Sunday, October 18, 2009

By story BY BARBARA BOWERS Special to The Citizen PHOTOS BY MICHAEL PHILIP Special to The Citizen

The clear-through view from the foyer of 1509 Patricia St. to the back garden is just one of its bright and airy features. Walls of glass sliding doors and strategically placed mirrors contribute to the openness, too.

Two renovations and three additions since 1981 have turned Sherry and Nelson Read's typical, two-bedroom/one bathroom, 1950-ish block structure into a spacious design of three bedrooms, two bathrooms and an almost free-standing studio in the rear garden.

And there's still room for more.

"After the hot tub died four years ago during Hurricane Wilma we thought about a pool," said Nelson. But the temptation to add a swimming pool gave way to the massive mango tree that stood its ground through more storms than Wilma, eventually affording it the opportunity to give thanks to the couple last year, with at least 1,000 juicy Haden mangos.

The mango tree overhangs the 1986 screened-in porch addition. Its side-gable roof -- a vision of architect Bert Bender -- extends almost the width of the rear lot to cover the studio/guesthouse, also built at that time.

A narrow, covered breezeway separates the two and creates "my favorite place to read," Sherry Read said. "But I spend more time in the studio."

At the moment, under construction in the studio are her delicate origami peace cranes. Nearby, boxes of exotic beads and shells are stacked on the desk, and within easy reach are cabinet drawers full of beach glass.

"The beach just calls me," she said. "When I had a dog, I walked it every day, but now it's more like three times a week at low tide -- always when there's good light."

Although Sherry moved to Key West in 1973, she has collected beach-found objects for only the past 10 years -- everything from buttons and beads to old earrings and figurines. Nevertheless, the collection is vast.

Throughout the house are jars of antique body parts from porcelain dolls, old bottles and broken bottle necks, and beach glass constructions that all have led to her latest series, miniature masterpieces.

"When I find interesting and still-intact doll heads, I make them the centerpieces of my hardwood canvases then work around them beach glass and old pieces of pottery that I've found," she said. "I've been able to research many of the pieces, like the doll parts I've found from a well-known 1906 shipwreck, and I often enter letter segments into a Web site that helps me identify glass bottles."

Although fragments of Scotts Emulsion bottles are fairly common, Read said one beach walk rendered from the sand a complete "Dead Shot Vermifuge" bottle.

"I know ... it's hard to believe that people bought stuff like that," she laughed. "The size and shape of the bottle suggests it was a one-shot gulp for a very foreign malady."

Read's found artwork blends seamlessly into the household's eclecticism of local artists (Peter Lefcort and Gill Furoy photos and her son Dustin Bergh's drawings are but a few), and also its rattan furniture and family antiques.

"The dining room table and the drop-leaf table in the living room are from Nelson's family. The hand-painted Chinese desk was my mothers, and according to who needs it most to suit new household changes, mother's old rattan passes between me and my sister, Nancy Bender," Read said.

At the moment, one of the rattan hassocks is made into a coffee table in the Read's living room, the other still acts as a footrest for the chairs and sofa in the Florida room.

The Florida room was added during the first renovation in 1981, when architect Tom Pope redesigned the original house by bumping out the front entry wall, inserting sliding glass doors and accessing the space to the then new master suite converted from the carport.

Everything in the large bedroom is built-in, and two walls of glass sliding doors give it a luxurious sense of outdoor sleeping. Because the garden has high fences on both sides, the Reads use no window treatments to block the flow of light or air.

Pope used a similar bump-out technique in the kitchen, where a solid wall was replaced with glass sliding doors that enlarged the kitchen and dining room area.

Surprisingly, the Reads were able to keep the original Cuban tile floor because they found their perfect match in a Miami store. It's almost impossible to tell where the old tile stops and the newer tiles start.

The long, wood deck that runs the full length of the house's west side -- from master suite in front to the Florida room in back -- also was part of the 1981 rehab. Then the deck was extended to the screened-in porch added in 1986, and overall, the finished product is as seamless as the Cuban tile floor.

And still, there was room for one more change: Encouraged by last year's bountiful mango season, the Reads turned the defunct hot tub into a useful vegetable plot, and now they eagerly await at least 1,000 bay beans.

Barbara Bowers is a writer and member of the Key West Historic Architectural Review Commission. To suggest a home feature, send an e-mail to Barbara@bbowers.com. Homes listed for sale will not be considered.