by Laura Read

Homestead Magazine 

In 1992 when Carol Braham and her husband, Bob, moved north from southern California to a stately neighborhood in Los Gatos, California, they bought the ugly duckling on the block — a 1970s spec house that would need a dramatic makeover. Braham was a schoolteacher by trade, but also in her previous hometown she’d been enrolled in a regional occupation program to learn stone mosaic and masonry techniques. In Los Gatos, she decided to be the general contractor on the remodel, and would do as much of the physical work herself as she could. It would be a perfect chance to employ all of the skills she’d learned.

Doing the construction around the needs of her growing family (her husband is a tech-industry marketing executive, and they had two young children at the time), she and her crew patiently, carefully built the house and yard section by section. As it took 12 years to complete, the project essentially matured along with the family — and ushered Braham into a new career creating stone and pebble hardscapes for her new business, Artistic Creations.

The move was a fit for her personality. “I just loved the work,” she says. “You build it, and it stays. It’s not like when you cook something and eat it, and then it’s all gone. You can see what you’ve done and you can create something that is beautiful and lasting.”

Slow Remodel Separated from the Pacific Ocean by the Santa Cruz Mountains, Los Gatos has a moderate climate that once supported orchards of grapes, prunes, and apricots, and now hosts about 30,000 established families and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. When Braham bought the property, she was pregnant with their second child. The family moved into the home and did some basic remodeling. When the projects expanded and they could no longer live among the work, they moved into a neighbor’s “little garage” across the street.

For the next year and a half, Braham and her crew tore the original house down to the joists. “The whole thing was gutted, and we added a second story,” Braham says. “We got it to the point of getting a certificate of occupancy, and then we moved back in. I tiled the kitchen and bathroom, and made the fireplace surround and built the chimney.” After the kitchen cabinets and appliances were installed, the work began in earnest on the exterior, which Braham and a carpenter covered with shingles. “I was the corner master,” she said. “You contour each corner piece and make it fit right. You scribe it, cut it, plane it and pin nail it down.”

It took months, but by 2002, the house was finished. However, there was yet another big plan to complete: The yard. Braham had lots of ideas for it, and during the next five years, as each section came together, the yard became a catalogue of ideas. “It’s been my laboratory,” she says.

Stone connectors The landscaping was conceived as a series of “rooms” made for contrasting uses and moods. She used hardscape patterns to both differentiate and coordinate the spaces.

Since the house is on a corner lot, there are two front yards for the many dog walkers and pedestrians to admire, one leading to the front entry of the house, and another flanking the driveway and garage. After you enter a white picket gate to the front, you can either approach the house, or veer off on a path of river rock and flagstone. The “wandering path,” as she calls it, passes a wooden swing that hangs from the branches of an oak tree. The 100-year-old coastal live oak is one of two historical oaks on the property that are protected by a city tree ordinance. “We bought the property because of the two oak trees, and we’ve considered them in everything we’ve done,” Braham says.

The wandering path concludes at an arched gateway leading to the backyard, which encloses an entertainment area, a “parlor” arrangement of teakwood chairs for chats with friends, and a pretty fishpond cornered off against an inspiring mosaic wall.

If there’s a backyard figurehead, it is the property’s second large oak, which fades into the clouds on misty cool mornings. Oaks require a lot of water, Braham says. The landscaping around the tree was designed to encourage the percolation of to the roots through the mulch, stone joints, and sand that beds the flagstone and brick pavers. “The mini-mulch is great because as organic matter it breaks down into the soil,” Braham says. “And it looks nice.” The mulch also functions as a bedding for devotional medals that Braham’s mother-in-law secretly plants under the top layer for good luck. Occasionally the medals surface as shiny forget-me-nots to be discovered by whoever passes by.

Around the side of the house, the yard narrows. Its focal piece is a Tree of Life mosaic in a wall of Connecticut bluestone. Stone-cut leaves display thoughtful words. The wall is a prime example of the permanence that Braham likes so much. “It is a block wall reinforced with rebar on a foundation,” she says. “It’s not going anywhere! I cut river-washed flagstone and used those pieces as a veneer for the design.”

A fishpond burbles at the wall’s base, and a teakwood bench provides a chance to sit and relax a while. “It’s really lovely when the sun is right in the late afternoon,” Braham says.

The spot next to the Tree of Life fishpond has an entirely different mood. Braham removed the garage that stood there originally, and enclosed the space as a desperately needed storage yard. She crowned one wall with a pebble sun motif, and then splashed the ground with a delirious, and time-consuming, composition of sunbursts and ribbons.

A gate nearby transitions to the driveway side of the house, where Braham and the landscape designer who helped her, Rhadiante Van de Voorde of Elemental Design Group, created an angular knot garden counterbalanced by an espaliered apple tree, trained onto a matrix lattice along the fence. The tree is both decorative and practical. “I wanted to see that structure on the fence as a design element, but also was excited about being able to grow fruit in a small space,” Braham says. “I am definitely limited by both space and sun, but my little granny smith apple tree still does well.”

The third element in this section is a bench mounted on a stone footing embedded with a quote from Sir Walter Scott, which reads, “Nothing is more the child of art than a garden.”

“I like planting surprises that give you a little something to think about,” Braham explains. It’s an impulse she apparently shares with her mother-in-law, the planter of devotion medals.

In a nod to ancient farmers like those in Ireland, who piled field rock without mortar into walls that have endured for centuries, Braham composed long-standing dry stack walls to frame flowerbeds along the street.

Since started construction, Braham has waved to many a dog walker pausing to watch her work. “Now they say, “Hey, I’ve been watching you for years!’” she says. “They call me the crazy lady who works on her house.”

Anyone lucky enough to explore the yard will know that Braham is not crazy, but rather a wizard of design blessed with a sure sensitivity to pebbles and stone.