When Todd Sandoval saw a real estate ad that read, “Coconut Grove in Pinecrest,” he knew this was a house worth seeing. He loved the lush, overgrown environs of his tiny house in the Grove, but he needed more space, a liberty afforded by a different location. Given the right house, he thought, this could be one killer combination.
Hiding behind oak trees and gumbo limbo was a 1952 one-story, ranch house constructed of oolitic limestone and cypress. Even though it hadn’t been updated since the ’50s, he fell in love with the home immediately. Hours later, it was his.
Born and raised in Miami, Sandoval is the owner of Palmetto Motorsports in Hialeah, a family operation passed down from his father. Over the years, he became an admirer of the architect Alfred Browning Parker’s work, prolific in the Coconut Grove area. As he started what would become a three-year renovation on the 2,700-square-foot home in Pinecrest, Sandoval couldn’t help but note the structural similarities it had to Parker’s work. The architect on record was a Vincent Grimm, whom Sandoval discovered worked closely with Parker on several Miami-based projects. Although Parker, who is still working in Gainesville, Florida, could never confirm for certain that this house was one of these collaborative projects, Sandoval is confident. “A tell-tale sign is that the whole roof is ventilated,” he says. Regardless, he knew he didn’t want to stray far from the original architect’s plan.
So he procured the help of Miami architect Max Strang for the renovation. Strang, whose firm has a history of working with older homes, lives in a limestone house himself and was eager to work with the native Florida material again. Describing it as “a special kind of ranch house,” he proposed a sensitive solution that would honor the home’s history but give it the modern update it deserved.
“Oftentimes, older homes offer more to work with,” Strang says. “All it needed was very few strategic moves to open it up to its surroundings.” The most dramatic adjustments included the removal of a wall at the foyer entrance and another between the kitchen and living room. In what was once a guest bedroom, they pushed one wall out to create more space, making it the master. To add light, three windows along the back wall were replaced with floor-to-ceiling glass doors. They added four walls in the master bathroom to create a “pod,” a free-floating room within a room. Sandoval also had the carport transformed into a garage, so it could protect his many toys: two motorcycles, two boats and, at the time of the renovation, a ’65 Corvette.
Once the floor plan was laid out, the interior design started to fall into place. “When the project starts to design itself,” Strang says, “you know you’re doing the right thing.” Since Sandoval lives alone — besides Emma, that is, a stray dog that wandered into his store one day — Strang wanted to design a true bachelor pad: a modern, industrial space that could also accommodate visiting friends and family. So they decided on a sleek, masculine kitchen in blue (Sandoval’s favorite hue), complete with stainless-steel GE Monogram appliances and a large center island topped with concrete for low maintenance.
The baseboards and the interior walls — those that weren’t limestone — were a weathered gray cypress, which the previous homeowner had stained dark. Sandoval sanded them down to their bare state and applied a bleaching oil. “It was all about respecting the original palette of the wood and the limestone,” Strang says. Playing off the inherent orange of the stone, Sandoval chose orange accent pillows and a ginger-orange rug from El Dorado for the living room. The original gold mosaic fireplace was caving in, so they replicated it with gold tiles from Trend USA in Miami. Going against the bachelor-pad-grain, Sandoval didn’t see the need for a television in every room, so he found a space for just one “swinging television” that could be watched from the family room, office and kitchen. “The whole idea was less is more,” Sandoval says.
A spacious backyard called out for a pool, so he hired stonemason David Goodrich (who has also done stone work at the Kampong in Coconut Grove) to help with the construction. “As a kid, our neighbors had an above-ground pool,” Sandoval says. “So I wanted one.” He decided to shape it after a limestone tile he liked in the patio area, a unique form, especially for a swimming pool. For materials, they saved the oolitic limestone that they unearthed while digging the pool and used it for the base and sides, substituting it with keystone for the top.
During delays, which there were plenty of, Sandoval focused on the landscaping, which “became a labor of love,” he says. He decided to take what he loved about the home from the day he discovered it — its verdant setting, its organic nature — and expound upon it. In addition to the 20 oak trees and 20 gumbo limbo trees that were already in place, Sandoval planted eight Sabal palms, six Dade County pine trees, six bald cypress trees, two Paurotis palms and an assortment of wild coffee, allspice, sea daisies and pigeon plum plants. He removed anything that was non-native, including ficus and rubber trees and corn plants.
“I wanted a native Florida look,” Sandoval says, “like an old Florida cracker house.” In other words, his own slice of Coconut Grove in Pinecrest.
See more photos of Todd Sandoval's home in our photo gallery.
