A Modern Sense of Space (continued)
A warm, modern home makes the northern California landscape part of its bright, spacious interior.
Because there wasn’t much flat area on the steeply sloping site, the architects partially buried the lower level of the two-story, 3,500-square-foot home into the hillside. The entrance is through a stepped landscaped courtyard that leads to a skylit gallery painted the same bright acid green as one of the wife’s favorite pairs of shoes. There’s a lofty family room at the center of the house that opens onto a terrace through towering sliding glass doors. To one side is the master suite; to the other are the kitchen, dining room and a music room.The couple didn’t want a proper living room. “We do salon parties, where everyone gathers around the piano with cocktails, and we and the kids sing. There’s always music in the house,” says the wife. “We don’t miss having a formal living room at all.” Downstairs are the children’s rooms, a guest room, a study and a playroom that opens onto another terrace and the lap pool beyond. The owners worked closely with the architects: “We hit it off really well. It was two couples around the drawing table all the time,” says the wife. One of the couple’s top requests was for tinted concrete floors throughout the house. Interior designer Jay Jeffers of Jeffers Design Group in San Francisco helped guide them in choosing the rich, warm beige. The architects mixed 25 different batches to get the tone just right. “With colored concrete, a drop extra can make it too green or too pink,” says Cathi House. The warmly neutral concrete floors (embedded with radiant heating coils) extend throughout all the public spaces to tie the rooms together visually.
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