Nightmare on Carriage Drive

A Mote Ranch house is undergoing an extreme home makeover.

By Jessica Salmond
| 6:00 a.m. July 22, 2015

The exterior of the home at 5762 Carriage Drive is pristineâ€”even the lawn has been kept up. Inside, however, fell into ruin.

East County
Real Estate

With its proximity to the UTC Mall and new development in and around the University Parkway corridor, the Mote Ranch of Braden River community is located in an up-and-coming area.

But until recently, a secret was hiding in one of its best homes.

The home, built in 1991 and located at 5762 Carriage Drive, in Mote Ranch’s Meadowlake neighborhood, is one of the few two-story homes on its street. From the outside, the nearly 3,000-square-foot home appears vacant but sound and inviting.

Preventable problems

Although some of the issues inside of the home were manmade, some problems could have been prevented before they got out of control. Lynda Contarino recommends calling in a specialist for most problems to fix the issue in the long term.

Roof and pipe leaks
One of the major causes of damage in this home are several roof leaks. Water and moisture seeped in from the roof and caused black mold, mildew and rotten wood along its path, along with stains.
Old pool filters
If pool filters aren’t cleaned and changed, it can cause pool water to turn green and become a breeding ground for bacteria. Even Jacuzzis need to be run at a specific temperature to kill bacteria.
Poor air quality
Poor air quality can become a health hazard, as the air can carry in fungi spores and pollen. Proper ventilation and air quality can be improved with some simple fixes, such as regularly changing the air conditioning filters or by a total HVAC overhaul replacing the system.

Stepping through the doors, it’s hard to believe it’s the same house.

Lynda Contarino, interior designer and renovator with Castles and Cottages Interiors, is tackling the home as what she is calling her “You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me” project.

She and an investor and former client, Clifford Cook, retired senior vice president of supply for Marathon Oil Co., purchased the home six months ago for $240,000.

Contarino has lived in the Mote Ranch community for 10 years, and said buying a property in the area is usually difficult. Properties stay on the market for an average of five days, she said. She’s tried to invest in five different homes in the area over the last year, and all went off the market before she could make an offer.

The Carriage Drive home was a different story however — the damage was too great to sell so quickly.

“No body would touch this home,” she said. “It’s not a fun decorating job. It’s a serious job. We have to take this house down to the bare bones.”

The home had been bank-owned for a year following a foreclosure. The interior of the four-bedroom, four-bathroom home is filled with black mold, stained carpeting and manmade holes in the drywall. The stains and fist-shaped holes—along with drug-related posters and trash discovered strewn throughout the home — suggest an unknown tenant had moved in, unbeknown to anyone else.

The large pool in the back lanai, complete with a jetted hot tub, has a few feet of gunk-infested water lapping in the bottom.

The carpet throughout the house is covered in a myriad of stains. Upstairs, large holes have been punched into the bedrooms, and the doors were ripped of the hinges.

Over the next four months, Contarino hopes to recarpet, retile, repaint and replace the HVAC, electrical and plumbing systems, as well as clean out the pool. She plans to remodel the inside of the home in the much-demanded “coastal contemporary” style. This look pairs the sleek, modern look of stainless-steel appliances and neutral tones such as taupe with beachy feel of blues and greens on the accent walls and white “shaker” cabinets—a new take on a familiar style.

“It has a lot of potential,” Contarino said. “This area of Sarasota is booming.”