Photograph by Douglas Rider
Tour Talk: Jenny Ludwig is helping coordinate San Jose Day Nursery's 20th annual Willow Glen Lifestyles Home Tour May 5. The event gives homeowners ideas about restoration and decoration.
SJ nursery child-care programs will benefit from WG's 20th home tour
Show begins May 5 with five WG homes
By Kate Carter
Jenny Ludwig says the San Jose Day Nursery's 20th annual Willow Glen Lifestyles Home Tour May 5 is a perfect opportunity for home owners to show off their restoration and decoration efforts and for potential remodelers or just the curious to see what makes a Willow Glen house a home.
She should know. Ludwig's home was featured the first year of the tour, and she has been involved in the event ever since-as a volunteer, home solicitor or merely a participant.
"[We have] pride in these homes and in having our neighborhood of Willow Glen a showpiece," Ludwig says. "You get a sense of what Willow Glen is like beyond Lincoln Avenue."
The tour is one of the most important fundraisers for the 85-year-old nursery, located at 1544 McKinley Ave., which provides affordable childcare for children from 6 months to school age. The tour helps the nursery provide assistance to families who wouldn't otherwise be able to use its services.
Ludwig says she first become involved in the tour as most participants do--by word of mouth. Ludwig, who now works at Lincoln Avenue's Alta clothes store, spent much of her time as a stay-at-home mom volunteering, but never for the nursery, she says.
She and her husband, Barry, had bought a Willow Glen bungalow in 1976 and did a small remodel early on. Ludwig notes that at that time home remodels and extensive home improvements were far less common than they are today. She points out that on the street where they now live, two of their neighbors' homes are undergoing remodels, with "more on the way."
In 1980 she and her husband decided to add on another room and do some more extensive work to make room for their second child.
Photograph by Douglas Rider
Tour Master: One of San Jose Day Nursery's 20th annual Willow Glen Lifestyles Home Tour houses is reflected in Jenny Ludwig's sunglasses. Ludwig's home was featured during the tour's first year, and she has been a regular participant in the event ever since. Other Willow Glen homes are also featured on the tour.
"We were trying to keep the look of the home and the character of the neighborhood," Ludwig says. "I think we did it successfully."
The mother of one of their babysitters was on the San Jose Day Nursery's board of directors at the time, she says. Through her daughter, Sherry Furbeck learned about the Ludwigs' remodel and approached them to see if they would be interested in allowing their home, when it was finished, to be toured as part of the nursery's first try at a fundraising home tour.
"There weren't a lot of house tours in those days," Ludwig says. "It was such a gamble for them."
Because their remodel would be completed just before the tour was scheduled, the Ludwigs agreed. The nursery helped them out by providing an interior decorator to quickly complete the look of the home's new interior, and Ludwig says the tour also gave her the added incentive to finish landscaping their large backyard.
They sent their young children to babysitters for the weekend while they and their in-laws scrubbed the home until it was "sparkling," Ludwig says.
"We just manicured that little house," she says of the whole remodel and tour-preparation process. "We just put our heart and soul into that house. We had so many memories from that little house."
The day of the tour, the Ludwigs left their home.
"I didn't want to hear the criticisms," she says. "There always are some."
Photograph by Douglas Rider
Instead, they visited the other homes on the tour, then came back to their own home at the end of the day to enjoy refreshments with tour participants in their backyard.
"I remember feeling really proud," she says. "I felt good helping the Day Nursery."
Participants in the tour are sent tickets in the mail, if they've purchased them before the event, as well as a pamphlet with a suggested tour route. The tour runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and participants are free to visit the five homes of varying styles and ages at their leisure. Volunteers man the homes to make sure people remove their shoes before entering and don't touch things in the houses, and nursery board members and staff are on hand throughout the event to meet participants and thank them for their participation.
One house usually also offers refreshments, as well as a gift sale with items donated by sponsoring Willow Glen retail shops, she says.
In the last decade or so, Ludwig says, it has become easier for the nursery to find homes to participate and to attract people to attend the tour, as people, especially in Willow Glen, become more interested in learning new ways to turn their houses into homes.
"I think we're all curious about how other people live and what they've done in a creative way," she says. "People improve their homes and are proud of them. It becomes a part of us; a home is where your heart and your soul is."
Tickets before the event are $25 and are available at the San Jose Day Nursery, Casa Casa, Cooking Etc., The Eclectic Touch and Comforts of Willow Glen. Tickets the day of the event are $30 and are available from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Willow Glen Elementary School parking lot, on the corner of Minnesota and Lincoln avenues. For more information, call the nursery at 408.288.9667.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
