Alamo Heights renovation project expands when part of the 1934 house collapses

Melanie spent much of those first few weeks on the phone discussing details with Monica Beyer, a designer they hired with New Generation Kitchen & Bath.

“There was a lot of talking that we were going to have cocktails when this thing was over, that’s for sure,” Melanie joked.

She also flew to San Antonio several times to see firsthand how things were going. 

“In April, Thomas came with me,” Melanie said. “He walked in and right away said, ‘No, you need to do the kitchen, too.’ ”

A relatively contained project suddenly got a lot bigger.

Having already remodeled five houses during the couple’s various moves, Melanie said she had plenty of ideas about what she wanted in the new place. 

“We love older homes with character and detail,” she said. “I wanted to incorporate things that were already here and update them.”

She relied heavily on Beyer’s expertise, especially once the project scope expanded.

More home stories: San Antonio Battalion owner’s downtown penthouse is filled with art and ‘best views in the city’

The couple have five children, two still living at home. In addition to wanting to be closer to family, they say they moved because they’ve always loved San Antonio. Melanie, 50, a self-described “domestic engineer,” was born here and is a direct descendant of Alamo defender Johnny Kellogg. Thomas, 66, is an oncologist who does fill-in work in Uvalde every other week.

Nine decades old, the home retains much of its original charm despite having undergone previous renovatations. Most every room has wide, detailed crown molding and large baseboards, for example, and much of the flooring is oak. The kitchen floor is hand-painted, giving it a checkerboard look.

“I love the floor,” Melanie said. “It’s one of the things that attracted me to this house.”

The look served as the basis for Beyer’s plan to give the kitchen a warm, European bistro look but with modern updating.

The centerpiece of that makeover is the free-standing, 48-inch wide stainless steel stove with six burners, a griddle and gold accents made by the Italian company Ilve. The stove has plenty of pluses, including one burner with a double flame to quickly heat large pots and pans, a convection setting and two double ovens. It’s big enough to hold a turkey on a rotisserie.

“With five kids, I’ve always done a lot of cooking, but this oven is so sophisticated I have to look up a lot of tutorials to learn how to use it,” she said. “I’m really excited about using it for Thanksgiving.”

Despite its size, installing the stove opened up the area.

“There used to be a simple cooktop, but there was also a double oven to the side and a microwave oven up above,” she said. 

Once those appliances were removed, Melanie had about double the workspace and more storage. They added quartz countertops and a textured white subway tile backsplash that, in certain light, resembles mother of pearl to give the space a sleek, updated look. 

Perhaps the most dramatic bistro-look feature is the sentimental Gallic Rooster cutout she hung above the sink.

“My grandfather made it for my grandmother, and it hung in her kitchen for a long time,” she said. 

Neither the Tuckers nor Beyer were afraid to mix things up, adding an industrial-style ceiling fan and a three-ringed chandelier with hints of midcentury modern design over the kitchen table. 

“I don’t think we have one style,” Melanie said. “We are very eclectic.”

They kept several features intact, such as the glass-fronted kitchen cabinets that have wood grilles, or narrow strips of wood that separate the glass into “panes.”

“People want everything brand new, but then you kind of miss out on the uniqueness of things,” Melanie said.

More home stories: Award-winning new Olmos Park home is both empty nester-friendly and the place to party

They did remove several cabinets that wrapped around the corner of the L-shaped room, making way for a bar sink and a large wine refrigerator.

She also decided to keep the glass-fronted pantry doors, even though that leaves her stored food visible.

“I try hard to keep things organized, but when you have teenagers, you’ve got to be able to make it work,” she said. “It keeps the kitchen open without it just being another wall.”

Everything was going according to plan until they began remodeling the owner’s suite. When the drywall was removed, workers discovered a damp spot in one corner.

“I thought, OK, no big deal,” Thomas said. “Big mistake.”

As work continued, about 150 square feet of flooring collapsed into the pier-and-beam crawl space beneath the house. Fortunately, no one was injured. They concluded the collapse was caused by a combination of missing support beams and wood that rotted because of a plumbing leak or rainwater that got under the house. 

Repairing the problem set the project back about two weeks. Once that was finished, they updated the bathroom by raising the vanities from about 30 inches to a lower back-friendly 36 inches, raising the shower head and removing the dated body sprayers.

The bathroom was further modernized with ceramic penny rounds on the shower stall floor and vertical tiles up the walls, as well as starburst tiles on the floor that run up the wall behind the clawfoot soaking tub. 

And for a dose of funkiness, they hung a Sputnik-style chandelier above the tub and kept an old-style, silver medicine cabinet left behind by the previous owners to store towels, toiletries and other bathroom supplies.

[email protected] | Twitter: @RichardMarini