Open House

Reminiscent of New Orleans, the upstairs balcony of the 1950 Land Park home is ideal for enjoying Sacramento’s cool breezes and waving to neighbors from a social distance.

“We sit out there every evening,” homeowner Tamara Kaestner says.

Rocking chairs, three long rugs and a row of potted and hanging plants add to the convivial atmosphere. Look up and marvel at a starlit night sky hand-painted on the balcony ceiling by Tamara’s husband, Ken. “It was just dead space,” he says. “So we said let’s turn it into another room. Now we spend more time up there than just about anywhere else.”

Layers. That’s how Renée Carter described her Land Park home when she purchased the mid-century-style abode in 2007.

“Over the years there were layers,” Carter says. “It obviously went through several phases of homeowners trying to make it into something it wasn’t.

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.

A Century in the Making Midtown bungalow is home and studio to local artist By Cathryn Rakich July 2020 For 100 years, a quaint bungalow on a corner lot in Midtown has sheltered its occupants and kept watch over a peaceful neighborhood. The century-old...

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.”