San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Smallspace living.
Room for 9 in Stinson Beach.
Page 6
Designer Karen Curtiss, founder of Red Dot Studio in San Francisco, has found her own solution to the Bay Area housing plight: With another family, Curtiss and her husband purchased a modest second home in Stinson Beach then redesigned the house to integrate into its unique landscape at the intersection of forest and sea, adding outdoor living space that effectively expands its square footage. “Buying and recreating this place with friends was a direct result of the insane realestate prices here,” she says.
Balancing atop stilts on a steep slope, the twobedroom “tree house” abuts a
5acre monarch butterfly preserve and, through the tops of eucalyptus trees, you can see puzzle pieces of the Pacific Ocean. Since every room opens to the outdoors, the 900squarefoot residence lives larger than it is. “There are at least nine people in the house at all times and it never feels crowded,” Curtiss says.
When they’re not at Stinson, Curtiss and her husband live in a Bernal Heights apartment. “We share 890 square feet with our two children, a cat and a turtle,” she says. “I know we’re lucky to have that, but we also have friends that we’re always getting together with, and we can’t all fit in any of our tiny city spaces.”
At first sight, the Stinson Beach home, too, was less than accommodating. Originally a 1958 kit house built with plywood, it had been altered in the 1970s or ’80s to include a wood parking deck hovering above it, keeping the house dark. Curtiss had the structure removed and reintroduced sunlight into the house by installing glass doors, which are also supposed to lure people outside to the newly terraced front yard or the cedarandredwood oceanview veranda that Curtiss added in the back.
The budgetpriced interior plywood surfaces tie to the exterior siding, but also to the wooded environment. “I wanted to express the simple, honest character of the wood,” Curtiss says. “When you’re inside, it feels like you’re outside. There’s just glass and plywood between you and the outdoors. Every night, a fox comes down the stairs, walks across our front deck and down the side yard. He’s right outside, and we’re part of his world.”
A minimalist aesthetic allows Karen Curtiss, founder of Red Dot Studio in S.F., redesigned a 1958 kit home in Stinson to accommodate two families. the landscape to be the focus of the living experience — but it’s also a practical consideration. In the living room, Curtiss arranged a CB2 foldout sofa, a pair of bean bag chairs and a sunny yellow punchedmetal lounge chair by Blu Dot. “The kids all pile in this room and just camp out. Sand, wet bathing suits — bring them on. We’re good.”
The architect outfitted the dining room with sublimely uncomplicated custom elements, topping metal legs she found on Etsy, for example, with a large slab of elm. She designed and assembled the dining area’s light fixture, which is just a series of modernist bulbs dangling from rope with knots tied by her husband, a sailor.
“This was a much smaller budget than I usually have for my clients and I share it with friends in order to make it work,” says Curtiss, who also lists the beach shack on Airbnb to offset the costs even more.
Still, her redesign for the home isn’t all that different from her other projects. “Stinson is not fancy — it’s rustic, laid back and beachy. I wanted to honor that. Sometimes I see the stuff other people have done with the homes here and it’s too much. This landscape is already so rich.”
“Buying and recreating this place with friends was a direct result of the insane realestate prices here.”
Laura Mauk is a freelance writer. Email: style@sfchronicle.com