Few could argue with Robert Larson's mother.

After viewing the jerry-rigged behemoth her son had just purchased with his wife, the one built before Arizona became a state, the one with peeling pink paint and leaning porch pillars, the one hacked into six different cheesy apartments, Mary Beth Larson could think of only one positive thing to say.

"You could tear it down and build a pretty nice house here" was her advice.
Thankfully, Larson and his wife, Angela Cazel-Jahn, didn't heed it.

Instead the 40-year-old mechanical engineer and his 35-year-old artist wife have spent the past 2 1/2 years gutting and rehabbing their 3,400- square-foot house, one of 15 historic homes and contemporary spaces to be featured during next Saturday's Roosevelt TourFest.

Restoring the 1913 two-story bungalow to its more original spacious floor plan and elegant beauty was daunting.

"I think I probably thought I knew what we had to do," Larson said as he thumbed through a scrapbook of 'before' and 'during' photos, "but I really had no clue."

The couple had fixed up a 1,200-square-foot historic home a few blocks away on Willetta Street and had lived there for 13 years, but they are their three daughters gradually outgrew it.

"But that was just a one little bathroom and one little kitchen house, and it was so simple compared to this," Larson said.

For several years they searched for a different, bigger house in their Historic Roosevelt Neighborhood, an area bordered by McDowell Road, Van Buren Street and Central and Seventh avenues.

"We wanted a historic, big family house without a lot of bastard additions, and since we're not rich, the only way to achieve that was to do a lot of the work ourselves," Larson said.

But they couldn't agree on a house. One she would detest while he loved it, and another he would despise while she adored it.

"This was the only one we both didn't love or hate," he said.

And with incredible vision, both could see the possibilities.

The ground floor consisted of four separate apartments with four kitchens and four baths.

Doors had become windows, windows had become walls and a staircase had been erected in the middle of what once had been the living room.

Sledgehammers were needed to gut to the studs the chopped-up divisions, and nine 40-yard dumpsters were quickly filled with debris.

"It took a lot of detective work to figure out what had been where," said Larson, who discovered where a row of windows had once existed on the east wall of the living room.

To replicate them with some authenticity, he took his cue from two windows that flanked the fireplace and had new replacement windows patterned after them.

He also had other windows and doors custom made to match the few originals that still existed.

True-to-the-period-looking deep baseboards, wide molding and high ceilings give both the living room and adjoining dining room the illusion of even greater spaciousness than actually exists.

What was once a downstairs bedroom off the dining room is now a family room with pocket doors. And an airy kitchen, which once featured a shower stall and a mudroom, is now one large food-preparation and eating area.

Cupboards with recessed center panels were patterned after the originals, but the countertops are altogether new. With the help of a friend, Larson and Cazel-Jahn created poured-cement tops.

Off the kitchen, a basement with cement-lined walls is currently used for storage but eventually will be a dance studio equipped with wall mirrors and a hand railing for Larson and Cazel-Jahn's three budding ballerinas, Anika, 12, Madeline, 10, and Jasper Rose, 6.

To the rear of the house are two adjoining rooms that might have been maid's quarters, according to Larson. Now they serve as a cozy study with fireplace and window-lined studio for Cazel-Jahn, whose paintings and murals are viewed around the Valley.

A large bath with small hexagon floor tiles, typical of the 1913 period and installed by Cazel-Jahn, are a perfect backdrop for the original claw-foot tub and pedestal sink the couple found in the house and had reglazed.

Just outside of the bath, a new stairwell, designed and mostly constructed by Larson, was once part of another bath.

Now it leads to what would have been an upstairs sleeping porch, vital for surviving Phoenix summers before coolers or refrigeration.

Also part of two upstairs apartments, it now provides Larson with at-home office space.

The configuration of other upstairs space was once a hot debate between Larson and Cazel-Jahn, with Cazel-Jahn and others who toured this house last year during the Roosevelt TourFest while it was still a work in progress having their way.

"Instead of one big dormitory room for the three girls, they all wanted to divide the area up so that each girl got her own bedroom, along with a library room to share," Larson said. "They won; I lost."

A second bath shared by the girls is equipped with another tub and pedestal sink, also original to the house.

Across the hall is the large master bedroom, one of the few rooms Larson and Cazel-Jahn found mostly intact.

"And it's the only room that has its original plaster," he said.

An adjoining bath, carved out of unused space, is still a work in progress, as is landscaping in the back yard and the replacement of a large, built-in wooden buffet in the dining room.

"The story goes that a tenant left his belongings behind when he moved out, but he took the buffet," Larson added.

If walls could talk, Larson and Cazel-Jahn probably would get an earful, but since moving into their home this spring, they're more than content to hear their own sighs of relief at being madly in love with their nearly finished project.

But what about his mother?

"Oh, she did a complete 180 and she loves it, too," he said.