Oakland cottage gets all dramatic
In the Bay Area, contemporary design sometimes feels synonymous with the midcentury-modern, Scandinavian look. “It can be difficult to find clients who want an ultramodern aesthetic,” says San Francisco architect Irit Axelrod.
But Axelrod found the perfect clients who wanted her sleek approach for the renovation of their home in the Oakland hills.
The owners — Thomas Bridges, a cosmetic dentist, and his husband, Jeff Dahm, a legal consultant — had lived in their 1,250-square-foot, two-bedroom cottage since 2008. Built in 1939, the modest clapboard house had knotty-pine interiors and a spectacular panorama of the bay, albeit through a modest pair of French doors. Bridges dreamed of opening the house to the view and modernizing the space. “I was that little boy who, when other kids were playing baseball and football outside, was reading Architectural Digest and Elle Décor,” he says.
Fortunately, Bridges didn’t have to look far to find the right architect: Axelrod had first come to him for dental work years before. She was impressed by the modern interiors of his office, which he had redone; and he instantly connected with her portfolio of work, which features sleek white surfaces and lots of glass. “I thought, ‘Someday when I have a place, I want to Irit-ize it,’ ” laughs Bridges. “Our tastes were so similar and aligned, I was really excited to work with her.”
Bridges’ original thought was to do something simple. But as the plans progressed, the project ended up being a gut remodel, with all new interiors. “It was such a fun, creative process — we were like two kids in a candy store,” he says. In addition to taking advantage of the view, he also wanted to optimize the space for entertaining and display art in a gallerylike setting.
The redesigned home, now 2,150 square feet, is practically unrecognizable from its former self. One of the more complicated aspects of the project was the merging of the kitchen, dining and living room into one large, column-free space, while still retaining the roof structure. “Part of the charm of the original house was its pitched ceiling,” Axelrod says. “I wanted to take advantage of having a cabin to modernize.” The original roof is now supported by a concealed steel I-beam on either side, and the exposed ceiling and trusses replaced the knotty pine for a clean white finish.
To carve out a large guest suite on the main level, Axelrod reduced the tandem two-car garage to a single-car one. On the lower level, she reclaimed a large sunroom at the back of the house to create a spacious master suite and added a small home office for Dahm. While the house’s clapboard siding and pitched-roof line are the same, Axelrod had the taupe exterior repainted a contemporary dark gray, replaced aging roof shingles with black composite tiles, and swapped out square bubble skylights with clean-lined rectangular ones.
At the entrance, a massive, 5-footwide door pivots open to present an impressively broad view of San Francisco Bay. A wall of glass sliders opens to the back deck, which stretches across the length of the house. In the living room’s glamorous bar, with mirrored shelves, both Bridges and Dahm enjoy mixing drinks for their guests.
The home’s high-contrast, blackand-white interiors are a reflection of Bridges’ “design character,” as Axelrod puts it.
“I wanted it to be more unusual and dramatic,” says Bridges, who’s wearing a black turtleneck that sets off a fine set of pearly whites. The French oak floors are stained ebony; the powder room’s walls and ceiling are painted black; and the master bath is lined with dark-gray porcelain tiles. All the major furniture pieces are also black, including a Como leather sofa from Design Within Reach and a Cloud platform bed in mohair velvet from Restoration Hardware. Even the hot tub outside the master suite has been upgraded with a new black base.
“Living in a modernist house that I’ve wanted since I was a kid has made me so happy,” Bridges says. “Everything is better. Even when you’re cooking in your modern kitchen, everything tastes better.”