THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 13, 1996 TAG: 9601120380
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JANET DUNPHY, SPECIAL TO REAL ESTATE WEEKLY
LENGTH: Long : 117 lines
The Chesapeake Bay is charming people back to the old neighborhoods that line its shores.
Speculators are buying property on and near the bay for new construction and investment purposes; others are meticulously restoring cottages, full-size homes and multi-use buildings that date back to the 1920s.
Recently, Sherri Dubay surveyed the inside of her latest project, a gutted building on Lookout Road in the Chick's Beach area of Virginia Beach.
Destined to be a cozy Italian neighborhood eatery, the interior if far from finished. Yet Dubay has a clear vision of what it will look like down the road. It's a vision that has already helped her successfully renovate about a dozen homes and one restaurant in the area.
It was thriftiness that brought Dubay and her husband Hayden to Chicks Beach 12 years ago in the first place. They wanted to buy a house.
``We started with the MLS book and purchased the cheapest house in there,'' says Sherri, remembering the $40,000 price tag for her two-bedroom cottage on Pleasure Avenue ``that needed a little TLC.''
Dubay, a California native, felt a kinship to Chick's Beach. ``It was a very eclectic area. It reminded of Venice Beach in California. It had a little bit of everything,'' she says.
She saw a lot of potential in the neighborhood, mainly because of its proximity to the bay beach. ``There's really only so much real estate left on the water,'' she says.
The house needed work and Dubay was eager to renovate it, but she discovered she couldn't afford a contractor. Instead, she hired the subcontractor. He taught her all about lumber as well as the steps it takes to put a house back together.
DuBay takes pride in keeping the original aspects of her buildings. She loved the intricate wood in the house. The windows, which still had the original Depression glass, were ornate and the front door was hand-carved. She burned off the many coats with a blow torch and then sanded the wood down.
Instead of totally modernizing the bathrooms by installing new tubs, Dubay removed the claw feet and had them re-brassed and did the same with the plumbing fixtures. She also kept the crystal doorknobs throughout the house.
Removing a wall between the small living room and kitchen created a great room. She also closed up several extra doorways between the living areas and the bedrooms to create more wall space.
The Dubays lived in the house during the renovations. ``It was a little more than I anticipated,'' She says. But it was worth it. The property, which includes a previously empty lot where the Dubays have since built another cottage, is worth about $200,000.
After making the investment in their own home, the Dubays wanted to make a bigger impact on the neighborhood. They made an offer to the owner of the property across the street from the side yard on Fentress Avenue but were turned down. Later, the owner and his partner had a falling out and sold the property to the Dubays.
This purchase presented Dubay with a much bigger challenge because it included an entire block's worth of property: a restaurant, now the Chick's Beach Cafe, on the corner of Lookout Road and Fentress Avenue; three cottages scheduled for demolition, and an empty corner lot. They paid $210,000.
The cottages each have small lots behind them and together with the corner lot back up to a lake. Today they are painted terra-cotta with turquoise trim.
At first it looked as though the cottages had severe termite damage; the wood floors were caved in to the center. But Dubay got some good advice. A man from Chesapeake told her to hit the wooden joists with an ice pick to see if they were termite-damages. The problem turned out to be sinking pillars, so she jacked up the houses.
``A lot of things that some people think are bulldozer material aren't.'' says Dubay. She never considered tearing the cottages down and putting up new construction, even though it would have utilized more of the property.
``It was just so beautiful. To take down trees to make room for a rental unit would have been a shame,'' adds Dubay. ``I just took what was there and made it work.''
Dubay saved money by hiring people who wanted to earn extra money and didn't mind working weekends. She hired only experts for the complicated jobs, like electrical wiring and plumbing. Her hairdresser knew some young Marines and Dubay hired them to work for her on the weekends.
``It was within my budget,'' she says. ``And they knew how to work together.'' They called themselves ``the weekend warriors'' and she'd feed them Sunday dinner. One worked for her for eight years.
Another house they acquired on the block - her neighbor offered it for sale to Dubay - was the biggest yet. ``It about broke my back,'' she says. ``Each job got a little more complicated.'' The kitchen portion of the house was barely hanging on, Dubay chainsawed it off.
Now she's finishing up a piece of their third acquisition at the beach, the restaurant. That property included seven unique cottages constructed of cinder block that Dubay previously renovated as well as a hair salon and larger home.
The cottages are one-bedroom, one-bath efficiencies that face a common courtyard and have little yards of their own. Dubay was seven month pregnant when they brought the cottages. Every tenant moved out unexpectedly and she had to renovate them all at once in order to get leases and pay for them.
They rent for $525 a month now while the others Dubay renovated down the street rent for $650 a month.
The next project for the Dubays will be to design and build a house for their family on the Fentress Avenue corner lot, which backs up to the lake. The house they renovated and currently live in on Shore Drive will be used as Hayden Dubay's law office.
``I just really feel like the quaintness of the area is where the value is,'' says Dubay. ``Anybody can build new.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover by Jim Walker
Sherri Dubay...
Color photos by Jim Walker
Sherri Dubay and Richard Tumminelli are renovating a Chick's Beach
restaurant.
Scott Pickett helped Dubay redo a small house on Fentress Avenue.
One of Dubay's finished projects on Seaview Avenue near the
Chesapeake Bay.
by CNB