If ever there was a right way to build a new house, Geri Hadley and Ron Cot矦ound it. Through extensive research, personal involvement, and the firm resolution to do it right, the couple were able to turn their dreams into a house that literally stops traffic in this quiet Bay Area neighborhood—and to enjoy the process as it unfolded. The object of attention is a charming modern evolution of a California Craftsman bungalow, which quietly fits into its established neighborhood. Geri had discovered the beautiful, tree-filled residential area years ago while visiting a boyfriend at a nearby school. Right then, she made a promise to herself: Someday she would live there.

In 1975, she and Ron fulfilled that promise when they bought a house in the neighborhood of her dreams. It was not, however, the house of her dreams. But at a time when real estate in the San Francisco area was positively booming (but then, when isn't it?), buyers had to leap at any opportunity. The opportunity Geri and Ron leaped into was a poorly built 1,300-square-foot Craftsman-style bungalow, built in the 1920s by a prominent local family for a daughter and her husband. In the plus column, the house sat on a large, open lot, and though most of the rooms were small, the layout was fairly functional. But all of the plaster and lathe had to be replaced, and the house needed a new foundation and a new roof. For the next four years, Geri and Ron spent evenings and weekends fixing the most glaring problems. Career demands filled the next eight years, which meant putting off any major house decisions. Even though they weren't working on the house during those years, Geri and Ron were thinking about it and researching it—a lot. "At first, we didn't even know we were living in a Craftsman bungalow," recalls Geri. "Then we started reading more on the period of our house. We were always searching for information that was pertinent to the type of house we lived in."

The couple came to appreciate not only the Craftsman style—hands-on craftsmanship and earthy, natural materials—but also the Craftsman philosophy of a personal aesthetic. This philosophy guided the couple through the rebuilding of their home. What really stuck in Geri's mind was something written by a classmate at the University of Southern California, design expert Carol Soucek King. "Carol said it's a morality; you have to understand the style expression as a whole idea—the motivation behind it, what the movement was trying to achieve, the political and sociological implications, how it was all about integrity and about how you live in a style."

The Craftsman movement was something of a reaction to the industrial age and the emergence of mass production; according to Geri, it put people back in touch with actually building their houses, in contrast to the prevailing late Victorian style, which was about a lot of tacked-on, mass-produced detail. When the time came to address their housing situation, Geri and Ron had to make their biggest decision first: Should they keep the original house and fix it, should they tear down the structure and start over, or should they just move to a new house? After checking out hundreds of houses and not finding what they were looking for, Geri and Ron decided to stay put in the neighborhood they love and to build a new Craftsman-style house, one that would fit into the neighborhood as well as the original bungalow did.

From that moment forward, Geri threw herself into the project. "I wanted it done right, and I wanted it done well," recalls Geri. To her, that meant personal involvement. "People try to simplify the process. Instead of making it a wonderful event in their lives, they often expect other people to do it right for them. Well, if you're not involved in the front end, you're going to have to be involved in the back end in ways you don't want to be." The first step was to find an architect. The couple searched for two years before a casual dinner conversation with friends led them to Robert Wylie. A planned half-hour interview with the local architect lasted two hours, and the couple were sold. Wylie offered everything Geri and Ron wanted in an architect. "The chemistry was there, the communication, the understanding of what we wanted. The way he talked about the design process made us very comfortable," says Geri. And by choosing a local architect, the couple felt that they were getting someone who understood local traffic patterns and local codes, someone who knew people in the city and how to get plans approved.

To get started, Wylie asked Geri and Ron to put together a sort of room-by-room description/dream list for their new house. With their already far-ranging knowledge, they produced a 26-page document that included everything from how they lived to where they wanted to store their trash bins. The architect also asked them to assemble a notebook of photos of their furniture and accessories, as well as pictures from magazines and books of the kinds of design elements they like. To complete the picture, they visited historic Craftsman-style homes like the Gamble House in Pasadena, designed by the landmark California Craftsman firm of Greene and Greene. The priorities that emerged were lots of natural light; an open floor plan but with enough wall space to hang the couple's art collection; and a cottage profile, despite the new structure's much larger size. The couple also wanted to protect the trees on the lot.

Working from this detailed description, Wylie designed an approximately 3,200-square-foot evolutionary Craftsman-style home, a home that tailors the handcrafted qualities of the historic form to Geri and Ron's modern sensibilities and taste. For example, the modern interpretation is far more openness and light than its turn-of-the-century antecedents. Though all of the rooms have their own character and are defined by varying ceiling heights, they open up to one another. That openness, combined with large custom windows and peaked transoms, allows sunlight to reach every corner of the house. Like the original, the new Craftsman house has lots of built-in wood details and trim, all done by a furniture-grade craftsman, but the new woodwork is much lighter and more refined. The beams in the house are leaner and lighter in color, and instead of floor-to-ceiling wood paneling, there is wainscoting.

Another important handcrafted design element used throughout the house is tile. "Usually, tile is an afterthought, a utilitarian choice, but here it was integral to the house's connection with the visual grammar and the philosophy of the Craftsman movement," notes Wylie. By working through tile heritage societies in the Bay Area, Geri re-created the feel of a historic period in the use of tile.

What makes the house particularly successful, in Wylie's opinion, is that Ron and Geri knew exactly what they wanted and needed: "The trick is to take the style you love and adapt it to the way you live and where you are—considering the climate, the light, et cetera. Examine what it is you like about the style. What are the elements? That's what we did here. Second, Geri and Ron's firm decision to do it absolutely right made the difference." It's so right that people often walk right up to the door for a closer view, says Ron. "It never ceases to amaze me how people stop and go out of their way to look at the house and tell us how much they appreciate it."

Credits

Text: Elliot Nusbaum

Architect: Robert Wylie

Regional Editor: Carla Breer Howard