San Diego Home and Garden – September 2017
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San Diego Home and Gardens – November 2016
DOG + Garden = House
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Coronado Times – October 2015
Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes Enters 23rd Year
by Joe Ditler – 2015/07/22
This home at 761 Cabrillo Avenue in Coronado is nearly complete. From left are principal architect Dorothy Howard, and, representing Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes, general operations manager Jeff Norton, and owner and CEO Carolyn Mitchell. Photo by Joe Ditler.
CORONADO — One of the most successful and prolific homebuilders Coronado has known is Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes. The company has built 114 custom homes in this small seaside community, 22 of which are historic.
History will record Mitchell-built homes as a significant contributor to Coronado’s landscape elegantly constructed homes built to last as an aesthetically integral part of each neighborhood, no matter what their scope or footprint.
“Our mission is to continue to build great homes,” said Carolyn Mitchell, owner and CEO of Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes. “Some have called our homes century homes’ because they are built to last. We pride ourselves in the quality that goes into building great homes. That’s what has been taught to our crew, and ingrained in every inch of every project we take on. Lorton made sure of that.”
Lorton Mitchell, founder of Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes, died in March from an aggressive form of cancer. He headed his successful company for 32 years. Today, his wife Carolyn continues to run the company, assisted by an impeccable and steadfast team of employees, both in the office and in the field.
This map of Coronado shows most of the 114 homes built by the team at Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes.
“It was a major loss to everyone in the community when Lorton passed, said Jeff Norton, General Operations Manager for Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes. “Our crew is made up of individuals who were handpicked and trained by Lorton. We have loyally stayed the course, and together we continue to represent his high ethical standards of custom home building. Our team is seamless, and we’re moving forward with Lorton’s dream of building the best homes possible.”
The myth is that Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes only builds large mansions. The truth is that most of the job sites reflect small, three or four- bedroom homes, known as “everyman homes” – owned by young families coming to Coronado for the first time.
“The company is recognized for many of the larger homes built, but we also have built cottages on unique, smaller lots of Coronado,” said Carolyn Mitchell. “Regardless of the size or location, our office staff and working crews are carrying on in the best fashion, as taught by the best builder. We hope to build another 100 homes before we are through. The quality that was synonymous with the name Lorton Mitchell will continue in each and every one of our homes.”
Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes has won a room full of awards, including a Gold Medal LEED certification. Lorton modestly shied away from taking credit for his award-winning work – always quick to give credit to his crew and the architects behind the scenes.
Then, as now, Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes works with the best architects on the island such as Dorothy Howard, Christian Rice and Kevin Rugee. “When we sit down to design and build a client’s custom home, we work as a team that depends and respects each other’s expertise,” said Carolyn.
Big homes or small, the team at Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes has seen it all. They have remained on the cutting edge of materials, construction and planning, whether building a new home or restoring a historic one.
Sometimes homeowners have specific and unique requests. Among those have been retractable outdoor stairs, turntable garages, exotic pool installations and large movie screening rooms; rooftop gardens, and even an outdoor, rooftop fishpond.
No request is too peculiar. It’s all part of the process of getting to know the clients, meeting their needs, and then staying close to them as they begin to grow into their new home and new community.
To be sure each client’s wish list gets fulfilled, Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes employs four licensed contractors. When they are working multiple jobs, as they are currently, there is a licensed contractor on each job site, from dawn to dusk. That’s something most unusual in residential construction.
“Taking a client’s ideas from a piece of paper to building their dream home, while maintaining budget expectations in an established time frame, can be a major undertaking” said Carolyn. “And that’s why it’s so important that we are working with a team of individuals personally trained by Lorton over the years.”
When the home has been completed, the relationship doesn’t end. “We don’t just build it and move on,” said Carolyn. “We maintain relationships with our clients. That sets us apart from other builder’s in town and has provided considerable referrals and future work for the company.”
Lorton Mitchell, working in the early stages of restoration on the Esrock Residence, originally known as the Kneedler Home. Photo by Joe Ditler.
For more information on Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes, call (619) 435-3446 or write renee@lortonmitchellhomes.com. You can see examples of work by Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes at http://www.lortonmitchellhomes.com.
This story is brought to you by Joe Ditler and Part-Time PR. For information on how you can better promote your business, write or call josephditler@san.rr.com, or (619) 435-0767.
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Coronado Lifestyle – Best of 2014
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Coronado Lifestyle – June 2013
Lorton Mitchell, Builder of 100-Year-Old Homes, Takes on Extraordinary Restoration Project
by Joe Ditler – 2013/06/05
1902 BEACH HOME SURVIVES CENTURY STORMS,
RECEIVES SECOND LIFE INLAND
Now will see Complete Renovation to Original Appearance
The Kneedler Home (left) along Ocean Boulevard, March 1905, in the wake of three vicious storms. The ocean literally encroached to the front porch of these homes and washed away 110-feet of earth and street. The home now sits on Adella Avenue and Tenth Street, and is being restored to its original appearance by Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes. Note the sunroom in the bottom photograph. Photos courtesy Coronado Historical Association.
CORONADO In 1905 a storm hit our beaches with such fury it was labeled “The Century Storm.” That was in January. Trouble was, another hit in February, and another in March. The sea washed 110 feet of land away along Ocean Boulevard. The boulevard itself was no more, and homes were naked against a violent and unpredictable sea.
It was then that two homeowners decided to move their seaside dwellings inland, a process that involved uprooting the homes, placing them on logs, and slowly dragging the enormous structures across town using multiple teams of horses.
In the early 20th century, this is how houses were moved. Makeshift wagons, or as in the case with the Coronado homes, large logs, were placed under the structure. Then, multiple teams of horses and strong labor were used to inch the homes along to their destination. This particular photo is of a home in Australia, also in 1905.
One of those classic homes, now located at 1000 Adella Avenue, is undergoing an extreme renovation designed to restore it to its original 1902 appearance. Coronado homebuilder Lorton Mitchell is conducting the ambitious restoration, one of the most unique renovations ever attempted.
Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. The company has completed more than 100 projects in Coronado over the past three decades, some ranking as Coronado’s most beautiful and luxurious residences. Mitchell’s work is highly praised by both clients and professional peers for its design, quality, execution and longevity, and in this case, innovation.
Now known as the Morton Home, the house was rotated on the new location. A once idyllic and often-used sunroom (see photo above) was originally designed to face Point Loma for afternoon light along Ocean Boulevard. On the Adella Avenue site, the sunroom caught the brunt of the morning sun, making it too hot to be used. Lorton Mitchell has carefully dismantled the sunroom and will reconstruct it using modern technology to control the temperature inside, restoring the pleasant interior ambience. Photo courtesy Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes.
This current restoration is called the Esrock Residence, after owners Bernard and Jill Esrock. The home, originally built in 1902 along Ocean Boulevard (at the corner of Loma Avenue), was known as the Kneedler Home, after Dr. William L. Kneedler, a retired Army doctor and personal physician to President William Howard Taft.
Later, on Adella Avenue, it was known as the Morton Home, owned by Dr. Paul Morton. Each of the past two phases have historic merit, so a major decision had to be made before reconstruction could begin.
“We’re going to take it all the way back,” said Mitchell. “We are attempting to match the details of the original home to regain that Nantucket beach house-look it once had.”
Custom homebuilder Lorton Mitchell is restoring the Kneedler Home back to its original 1902 splendor. He is examining blueprints here, perched on an old, handmade medical chest that he found in the attic of the home. The chest contained many of Dr. Kneedler’s medical books from the turn of the century. Photo by Joe Ditler.
In restorations of this magnitude, Mitchell could be likened to an archeologist as he carefully scrapes away layers of the surface to reveal his treasure. In this case, that treasure is a lovely, turn-of-the-century Craftsman that has been modified and added to over the decades.
He examined old photos, researched early documents, and then, along with principal architect on the project, Dorothy Howard, decided the path they would take. Once that decision was made, and they received a blessing from the Historical Resource
Commission and the homeowners, Mitchell and his team began the process of this very unusual restoration.
In 1905, the transported home was positioned on a bed of red brick and mortar. Mitchell’s challenge was not just creating a new foundation and building a basement for the new owners; he had to find a way to support the weight of the 111-year-old home. And here is where the inventive builder stepped outside the box.
Taken in the 1920s, this photo shows a family out for a Sunday drive. The gentleman in the rear looks like J.D. Spreckels, but information on this photo is vague, other than this is the former Kneedler Home, now located on Adella Avenue. Photo courtesy of Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes.
“The big issue for us,” said Mitchell, “is that the foundation was shot, and it didn’t have adequate or seismically correct footings, requiring us to replace it anyway. When the new owners requested a full basement, we had to do some creative thinking.”
What they came up with was to surround the home with 17 large, metal columns known as “soldiers.” These soldiers allowed Mitchell to shore up the walls of the building and keep out dirt as they dug the basement. But their most important duty will be to actually support the house by hanging it from beams connected to the tops of the soldiers.
Lorton Mitchell is proud of the fact that he builds homes to last a century. This project, however, is already a century old, and he hopes to give it another century of life. He is seen here examining blueprints on the interior stairwell of his latest project, to be known as the Esrock Residence. Photo by Joe Ditler.
“We will be running beams on top of the soldiers that run down into the ground and provide support for the basement. Then,” said Mitchell, saving the best for last, “we’ll take all the pressure off the foundation by literally floating the house in the air above it dangling it, for lack of a better word.”
The floor will be lowered six inches to allow wheelchair access and ramping into the building, but the roofline will remain where you see it now. It’s an extraordinary solution for an unusual challenge, but because they didn’t hit groundwater until 20 feet, the work will all be dry, allowing for Mitchell’s crew to get in, do the work, and get out without too much risk.
A tradition at Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes is the leaving of small time capsules inside the walls and stud bays of each home, whether a new structure or a remodel. Mitchell, seen here with a popular front page of the San Diego Union-Tribune, doesn’t expect the person who will find this has even been born yet. Photo by Joe Ditler.
Always one to pay attention to history and original materials, Mitchell has gone to great extremes to salvage and reuse as much of the original home as possible.
Old bricks under the house will be used on a perimeter skirt so the home looks like it’s on the original brick foundation. Much of the original redwood is also there. Mitchell’s team will mill it to make exterior trim, essentially salvaging century old vertical grain redwood that is no longer available.
“We’ve found a lot of existing elements from the original house, things like cornices and floor joists,” he said. “Also, the eaves are almost in perfect shape. They were well built to begin with and have survived the test of time.”
“I’ve never even found a nickel at one of my sites,” said Lorton Mitchell, who has built more than 100 homes on Coronado over the past 30 years. But he has found many newspaper articles, and dozens of antique bottles – some of which are seen here at his home. Photo by Joe Ditler.
Part of Mitchell’s legacy in the next century will surely be his concern not just about specific homes he is building or restoring, but how he took into consideration the history of each home and calculated out how a project would affect the neighborhood it would reside in.
It’s unusually refreshing to find a homebuilder with a conscious and an awareness of Coronado history, such as Mitchell has. And, while many new homes in Coronado have 30-year lifespans, Mitchell refuses to sacrifice materials or time when creating or rebuilding a home.
“In architecture we define a building as a solution to a problem home, security, etc.,” said Mitchell. “We try to build our homes to last at least 100 years. This is a 100-year house,” he said of the Adella restoration. “And that’s what we strive to build at Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes, houses that will also survive the test of time and last a century or more. Hopefully the Esrock Residence will last even another 100 years, once we’re through.”
One of the new homes created by Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes appeared last year on the cover of San Diego Home/Garden & Lifestyles Magazine. It’s not uncommon for his custom homes to be heralded on the regional and national level. Over the past 30 years he and his team have created more than 100 homes in Coronado.
Working on homes this old often reveals treasure of one sort or another. “The fun stuff is the articles we find,” said Mitchell. “We are always finding old newspapers in the stud bays. Sometimes the crew and I will sit around at lunch and read the old articles and advertisements. We love that. And I have a huge collection of old bottles we’ve found on building sites. But we’ve never found any money. Never even found a nickel,” he said laughing.
The history bug has severely bitten Lorton Mitchell around the ankles. Today, whatever home he is working on, he leaves contemporary newspaper front pages inside the walls and stud bays, newspapers that scream headlines such as “Obama Sweeps To Historic Victory,” “Bin Laden Killed,” or “Egypt Falls.” One of his workers, Justin Hardy, writes poetry. He often transcribes his poems inside the walls, again, to be discovered a century later, as a form of time capsule that surely will be appreciated by someone not even born as of this writing.
To stay in shape, Lorton Mitchell often heads out into Glorietta and San Diego Bay on his paddle board. The custom home builder always manages to make time for his family and a little exercise. Photo by Joe Ditler.
This release prepared by Joe Ditler and Part-Time PR, serving all of Coronado’s publicity needs. To publicize your business, write or call Joe Ditler at josephditler@san.rr.com, or (619) 435-0767.
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San Diego Home and Gardens – June 2011
Coronado by Desing
