplace, and refurbishing the extra-wide, red-leaf pine front door.

"We had to remove bars from all of the windows," Alan said, noting that the neighborhood, which has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years, is no longer the kind of place where such security measures are needed.

The couple even met with bungalow guru, California author and consultant Jane Powell, who was in the Tampa Bay area a few weeks ago speaking on bungalow exteriors. The Badias, who believe they are the third owners of their home, plan to restore the kitchen and master bathroom, both last redone in the 1960s.

They say their major downsizing effort, though ultimately freeing and fulfilling, was extremely difficult at first.

"We had a walk-in bedroom closet that was half the size of our current kitchen," Alan said.

What did they decide to hang onto?

Easy.

The Badias are longtime collectors of 1920s Czech glass, much of it in deep, vibrant earth tones.

"It's the sort of thing people who lived in homes like this would have collected at the time," Alan said.

They also collect antique furnishings, from the handsome old chaise lounge and sofa in the living room, to an Art Deco-era china cabinet with a small modern clock built in.

Sherri admits that they had to mull some hard questions as they literally dispensed with half their belongings in order to fit into a small, historic bungalow in an urban neighborhood so close to downtown that she never misses a minute with her family.

"Here we were, both 40 years old," she recalled, "and we had to ask ourselves, did we really need so much stuff?"

[Last modified May 21, 2006, 09:31:26]