Flowers drape whimsically over the stucco house that sits on the corner of Degroff and Sawmill Creek Road.

Lilies, Iris's, and numerous other plants all reach and climb in an effort to gain the upper hand. People passing by pause or slow down, all marveling at the wonderful array of blooms that blanket every available space in the yard.

It's a beautiful site, it's true and we understand the tourist's oohs and ahhs as they go by. For the local people, though, we all know that the story doesn't lie just in the wide array of blossoms and blooms that compete for attention. For the small house on the corner lot it lies in what was and what is now, and, how one woman's vision changed a town eyesore into a main attraction.

As I sit and talk with Kris Hoffmann about her house at 621 Sawmill Creek Rd, she explains expressively with her hands how she told herself she was crazy to even consider taking on such an enormous challenge. Not only was she a single person, with no one to help when she first considered it, she also had very little carpentry and remodeling experience. She also knew nothing about city building codes, wiring, plumbing, or any other major concerns that could be involved with redoing a house in such a bad state.

What she did know, though, was that the small pink, dilapidated building sitting on the corner lot pulled at her heartstrings.

To make it even harder, almost everyone told her it was a crazy idea, that it should be torn down, bulldozed into the ground and a new, modern building put there. But, as some of us are wont to do, she kept asking until someone gave her the answer she was looking for.

"Am I completely crazy for even considering this," she'd asked the local contractors. Almost all of them shook their head and wouldn't even talk to her.

Only one person said that it might be possible, Preston O'Connell, the building inspector. "He was someone I trusted," she says now, as she looks around the small house. "He didn't see quite what I saw, but at least he said it might be possible. With that little bit of hope, decided I'd talk to someone about buying it and see where it goes.."

All during the buying process, she kept thinking to herself she was crazy. Right down to the last minute she gave herself excuses to back out, even confronting the owners about a contract issue that involved only a couple hundred dollars, fully expecting, even hoping at this point, that the owners would back out of the sale. But instead, they complied.

Shrugging her shoulders, she said, "At that point, I told myself, "Okay then, if it went through, this is what I was meant to do." And so, I put my mind to doing it. I spent the next few months gutting out the building. There was so much to do that I often found myself overwhelmed. A lot of days I wouldn't even want to come down because on seeing it, I would kind of go into shock. I didn't know where to start.

I finally started making myself come down for at least fifteen minutes everyday. "Kris," I'd say to myself. "Go sit for fifteen minutes. If you don't feel like doing anything, don't, but at least go." So, I did. Usually before it was over, I'd convince myself to at least pick one thing that needed doing and do it. Then that would lead to something else, and something else. Eventually, I had it all gutted out and ready for the contractors.

I then turned it over to them to do things that I couldn't, such as putting in new windows, the electrical wiring and such. After they were done, Robert and I took over.

One of the hardest parts was the outside. I knew what I wanted, but it was something that had never been done in this area. Back in 1983 I had completed my degree in horticulture and during that time had read about a cement and pearlite mixture used to make cement planters. I had this idea of putting it on the outside of a house to create the cottage affect. But, I was concerned about the freezing and thaw that we have here and how it would affect it. You know, would it crack? Would it sweat, mold? Another concern was the community. What would they think about what I was doing? Would they think I was crazy? I was pretty sure they would. And, they did. I'd have to say that was one of the hardest things to overcome, coping with what others in Sitka thought.

When I started putting the mud on the house, there was a lot of concern. I was concerned, too, not only about how it would look, but also how it was going to hold up in this weather. But, I told myself the worse that could happen is it crack and break off, in which case, I would then come back with a cedar siding.

I started out by covering the outside with tar paper. Then I cut 1-inch blocks from 2 x 4's and started nailing them all over the outside. This would later support the chicken wire that I would use to hold the mud. The house really looked funny during this time and there were many comments, some funny, some not so funny, from the community. I had one family tell me that every time they rode by their small son would say, "Hey, there's that Dalmatian house," as it looked like it had spots all over it, what with the dark tar paper and then the small blocks of wood scattered over it. Anyway, I got the chicken wire attached to the blocks, rented a cement mixer and started mudding. I mixed about six parts pearlite and one part cement. That's when the comments really started coming in.

I had one guy stop me in the grocery story and tell me, "I couldn't believe it when I saw you actually working on the house. "By golly," I told my wife, "she's actually going to live in it!" I had to laugh at that.

As the outside was finished, though, the local attitudes started changing. Anytime I went to the store or out into the community, people would stop me and tell me how well it was looking, and soon something else started happening. I didn't have a lot of money, and so was looking for ways to do things as inexpensively as possible. Suddenly things I needed seemed to just start finding their way to me. A window we were working on cracked, I found a discarded window exactly the size I needed; I decided I wanted to put in a wood stove, someone stopped and told me they had one they were taking out that was in good shape; I decided on lavender for my fence, a neighbor offered some old paint he was going to throw out. Jokingly, I asked, "I don't suppose you have any lavender?" Not sure, he opened up several cans, and he had a purple, which I mixed with white to get my lavender!

It took me two years to get it legally habitable," she says as she walks me through the inside. And, there's still a lot to do, but I love it. Yes," she repeats more to herself than to me. "There's a lot of me been put in this house."

Sheetrock and paneling have all been removed, leaving access to the bare bones of the house, which has been painted a soft cream. Here, in-between the 2 x 4s and beams of the roof, she's inserted little shelves to hold her myriad collection of bottles, old china, photos and many other whimsical whatnots. Not a single space is unused. Every nook and cranny provides storage. Every wall space holds a treasure, a photo, a whatnot from another day and time--memorabilia from a life well spent with friends and family.

Rain pelts the roof and the small cast-iron oil stove lends a soft flicker of warmth as we move into the living room that was once two bedrooms. Large and open, with several different sitting areas, the room invites you to snuggle down with a cup of coffee and a good friend on a cold wintry day.

All this from a tiny, pink dilapidated building that nobody wanted. "I love my house," Kris says now, as she sits in a rocker looking around her. "If someone on passing my house, smiles, then that makes me feel good." With this said, she leans back in her rocker, rocking softly with coffee cup in hand.

By: Sharon Romine Copyrighted September 2003

I was so enthralled by the story of the house and the events that brought it to its current remodeled state, I forgot I was supposed to be writing about gardening.

Check back later to learn about Kris's wild, unbelievable garden and what inspires her most.