By Gillian Drummond
Special to the Arizona Daily Star
Remodeling can be more than a lesson in planning, patience and budgeting. If more than one person is involved, it can test a relationship, too.
So it was with Debra and Les Caid, high school sweethearts from Tucson, happily married now with two children, yet with slightly different agendas for the outside of their house.
Their problem was about a half-acre of desert that adjoined the back yard of their Foothills home.
Debra wanted a pool; Les didn't. The standoff lasted several years, and in the meantime, the rugged piece of land provided something charming to look at but — with its cacti and pack rats — not much else.
Eventually, Les relented and agreed to the pool. But there was a condition: that they incorporate a basketball court into the space as well.
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Four years ago, the pool and basketball court went in, as did a rock-and-flagstone surround to the pool, with a raised patio area and huge rock planters.
The Caids, both 51, love being outside, and they do a lot of entertaining. Debra, an insurance broker, is one of seven children. Her family alone can fill the place, she says.
So they agreed it would make sense to also have a covered seating area, similar to a gazebo, and space for a grill.
Work began in the summer of 2004, and six months later they had something much more — the makings, in fact, of a separate dwelling.
A tall, slump-block wall separates the old back yard from the new one, and a set of steps leads visitors to a tiny porch and a heavy double door.
Go through it and you're inside and outside all at once. It's a half-house, half-ramada, with slump-block walls and pillars, and a high redwood ceiling.
The seating area, on a flagstone floor, is wired for electricity and lighting. A separate open-air kitchen has a built-in barbecue and sink, a fridge and a breakfast bar.
There's indoor and outdoor furniture, from wicker chairs to a daybed, which the Caids have been known to spend the night in.
They're considering a flat-screen TV, but they draw the line at a telephone.
"I wanted to have a place where you think you're away from everything," Les says.
The décor is "a hotchpotch," Debra says. The couple bought a set of wicker furniture from Costco, but the rest — the Corian countertop, a defunct 1950s range, a set of drawers and the cabinet doors — was donated by friends and relatives. As such, the space is a friendly and funky assortment, and one that's not at all planned.
"We didn't really have a vision," Debra says. "It just kept coming to us in phases. I prefer not to plan. It feels more artistic that way — kind of like painting."
The windows, set high up in the living area and at chest height in the kitchen, came from a salvage yard.
Some of the panes of glass are missing, but the Caids, as laid-back a couple as they come, really don't mind.
Nor do they mind that their retro beer cooler (from Tres Amigos World Imports) serves better as a storage space for towels and bedding.
Or that an antique red fire bucket, a nod to Les' career in firefighting, lies on its side among some rocks.
Or that there's the head of an old parking meter stuck into the counter at one end of the bar.
"I bought it for $10. It doesn't fit there, but it's a talking point," Les says with a laugh.
The Caids reckon the whole project, minus the pool, cost them around $30,000, with not a designer or architect in sight.
According to Les, there wasn't much negotiation involved. He says Debra pretty much got her own way. "I would always lose the argument. Then I saw the error of my ways."
But he did put up a fight over an old and fast-growing Chinese Pistache tree that he adores.
It's a shade tree that sits on the edges of the kitchen area. Debra, and some of the couple's contractors, wanted the counter space to run long and cut into the tree. Les said no.
So instead, the tree has become part of the space; they've hung lights on the branches that overhang into the kitchen.
With often 100 people to cater for, Debra is tired of the small sink in the kitchen area. Les is happy to replace it, but he jokes that the couple might have to wait until someone else remodels a kitchen and throws the Caids the garbage.
● Contact freelance reporter Gillian Drummond at GCDrummond@aol.com.
» Waste not, want not
The Caids like to recycle where they can — both with furniture and resources.
Apart from the main part of the structure, every wall and column is made from concrete and rocks from their yard.
They've made a plant shade out of an old garden umbrella by draping a piece of shade cloth over the bent "arms."
Les salvaged two garden benches, replacing and painting the wood, and antiquing the metal.
On the far side of the yard, overlooking the pool, is a tin fireplace made by Les' late father and snatched by Les from his childhood home before the house was sold. Les let it rust, then he sealed it.
The pool is solar-heated, and most of the plants are low-water-use.
The water from the kitchen area is recycled into the old back yard below, and Les is keen on starting to reclaim monsoon water from the roof of the main house.