Welcome!

Welcome to our Renovation Steinback Mountain blog! We’re a few weeks away from beginning what will be a multi-stage renovation of our dream home that we lovingly refer to as Steinback Mountain. About the name: It’s a play on words combining one of our favorite films, Brokeback Mountain, and the area we live made famous by its native son, John Steinbeck.

We’re Chip and Kevin, a married couple, together for sixteen years, and huge fans of all things midcentury modern. We recently sold our “retirement” home in Palm Springs, a 1959 Alexander, and will be using the profits from that sale to fund the renovation of our current and final home that sits on four acres on a hillside overlooking the Salinas Valley. Chip has an EdD  in Educational Technology (Pepperdine) and a Masters in Aerospace Engineering (Texas A&M). Kevin has an MFA in Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art. We have a large collection of MCM furniture, most of it designed by our heroes (and Cranbrook alumni) Ray and Charles Eames, Harry Bertoia, and Eero Saarinen.

 
The history of our home
Our home has a rich history. It was designed and built by George Tombleson for his family in 1952. Mr. Tombleson started Tombleson General Contractors in Salinas in 1946 and it has grown into one of the regions’ largest construction companies. Tombleson, Inc. has built and renovated a number of buildings for CSU Monterey Bay, where we both work, and their reputation is well earned.

When we purchased the place in 2010, we were excited to find the original plans stored in a small drafting table in what was originally called the “Barbecue Room.” The home is actually three buildings: the main house connected by a covered breezeway to the BBQ Room and a guest house at the opposite end of the back yard. Fortunately, little has been done with the buildings other than a not-very-MCM update to the kitchen which appears to have been done sometime in the 1970s. Our goal is to update the home so that it “works” for our current times while honoring the original vision of its creator.

Putting together the right team
To do this, a year ago we contacted Tombleson, Inc. to see if they would be interested in working on the project. It began with a phone call to Don Locke, Tombleson’s current owner. Unfortunately, Mr. Locke was not available but his son, Mike, was able to take our call. Turns out he was familiar with our house and said he and his dad could come the next day to discuss the project. When we first met the Lockes, it was instantly obvious that they would be the perfect contractors. Don told us he had worked on the house many times over the years as Mr. Tombleson continued to play with his original design. He also had been invited to holiday meals at the Tombleson’s. Don especially endeared us when he said that Mr. Tombleson had hired him as an apprentice carpenter when he was 19 and for many years told him to save his money because he wanted the business to someday be his.

So we started the project knowing our construction team would not treat it like just any other project but rather as an homage to its founder. Everyone on board knows this is a special and unique home and we all want to do George Tombleson proud.

Mike Locke has been especially helpful leading the project. He recently finished a renovation on his home a few miles away and has generously shared the ups and downs of that project, especially those that relate to permits and working with the County planning department. When we first met, we told Mike that, based on budget concerns, we hoped to do the renovation in stages: First, the guest house and BBQ Room so that we could move into them while we took on the much larger renovation of the main house. At Mike’s suggestion, we started last summer with replacing the single pane windows in all three buildings with custom double pane windows. This could be done without permits and getting it done first made the most sense in terms of immediate energy cost savings.

None of the windows in the compound open like traditional windows. Instead, above each window are wood paneled transoms that can be opened to control the air flow and internal temperature. Speaking of temperature, now would be a good time to mention that the house is and always has been 100% electric. No gas, no propane. Its only source of heating is electric baseboard heaters and a fireplace in both the main house and BBQ Room. After our first winter when we experienced monthly electric bills over $400, we made our first upgrade, two Danish (Morso) fireplace inserts. We chose them for two reasons: 1) they were the least polluting and most energy efficient models available and 2) their modern simplicity seemed to be a perfect fit for the MCM aesthetics of the original design. Now, with the new fireplace inserts and dual pane windows, our monthly electric bills in winter are way below $100.

Shortly after bringing the Tombleson company on board, Mike suggested we hire JHW Architects, a Monterey based firm, to draw up the plans we would need for County approval. After living on Steinback Mountain for three years, we were pretty clear on the design changes we wanted and had given the contractors a Photoshopped version of Mr. Tombleson’s original plans (which did not include the guest house) showing what walls we wanted moved, the conversion of the main bathroom to the master bathroom, and the conversion of the original master half-bath to the main house’s public bathroom. Hiring an architectural firm would not be cheap, but it was a necessary expense.

Daryl Hawkins (the H in JHW) came to our property, took lots of pictures and numerous measurements, and left to begin the lengthy process of drafting the plans for the County of Monterey. These included Site Plans, Elevations, as well as Visual Easements that are required because of our hillside location. Not long after that process started, Daryl informed us that because our house was over 50 years old and because we wanted to add an additional window to the front of the main building and change the gable roof of the guest house to match the flat roof design of the other two buildings, we were required to hire an architectural historian who would review the proposed plans and recommend to the County Architectural Review Board whether or not they should be approved.

Of course, this was another expense and time delay we had not planned for but something we had to do. A couple of thousand dollars later, and with the blessing of Monterey’s only architectural historian, we were ready to go before the Review Board. An interesting, and perhaps destined coincidence took place at that meeting. The “Butterfly House,” easily the area’s most famous midcentury modern house which sits majestically on the coast on Carmel Point, was recently purchased for 16.5 million and also being renovated and up for review. In our historian’s report, he suggested that Mr. Tombleson was most likely the contractor for the Butterfly House designed by Frank Wyncoop and built in 1950.

The Architectural Review Board approved the plans last November. Since then, Daryl and another architect, Doug Roberts, have completed the final engineering drawings which were approved in June. We've also just returned from our second Dwell on Design conference in L.A. with lots of samples, inspirations, and the coolest cabinet hardware ever.

We are ready to go!