Owners & Curly

My wife Mary is the one who discovered this property, an old fisherman’s shack built around 1930 on the west side of Highway 1 in Bodega Bay. The building was in about as poor a condition as you could find a structure and still call it a structure. It had not been lived in for the previous 4 years, but I’m guessing the last 10 years before that must have been pretty rough. It had a timber foundation, most of which had rotted away so that it pretty much left the house sitting in water at high tide. The original redwood siding had been at some point recovered with a particularly bilious green shade of composition shingles, and which were now so weathered and curled that they gave the siding a strange 3 dimensional dragon skin effect. The doors and windows were rotten, the roof leaked, and the interior plan was a rabbit warren of tiny spaces. Then there was the bathroom, which was just scary. I felt like we were nuts to even consider buying such a mess, but there was one thing – the site was incredible. It sits on the edge of the bay, in a protected cove that looks out over water, wetlands, and parkland. There is one house that sits adjacent, but beyond that no other man-made structures are visible. It sits right in the heart of the town of Bodega Bay, you can walk to stores, restaurants, even a golf course, but it feels like you are alone on the edge of the continent with your own private bay. The design opportunity was just too good, the chance to do something extraordinary too seductive, so we decided to try and save this tired little house.

Then the permit process started. With coastal property in California you get to deal with both the County (Sonoma) and the California Coastal Commission. That was an education. We had a biological survey done which showed that the wetlands edge ran under the middle of the house. This discovery proved problematic, in that development within coastal wetlands is prohibited, and new foundations qualified as new development. But we were able to move the house back 10 feet, and that combined with a cantilevered design for the foundation enabled us to move all of the foundation piers out of the wetlands area. So after about 2 years of negotiations we were finally granted a “coastal permit”, clearing the way for issuance of a building permit.

We were not allowed to enlarge the structure but we came up with a completely new interior floor plan that maximized the view potential to the west by putting the living space on that end and then replacing the entire west facade with floor to ceiling windows. Beyond it was the large deck, accessed by 4 sliding glass doors, protected from the sun and wind by a large cypress tree. On the south side, which also looks out at the Bay, we added 4 more sliding glass doors, from the bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and dining area, which all lead out to a narrow deck that overhangs the edge of the water.

Construction started by removing the old decks (all rotten) and the bathroom addition (too hideous to even consider keeping). We then raised the remaining structure high enough to get portable drilling equipment under it, placing it upon temporary cribbing. Demolition of the old roofing and siding followed, and then the remaining skeleton was tented and fumigated to discourage the generations of termites (and assorted friends) that had taken residence in the remaining wood timbers.

The old house had 8ft tall flat ceilings, but to make the new spaces more generous I wanted to change to cathedral ceilings in the main rooms. So we kept the old skip-sheathing (typical for cedar shingle roofing) and then built a new roof structure on top of that, where we ran much of the electrical and plumbing along with a new 6 inches of spray-in insulation. The interior finish had been “bead-board”, which we salvaged and reused as the interior wall finish. The old five-panel doors were also reused. Strangely each room had been painted a different color, the only flamboyant gesture in an otherwise Puritan decor, so the end result was a patchwork of colors that were surprisingly endearing. But I am trained as a modernist, and a Scandanavian modernist no less, so the likely solution is paint it all white. The jury is still out though, with ardent supporters of both color schemes, although I suspect that the multi-color advocates may have just worked in high-tech too long.

The house is intended to be used primarily as a vacation rental, so all of the finishes have been chosen for durability. Multi-colored Brazilian slate floors (don’t show dog hair or dirt for that matter), Ipe siding (an ironwood that grays out in a manner very similar to the original redwood siding did, but dents woodpecker’s beaks), slate roofing, and stainless steel cabinets (try eating through these babies you mice!). The furniture will be a mixture of custom pieces by LD, some mid-century Danish stuff, and a really comfortable B&B couch. The mattresses and linens are from Casper. All of the light fixtures are by SkLo, which imports these fantastic heavy molten glass fixtures from Czechoslovakia, and the outdoor furniture is Richard Schultz. The outdoor dining table is made from a single slab of old growth redwood, reclaimed from a log that was cut around 1900. It is all modern, with many of the pieces built from large pieces of wood, somewhat reminiscent of driftwood. All of it is heavy (a signature LD trait.) Finally, it will be a great place to cook. The kitchen and outdoor barbecue are the real thing, designed to make my chef friends inspired.

Now that the construction is complete I am genuinely thrilled with the way it has come together. I love the fact that we saved this decrepit little shack from sinking into the mud, and I think it will prove to be a very special place to spend a few days on the Sonoma Coast. I hope our guests will find it an interesting combination of modest and elegant. That the design will prove timeless, and that Nature will be ever-present in the weather, the tides, and the countless birds that feed in the shallows just outside the back door. I hope it proves to be a great place to fall in love, or perhaps to rediscover it…

Design Principal, Lundberg Design