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Published on 07/27/1998 All articles from this issue

Dalmatians come to Camellia Way home

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue

Town Crier Staff Writer

Folks are seeing spots on Camellia Way. Last Friday one resident on the street of '50s single-story houses, with carefully tended yards, had her house painted to look like a Dalmatian: white with black spots.

"I thought it'd be cute," said the owner, who declined to give her name. "I wanted to do something creative. It matches the mailbox."

A wooden mailbox, carved and painted like a Dalmatian, is in front of the house.

"My grandfather made the mailbox for me when I got the dog," she said.

Ditto, her 5-year-old Dalmatian, celebrated a fifth birthday last week, and a Mylar balloon floated from a string above the mailbox.

This is the street where two different homeowners, in the past 12 months, each came to the city with requests for a second-story addition. But most of the neighbors wanted to maintain a "consistent" neighborhood and fought hard against the plans with petition drives and city council appeals.

The vice chairwoman of the newly appointed city design guideline task force, who was a key person in the challenge to two-story additions on Camellia way, lives across the street.

But the owner said her newly painted house has nothing to do with the flap over design that has been going on with her street for the past 12 months.

"I've seen some pretty interesting paint jobs around the neighborhood," she said.

When one neighbor spotted the, er, spots, for the first time, she sucked in her breath and said, "Oh, my land. Look at that."

She declined to give her name but did say she had only moved in a few months ago.

Penny Lave, a former mayor of Los Altos and currently a member of the city's planning commission as well as the design guideline task force, said, "I appreciate the flight of fancy," after she saw the house.

"We don't have any guidelines on (house) color, except for commercial buildings," she said.

Los Altos painter Steve McDermaid, who painted the house, thought it was "a great idea."

Camellia Way "is such a pretty street," Lave said. "This doesn't detract at all. I can't help but think people's first reaction will be amusement."