Jul 27, 2020
An 8-foot high, multi-paneled glass door off the dining room folds back, opening the home to a secluded backyard patio. At the opposite end of the vast room, a large kitchen window overlooks the front yard’s lush garden landscape. When the panoramic patio door and kitchen window are fully open—no intrusive screens involved—the effect is like standing in a serene oasis with a cross breeze that may bring in a dragonfly or two.
“When designing the house, I told our architect, ‘I want to bring the outside in,’” homeowner Helen Wheeler says.
Jun 25, 2020
Unaware they are trespassing on land owned by the Sacramento Kings, hundreds of snowy egrets and black-crowned night herons have taken up residence in a deserted oasis on the north side of Sleep Train Arena.
From a chain-link fence surrounding the grassland, the birds can be seen gliding among cement slabs and rebar, the foundation for a baseball stadium project led by Greg Lukenbill in the late 1980s that never came to fruition.
May 27, 2020
Terry Grabowy purchased his “really old, really small” home, tucked away off a quiet road in Carmichael, in 1989. More than 30 years later, it was time to level the 1,200-square-foot dwelling and start anew.
“It was meant to be torn down and something new built because the house was just so old and the foundation was really lousy,” Grabowy says. “Part of it was raised and part of it was slab. The concrete was falling apart.”
Apr 1, 2020
Bill Harms is an artist and craftsman who studied with a master in Germany. In 1957, Harms migrated to New York with his parents and siblings. A year later, they crossed the country by bus and landed in Sacramento.
“We got out on L Street where the Greyhound bus station was,” Harms says. His first impression was a sleepy village. But the family soon found an apartment at 23rd and G streets, and “that’s when we started loving the area.”
