Lby Jackie Peterson If you have ever watched episodes of "This Old House" on PBS, you know what determination and imagination can do to save a hopelessly deteriorating dwelling from the wrecking ball and turn it into a showplace. Maybe that is what inspired Ted Udhus and Patti Sawyer of Hansville, Washington, to acquire a crumbling barn of a structure in Old Mazatlan and set about making it once again the showplace it undoubtedly once was. The day the Pacific Pearl went to take a look, Ted was the only one home, although there were workmen tapping, banging and crashing all over the place. The structure, on a corner of Olas Altas, is not impressive from the outside and probably never was. As with many a Mexican home, all its beauty is turned inward for the exclusive pleasure of the inhabitants. Judging by its unadorned exterior, the place could be a small office building rather than a home. It undoubtedly was built to accommodate a good-sized family, for at last count Ted and Patty had tallied 12 bathrooms with adjacent rooms that must have been bedrooms. Not all these accommodations were for the original family, of course. There were servants' quarters, too, including a chauffeur's room and bath behind the six-car garage. Incidentally, the servants had their own entrance and back stairway, not only to reach the kitchen but also leading to the upper floors where m'lady no doubt rang when she wanted breakfast in bed. But to get to the present, Ted said he was never crazy about Mazatlan. He had visited here four or five times and admitted he didn't think much of this town until he ventured out of the Golden Zone and into the historic area around Olas Altas. "We started looking around the neighborhood," he said, "found this place for sale and I promptly bought it. That was in February of 1998. It took nine months to negotiate the paperwork, so we actually didn't take possession until the first week in October. At that we couldn't live here, because the building was a total wreck. It had been neglected and vandalized, and all of it needed serious repair work before we could move in." While he talked he was showing us the garage level and part of the first floor, and we had stopped to admire the gracefully curving Art Deco stairway leading to the second

floor. "Look here," he said as we reached the top of the stairs and found a generous-sized landing with several doors opening onto it. "See these doors? They are in the original Art Deco style. Vandals had ruined some of the doors, but at least one was intact. I found a wonderful carpenter who was able to duplicate that door when he made all these others." Then he opened the farthest door from the part of the house where workers were chinking away at crumbling walls and then patching them with wet cement. He motioned us quickly inside. This was the corner the couple calls their hideout until more of the house is livable. "We stayed down the street in the La Siesta Hotel for several weeks until this room and bath could be made acceptable to live in," he said. "We're very careful to keep this door closed so that the dust doesn't get in here. Eventually, we'll move into the master bedroom. Come this way and I'll show you." The new homeowner admitted he doesn't know what all the rooms are for, but said, " We'll decide what to do with them after they've been fixed up." There was no mistaking what was once the palatial master bedroom, though, with its full wooden wall of drawers and closets, its adjacent terrace overlooking the sea, and its good-sized bathroom with sunken tub. Udhus guessed the house dates from around the mid-1930s, and he said he wants to restore it "to its original condition, in the period when it was built." While vandals relieved the place of many of its original fixtures, they did not get a striking Lalique chandelier which is being restored. Nor could they remove the marble sideboard in the dining area. Out in back, and completely hidden behind high walls, is a good-sized swimming pool and a garden which had become a jungle until the Washington couple came along. With the undergrowth now hacked away, this area will one day become a pleasant green oasis once again. But that will have to wait for a couple of years. As Ted said, "I see this restoration as a three-year job. We're in the first phase, the clean-up, patch-up year. Next will come the decorating and furnishing. And after that -- long down the road -- we'll get around to the finishing touches."