The Line between Everyday and Heirloom

“In the winter, everything is dead, and in the spring, everything comes to life,” says Catherine Bailey as she looks out the window of the Tahoe home she shares with her husband, Robin Petravic, and son, Jasper.

Bailey and Petravic are the driving forces behind a reinvigorated Heath Ceramics, the Sausalito, California-based company that was started in midcentury by Edith Heath and given a dose of new energy by the couple in 2004.

When taking the tour of the Heath facility, the guide explains that, at its essence, the company aims “to straddle that line between the everyday and heirloom,” words that perfectly describe the experience of Bailey and Petravic’s Tahoe home in California’s Sierra Nevada.

Finding the house (or being found by the house)

The couple are avid winter sports enthusiasts—Bailey had consulted for many years as a product designer for a large snowboard manufacturer—and had been looking for a weekend escape for some time when their real estate agent called about a listing in their desired area of Alpine Village. They were so excited about its location and the fact that they could walk to the slopes of Alpine Meadows Ski Resort that they made an offer on the house sight unseen.

When they did finally see the house, they were immediately taken by its placement on the lot, how it cascaded down the hill to the creek below and was framed by the dramatic mountain peaks behind it.

At the same time, they were underwhelmed by some unfortunate interior decorating choices. “Everything was green—green carpeting, green cabinets, and green linoleum,” a design aesthetic Bailey laughs about. “I guess the former owners thought, ‘We’re in the mountains, so we should make things the colors of trees.’ ”

The couple was able to look beyond the green, however, and fell in love with the bones of the house, especially its beamed wooden ceilings and reclaimed wood doors.

Making it modern

After purchasing the home in 2012, they embarked on what Bailey calls “a low-hanging-fruit” remodel. Her method was to “always look back to 1974, when the house was built, and not mask that, but make it feel nice for today. The brown of the wood beams and doors with bits of orange, yellow, and red resonate with the mood of that period,” she says. “The interior feels fresh and bright without having to paint everything white.”

It’s easy to draw a comparison between the house remodel and what Bailey has done with Heath as creative director. “We didn’t find it very interesting to just have a nostalgic company where you are just trying to recreate the past,” she says.

Instead, the past becomes inspiration for moving forward. “Our philosophy has been to look back to where you’ve been and what you’ve done and don’t ever run away from it, but to learn from it.”

“Our philosophy has been to look back to where you’ve been and what you’ve done and don’t ever run away from it, but to learn from it.”

Heath ceramics

Heath was founded in 1948 by Edith and Brian Heath and is famous for its handcrafted stoneware and distinctive glazes. Under Bailey and Petravic, it continues to produce and design midcentury tableware and tile in its California factories, but the couple have expanded the company with a business model driven by “design-led manufacturing principles, and in the belief that responsible business practices lead to long-term viability.” Since purchasing the company, they have added new colors, opened a new tile manufacturing factory and showroom in San Francisco, and started up a Los Angeles studio and showroom. Most importantly, they have expanded the brand through successful collaboration with designers and ceramic artists from around the world.

“We are always looking for the next creative opportunity that fits with what we love to do: the materials we love to explore and the people we want to work with,” Bailey explains. Those successful collaborations run the gamut from the prolific Fresno-based ceramic artist Stan Bitters and the well-known type designers at House Industries to the Mexican artist and designer Carla Fernández.

Tahoe sleepover

This spirit of openness is also reflected in the Tahoe house.

At 1,450 square feet (135 square meters), it’s a relatively small house with one big living area. But the couple was committed to finding a way to sleep a lot of people and their kids. Every bedroom has a loft with an additional place to sleep, so you can fit a family of three in each room. “We also turned the laundry room into a bedroom,” says Bailey. At times, there are three families staying at the house all at once. “That’s why we come here,” she says, “to spend time with people we want to spend time with. You don’t normally get to have your friends over to sleep at your house for the weekend.”

The couple also uses the house as a refuge and escape from the demands of running a hectic Bay Area business. The breathtaking living-room views of the Squaw Valley peaks provide the seclusion and isolation that they love. “You’re in a wonderful gem in the big outdoors—it’s kind of big out there—and there’s not a lot coming at you. That’s what makes it inspiring and special,” Bailey says.

Her seat of inspiration in the house is the couch. The expansive view opens up from there. “In the afternoon the light comes in across the fireplace, and it really gives you this great sense of time of day because there is no direct light until late afternoon.” At that moment “you think, ‘Is my day going like it should have?’ It’s your last chance to get out and take a walk and make the most of your day. It’s like an alarm clock, and it’s the sun, and I’m reminded that I want to get outside.”

“That’s why we come here, to spend time with people we want to spend time with. You don’t normally get to have your friends over to sleep at your house for the weekend.”

A place of inspiration

This sense of place—Tahoe, the outdoors, the sun, the mountains, the sky, the colors—serves as creative inspiration for Bailey. “When you are in that environment, there are all these base colors that ground you—make you feel the whole place, and then there are little points of vibrancy.” It’s an environment that is not bright colors all the time. “It’s subtle,” she says, “and the granite of the mountains is part of that, at least where we are. Granite grounds it colorwise. We are not on the lake, which is that crazy vibrant blue color.”

This play between vibrancy and calm, between old and new, between everyday and heirloom, is of particular interest to Bailey. “When I’m thinking of myself as a designer,” she says, “I think it’s important to create balance, and that can apply to everything. You’re trying to create a balance between a lot of different things—to make sure it’s making the right statement, the balance between doing something interesting and standing the test of time. Balancing utility with beauty—all those things you are trying to get right in the middle of, and if you do, then it does stand the test of time and meet its needs.” At the same time, “It is beautiful. To me, good design is taking all those things and striking the right balance.” △

Airstream Dreams at AutoCamp Russian River

Nestled in the Russian River Valley, AutoCamp’s custom Airstream trailers and midcentury pavilion provide a boutique camping experience.

First established as a logging community in the late 1800s, the town of Guerneville, California, has grown to become an artist enclave, queer haven, and tourist destination. Seated in Sonoma County, Guerneville benefits from its proximity to wineries, redwood forests, beaches, and the bucolic Russian River, which winds along the 101. It has also been riding a new wave of revitalizations, most recently manifest in the opening of AutoCamp’s second location at the end of the town’s main strip. A cross between boutique hotel and campsite, AutoCamp Russian River is known for its Airstream accommodations, artfully furnished tents, and midcentury modern Clubhouse.

Over at Dwell.com, we had written about the Clubhouse before its opening and were eager to see the "glampsite" for ourselves, so we packed our bags for a weekend trip. What we discovered there is equal parts design and adventure. Whatever the category of trip—family outing, Airstream appreciation, or corporate retreat—AutoCamp allows you to “rough it” in style.

"A cross between boutique hotel and campsite, AutoCamp Russian River is known for its Airstream accommodations, artfully furnished tents, and midcentury modern Clubhouse."

The heart of the community

Turning off Old Cazadero Road into the parking lot of AutoCamp, we were greeted by the Clubhouse, a modernist structure designed by ANACAPA. It provides a sense of arrival and sets the tone for the experience. It also stands as metaphor for the continued renewal of Guerneville, since it sits on the very site of the clubhouse belonging to Spooner’s Resort, an ill-managed, unsavory RV park that was previously on the property.

For the 3,000-square-foot structure, Dan Weber drew inspiration from midcentury masterpieces like the Barcelona Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe and the Kauffman House by Richard Neutra. The pronounced horizontal planes of the Clubhouse are a launchpad for the soaring verticality of the surrounding forest. Its robust material palette of board-formed concrete, locally harvested redwood, and blackened steel not only speaks to the natural setting, but also acts as safeguard against the periodic flooding that occurs in the area.

The Clubhouse evoked a persistent sense of homecoming as we jetted to and from camp. For guests, it is the reception area and rallying point: a hanging fireplace and custom-designed furniture by Alexis Moran invite you into their halo of warmth; on the north side, an outdoor fire pit offers views of the meadow and the glinting Airstreams that encircle it. There’s a lounge section stocked with books and magazines, an ideal spot for enjoying a cup of joe from the coffee bar—and for those staying in canvas tents, the Clubhouse provides luxurious bathrooms and showers. With so much traffic, the Clubhouse is the true heart of the community, a place to decompress, play a game of dominoes, and meet and swap stories with fellow travelers.

Ryan Miller, co-founder of AutoCamp, is excited about putting down roots in Guerneville. Originally from southern California and now a Bay Area resident, Miller had been driving up the coast on a road trip when he came across the town. Immediately, he knew it was something special. “It’s the tightest community,” he said. “You get the sense that something is peaking.”

The AutoCamp experience is always evolving, and there’s room for the community presence to grow even stronger. Future programming like yoga classes, ecology talks, movie screenings, kids’ activities, and maker workshops will revolve around the Clubhouse. Already, it has hosted a pop-up event with local entrepreneur and restaurateur Crista Luedtke—whom many credit for Guerneville’s transformation—serving dinner, and Phoebe Dahl of ethical clothing line Faircloth Supply Co taking over the Canteen, the Clubhouse’s general store.

Setting Up Camp

By day, the 23 Airstreams on the grounds have a striking effect, their silver bodies giving off a pearlescent glow; by night, their windows gleam in the darkness. Whether you’ve been a longtime fan of this American icon or just discovering the classic camper, staying in a custom-designed Airstream is a rare experience. Thanks to the vision of architect Dan Weber and interior designer Lauren Geremia, the accommodations strike a balance between rustic and modern, emphasizing comfort without losing their connection to the outdoor setting.

“She had a good feel for the culture,” said Miller of Geremia. “It was cool to work with someone who could facilitate so many creatives coming together.” From sourcing artwork to recruiting furniture makers like the aforementioned Moran, Geremia helped realize the warm, folksy vibe that pervades AutoCamp. We were taken with every detail: pendant lights by Schoolhouse Electric hang on either side of an indulgent Casper mattress, and vintage Observer’s books provide a bit of bedside reading. The homespun touches complement luxe elements like the marble tiles lining the bathroom and the crisp walnut cabinetry.

"Whether you’ve been a longtime fan of this American icon or just discovering the classic camper, staying in a custom-designed Airstream is a rare experience."

For those who prefer to hibernate at home base—or just want to relax after a day of traipsing through the woods—the Airstream is equipped with a wall-mounted flat screen TV and a Bluetooth sound system. A thoughtfully stocked kitchen and a private deck area allow you to brew coffee or fry eggs and bacon in the morning. And no campsite would be complete without a fire pit, the perfect stage for roasting s’mores (psst—if you forgot to grab marshmallows at the store, the Canteen stocks grab-and-go S’mores Kits).

The 10 canvas tents on site, made by Wyoming-based Sheridan Tent & Awning, harken back to Guerneville’s heritage as a logging town. Geremia’s stylings—think Wes Anderson meets the W Hotel—create a cozy-chic atmosphere that caters to families, friends, and romantic couples alike. AutoCamp originally had a funky, vintage style, but over time, says Miller, “We found ourselves in a clean, modern aesthetic and layering textiles.”

An accessible cabin built by Shelton Huts, run by Mattie Shelton and Evan Walbridge in Santa Barbara, rounds out the grounds. A steel structure wrapped in canvas with plywood floors and walls, the hut has a glass facade that offers a lush view of the banks of Hulbert Creek, which runs along the west side of camp. Custom fabric curtains designed by architect Jeff Shelton, Mattie’s father, provide shade and privacy.

"Think Wes Anderson meets the W Hotel."

Launchpad for Adventure

You won’t be at a loss for things to do at AutoCamp. Emerging from your Airstream or tent in the morning is an event in itself—bundled against the early chill, we helped ourselves to coffee in the Clubhouse and looked out at a meadow cloaked in fog. Linus bikes, helmets, and locks are available on a first-come, first-serve basis; on our journeys into town, we spotted several of these distinctive baby blue beach cruisers. You can check out beach towels and umbrellas to bring to the river or borrow a bocce ball set for a leisurely game on the green. An adjacent playground, basketball court, and tennis court, though not affiliated with AutoCamp, are easy to access as well.

Where else you go is up to you. Describing AutoCamp, Miller said, “It’s a platform to jump off of. The best experience at AutoCamp is using it as a base camp for exploration.” From exploring the local scene to getting lost in nature, the Russian River Valley has much to offer—and AutoCamp puts it all at arm’s reach.

“It’s a platform to jump off of. The best experience at AutoCamp is using it as a base camp for exploration.”

Nightly rates for tent accommodations start at $139, while Airstream camping starts at $225. △

The Fragrance of "Out There"

Hall Newbegin is out there. Upon first meeting him, I didn’t expect it. He seemed jovial, unintimidating, and mild-mannered. But in the first five minutes of our conversation he used the phrase “out there” eight times — “Part of what I wanted to do was to just be ‘out there’ . . . Being ‘out there’ just centered me . . . Being ‘out there’ saved me as person . . . I had no idea where this was going, but I loved being ‘out there.’ ”

Return to the wilderness

All of us go through periods of discovery in our lives when we are searching for direction, trying to find out what defines us and how it can drive our life and work. For Newbegin, the founder and head perfumer for Bay Area-based Juniper Ridge, that discovery came after a stint on the East Coast and a return to his roots in the West, a return to the wilderness — “out there” — where he feels most comfortable and alive.

Newbegin never imagined that being “out there” would lead to a burgeoning fragrance business, with his products sold in outlets around the globe. He stumbled upon the idea after trial and error — in his life, in his passions, and in his own business.

Capturing the essence of being “out there” is the driving force for the people who run Juniper Ridge, which proclaims itself the world’s only wilderness fragrance company. Headed by Newbegin and the firm’s chief storyteller and packaging designer, Obi Kaufmann, Juniper Ridge, per its website, is “built on the simple idea that nothing smells better than the forest.”

“Built on the simple idea that nothing smells better than the forest.”

Newbegin and his team embrace this mantra through a process called wild harvesting, where they make real fragrances from the places they know and love — the trails of the rugged and diverse American West.

Their teams of hikers crawl through mountain meadows, smelling the earth, the wild flowers in bloom, or the moss covering the trees, then harvest the ingredients to capture the real scent of that land. Armed with public permits or private permissions, they gather wild flowers, plants, bark, moss, mushrooms, and tree trimmings, then distill and extract fragrance by employing ancient perfume-making techniques of distillation, tincturing, infusion, and enfleurage. These formulations vary yearly and by harvest, due to rainfall, temperature, specific location, and season.

“I want people to stick their faces in the ground and just get really primitive.”

“I want people to stick their faces in the ground and just get really primitive,” says Newbegin, whose Instagram handle is @crawlonwetdirt. Yet this call to the primitive is based in fact: Our sense of smell is often called the oldest sense, the only one with a direct connection to the brain. That connection brings pleasure and sparks memory, transporting us in time and place. For the team at Juniper Ridge, the time and place is marked on every bottle of fragrance they sell. In fact, they authenticate the process of each harvest by stamping each package with a harvest number and by documenting the process through an accompanying story and photographs on the Juniper Ridge website.

“Our muse is the place. And our job is to funnel that the best we can,” says Newbegin, pointing to a small spray bottle of Sierra Granite, a fragrance connected to California’s Sierra Nevada. “Everything in this bottle is real. Our test is always ‘Is it the real place?’ ” Some of the other places they have captured include Big Sur (California coast), Siskiyou (Oregon coast), Mojave (Mojave Desert), and Cascade Glacier (Oregon’s Mount Hood).

“Our muse is the place."

Real fragrance resonates

Kaufman notes that as the business has grown, sales have been strongest in Scandinavia and New York City. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been to the Sierra mountains or to Big Sur, it takes you to a place inside your own head that is common to all of us,” he says. “Ninety-nine percent of the people who buy this have never been to the Mojave Desert, but because it’s real fragrance, it resonates — this is real, it’s not Comme des Garçons, it’s not that bullshit stuff at the Nordstrom’s counter that’s made from petroleum, and that never existed on earth until ten seconds ago. Because this is real, it goes deep into our genetic past — we’re responding to something real.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been to the Sierra mountains or to Big Sur, [the fragrance] takes you to a place inside your own head that is common to all of us.”

Saved by the wild

While hiking on Marin County’s Mount Tamalpais with the sometimes loquacious but unassuming Newbegin in his worn T-shirt and jeans, it’s hard to imagine that he would describe the transcendent moment of his life as a cliché. But those are the exact words he uses when he muses on the importance of the wilderness and the outdoors: “I feel like it saved my life.”

Growing up in Oregon, with Mount Hood in his backyard, Newbegin spent most of his youth hiking and backpacking. He attended college in New York but knew there was something growing inside of him, “a hunger to get back to the West and be in the mountains . . . I had camping and being outdoors in my blood. It’s a deep West Coast/western cultural thing,” he says.

With a last name like Newbegin, it seemed inevitable that he would eventually find his true calling. That happened in Berkeley, California, after a period he deems his “hippy schooling.” He took inspiration from eco-wilderness writers including Gary Snyder, John Muir, and David Brower and studied under commercial mushroom harvesters, members of native plant societies, and herbal medicine teachers.

New beginning

The real turning point came as he was foraging native medicinal plants in the Sierra Nevada. “I dug my trowel into osha root, and the air just exploded with that smell and it’s like, ‘ahhh.’ It would just slay me,” he says. “I didn’t know what the stuff was. I wasn’t thinking about fragrance or anything. I just loved being out there. It just centered me. It brought me into this world where the big thing is there, and it just brought peace over me. You’re looking at plants, at trees, your map, and you smell the ground and suddenly it breaks. You’re just there. All that chatting in your brain just stops, and you’re just there.”

This was the beginning of an epiphany, but the path from being an outdoorsman to becoming a true perfumer has been sixteen years in the making. “You know how journeys are,” Newbegin says, “You just start taking your steps, and soon you start getting somewhere. And so, I started learning how to extract goo out of plants. I was going to the Berkeley Public Library and trying to figure out the old extraction techniques of how you get the goo out of the plants.”

Eventually, he was mixing that goo with other ingredients to make soap and selling it for four bucks a bar at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market. He describes encounters with his first customers: “They would say, ‘Oh my God, this is Big Sur in a soap.’ ” Sounding a bit like Hemingway, he would give them the authentic story of the day that it was harvested — “I got black sage goo on my arms, and I took a nap under this big black sage shrub and had dreams about it and woke up, and the sun was on my face, and the air was just filled with the cleanness of black sage and bees in the air.” Their response, according to Newbegin: “OK, I’ll take ten of those, right now.”

Goo business

After quickly selling out of his product, Newbegin also realized that he was vastly underpricing his offerings. Over the years, he and his team have refined not only the process to get very consistent quality, they have also learned how to price their product to create a sustainable business. Newbegin laughs when he says, “We make perfume for people who hate perfume. It’s the worst business model ever.” And yet, it is a business that is working — with retailers such as Barneys New York now carrying the product, and outlets as far away as Paris, Moscow, and Tokyo.

“We make perfume for people who hate perfume. It’s the worst business model ever.”

And Newbegin’s enthusiasm for his product and the process is still very evident. “When I hand this to someone, I think to myself, ‘Oh, my God, you’re getting something just unbelievable.’ All that green in there . . . This is what Mount Hood was like as of September fourth of last year. All that green goo, tree pitch. It’s just real. It’s just 100 percent real.”

The Juniper Ridge team talks about how this realness is a stark contrast to the more synthetic nature of traditional perfumes. Those classic perfume houses employ someone who is called “a nose” to help them create unique fragrances. Globally, there are around fifty “noses” who are highly sought after for their olfactory abilities.

Although this is rarefied air that Newbegin wants no part of, he does refer to himself as “the Pied Piper of the nose.” He is quick to recall the power of the sense of smell. “My message is, use this primitive thing because it will change the person you are.” The scent of nature “is everywhere, all the time. So wake up your sense of smell,” he exhorts. “I want people to do it, not because they should, but because it’s the most sensually gratifying thing they can experience. It’s wonderful.”

Try for yourself

Newbegin’s final piece of advice: “Do what we do — get outdoors, crawl around on your hands and knees, smell the wet earth beneath your feet. Or if you’re worried about embarrassing yourself (which you should be since people don’t normally crawl around on trails), just start by crushing tree needles and plants under your nose. Stay with it, keep breathing it in. You may notice yourself feeling things, feeling something about the quietness of the place. That's the power of real fragrance.” △

"Stay with it, keep breathing it in. You may notice yourself feeling things, feeling something about the quietness of the place. That's the power of real fragrance.”

A-Frames

Spawned by postwar affluence, A-frame cabins became the quintessential American vacation home of the 1950s and 60s. A look at what made these icons of middle-class leisure immensely popular then, and what it is like to remodel and live in one today. “The design is intuitive,” says architectural historian Chad Randl, author of the book A-frame (Princeton Architectural Press), about the A-frame’s triangular structure. Why else would different cultures have turned to this universal, unifying building type, independently, throughout time and across the globe?

Was it intuition, too, that told Rudolf Schindler in 1936 to carry the roof down to the ground and fill both gables with glass? The Austrian-born architect needed to find a way to comply with local building codes when he was commissioned a modest vacation home suitable for the mountainside setting above Lake Arrowhead, California. The upshot was an A-frame built twenty years before its time.

By the middle of the twentieth century, architects in postwar America sought a more casual yet visually dramatic design conducive to relaxed seaside and mountain living. The A-frame was both comfortably familiar (pitched roof) and playfully novel. Because these weren’t primary homes, the architects could enjoy more freedom in designing wide-open spaces with fewer partitions and very small bedrooms and bunk rooms.

"The A-frame was both comfortably familiar (pitched roof) and playfully novel."

Genesis: The Leisure House

In 1950, Interiors magazine published an A-frame by San Francisco-based architectural designer John Carden Campbell: the Leisure House. It hit the mark on the era’s modernist style sensibility, down to the butterfly chairs. Campbell was fond of saying the house enclosed the most space in the most dramatic way for the least amount of money.

After a full-sized model of the Leisure House was exhibited at the 1951 San Francisco Arts Festival, Campbell’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Fixing its dimensions to the width of a sheet of plywood reduced the cost and simplified construction so vastly, the Leisure House could now become a do-it-yourself project. Campbell deftly developed a precut kit that contained everything needed to assemble the house, from timber to nails and hammer.

For the next twenty years, photos of Campbell’s own Leisure House he built across from the Golden Gate Bridge in Mill Valley, California, appeared in countless home magazines and architectural books. The Leisure House was promoted as a natural design for the mountains or the beach, for a summer cottage or a ski cabin. The Leisure House manifested a new leisure culture.

A national phenomenon

The mushrooming popularity of A-frames was fueled by postwar prosperity, which brought owning a second home within reach of the middle class. Suddenly, people had more disposable income and more free time. The A-frame embodied an informal weekend and holiday getaway that was innovative and exciting — a recognizable, identifiable symbol of “the good life.”

“It’s interesting how people individually adapted drawings or kits for their own family’s way of living and for their own technical expertise or lack thereof,” says Randl, who now teaches at the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. “What I loved about A-frames was that it was such a simple design, a basic triangular form, but you had so many variations of it, and it was still recognizable as an A-frame.”

"The A-frame embodied an informal weekend and holiday getaway that was innovative and exciting — a recognizable, identifiable symbol of 'the good life.' "

The fall of an Americana archetype

While A-frames were touted as efficient in the use of materials in the 1950s and 60s, they were far from energy efficient by today’s standards. The open-floor-plan homes were notoriously difficult to heat — warm air escaped upward, leaving the downstairs chilly and the bedroom loft uncomfortably hot. Many of the early designs were not insulated at all. Thus, keeping A-frames warm became increasingly challenging with the energy crises of the 1970s. “You had that plywood building that became really expensive to heat once oil got expensive,” Randl remarks.

“That’s when it all crashed down,” says the A-frame expert. “The A-frame lost its cultural cache, and people saw it as cliché.”

A-frame Reframe

Today, Randl considers A-frame vacation cabins an “endangered species.” In the right location, however, these period pieces are still sought-after architecture, especially to design enthusiasts with a passion for modernism.

One of those aficionados is Alpine Modern correspondent Paul O’Neil. He bought a 1953 A-frame in Mill Valley across from San Francisco in 2011. The house was designed by Wally Reemelin, an industrial engineer interested in efficient architecture, and is featured in Randl’s book.

O’Neil loved the house at first sight. He liked the way it was situated in the street and on the lot, embracing oak trees. There was more than meets the eye, though. “The house spoke to us,” he recalls about the day he and his partner, Andrew Loesel, discovered the faded treasure during an unplanned stop on a road trip. “There was something special about it. It was asking us to save it. There was a story there,” O’Neil says. “The woman selling it thought we were insane.”

“There was something special about it. It was asking us to save it. There was a story there.”

The Californian has chronicled the history and renovation of the Reemelin A-frame on his blog at aframereframe.com. But before O’Neil could bring the 1,265-square-foot (ca. 118-square-meter) house back to its beauty, he had to undo a poor renovation. An unpermitted addition built in 1964 had left the house with uneven floors and structurally unsafe. By the time O’Neil purchased the house from the third owner, it had been virtually untouched since 1980, with the exception of a new roof from twenty years ago. “We tried to understand what the house originally was like,” he says. “Our goal was to keep the integrity of the house, but make it modern.”

“Our goal was to keep the integrity of the house, but make it modern.”

Once their contractor ripped out the remnants of shoddy remodeling, the house had no structural problems. With elements like a wobbly staircase and an awkwardly placed bathroom gone, O’Neil could rethink the layout. “It was like a puzzle, once we realized what we needed to do.” After updating the electrical and plumbing, and installing insulation, they could focus on designing the house with a nod to its midcentury modern architecture and interior.

Living in San Francisco at the time, O’Neil and Loesel had bought the house for a weekend home, but later decided to live there full time, in the spirit of living smaller and simply. “If a house is well-built, it doesn’t have to be big,” O’Neil says.

“If a house is well built, it doesn’t have to be big.”

In fact, Randl agrees that in the context of the small-house movement and people’s yearning for a simpler, minimal lifestyle, the design concept of the A-frame could once again fit contemporary zeitgeist. “It’s got that reference to the past while also being modest,” the architecture expert says. “That has appeal again.” △