When you walk into Uri and Lea Carrazco’s remodeled house in the Fab 40s, don’t expect to see refurbished light fixtures, original hardwood floors or carefully preserved crown molding beckoning back to the home’s heyday in the 1920s. The previous owners gutted the interior in 2015, leaving one wall standing, and started anew.
The two-story home, built in 1927, is now a showcase for contemporary living, complete with a black-and-white color palate and chic furnishings. The Carrazco’s East Sacramento abode is one of five on the annual Sacred Heart Holiday Home Tour this month.
Recently, a dear friend, who has lived in the Sacramento area for 40 years, decided to relocate back home to the Midwest where she spent the first 28 years of her life. Despite the prospect of harsh, snow-laden winters and saying goodbye to her many friends, she sold her Carmichael house and purchased a two-story condo with a stunning view of her new city.
There was just one problem. She had to transport her 17-pound schnauzer mix and four cats more than 1,500 miles to their new hometown. And it was not going to be by car—four cats in carriers and an active pooch on a four-day road trip would be too stressful.
As a “Spanish-house addict and self-diagnosed tile freak,” Kim Heartman set out to bring back the original splendor of the 1926 Spanish-style home she and her husband, Bill, purchased in 2018 in the Fab 40s.
“The house had undergone a remodel that removed whatever Spanish elements it contained prior,” Heartman says.
By her own admission, Gina Knepp didn’t know a pit bull from a Pomeranian.
“But I knew how to motivate people. How to get energy behind the mission,” says Knepp, who took over as animal care services manager at the city’s Front Street shelter in 2011.
Her mission was to turn around a failing facility with an abysmal 20 percent “live release rate”—the percentage of animals leaving the shelter alive.
When partners Peter Weight and Manny Kwahk broke through the walls of their newly purchased Land Park duplex, they found a bit of history tucked away behind the lath and plaster. Aged and tattered copies of The Sacramento Union dating to 1936 and 1937 were left in the walls by Depression-era construction workers. But instead of discarding the relics like yesterday’s news, Weight framed the old newspapers to display on those same walls as a tribute to the home’s historical past.
Visit the artisan jewelry store, Little Relics, in Midtown on Tuesdays and Thursdays and be prepared for an enthusiastic welcome from Buttercup the bulldog.
“Sometimes she becomes an overzealous greeter,” says Buttercup’s owner and master jeweler Susan Rabinovitz. “She follows people around. She thinks everyone is here to see her.”
