The Ugly Duckling
September 7th, 2010 | By: Fred Nystrom
The renovation of a neighborhood starts one home at a time.
The Ugly Duckling
Sooner or later almost every neighborhood ends up with one home that morphs, through neglect or some quirks of the owners, until finally it qualifies as the “ugly duckling” of the neighborhood. For the historic neighborhood of Sycamore, the downward spiral of a once beautiful home on a well-landscaped corner lot began with a new owner who was fearful of trees. She gave in to her phobia by having 30 mature firs and cedar trees cut down in a single day. (This was before the City of Issaquah enacted its tree removal control act.) The home’s lush and shaded lawns dried out and the shade plantings died, leaving a parched landscape.
The next owners decided to build a 2-foot-tall planter that covered the roots and lower trunks of the last four majestic cedar trees on the lot; they, too, soon died. Compounding the destruction, the owners painted the two-story house baby blue and added a prefabricated white fence tilting in every direction except straight. Now the only landscaping was done by gophers, which pushed up hundreds of dirt mounds in the weed-choked yard.
The once Ugly Ducking is now the pride of the neighborhood
Luckily for the other neighbors, the owners sold the ugly duckling and left the area. For the next year or so, as the real estate market collapsed, the ugly duckling sat and continued its downward spiral, until a young energetic couple, Keith and Jocelyn Frasier, bought the sad place in a foreclosure sale.
In short order, the rickety white fences disappeared, the yard was graded and cleaned up, the rotten wooden deck was removed, and, for the first time in a decade, the duckling began to look better. Over the following year, the Frasiers applied their vision to cultivating the neglected yard and restoring the beauty of the home.
The once ugly duckling is now one of the most beautiful and well-landscaped homes in the neighborhood. Neighbors have been stopping to introduce themselves to the Frasiers and to thank them for the creative work they have done to their home and the positive effect they have had on the entire neighborhood.
Good taste and creativity are all it takes to transform an ugly duckling into something graceful.
