See how this one-of-a-kind Northern California remodel takes full advantage of its picturesque, swoon-worthy setting.
Etched into the hillsides of San Rafael, CA, sits a home with an expansive, breathtaking view of the San Francisco bay. However, that wasn’t always the case. The home’s new owner was relocating from New York and needed to reimagine the space to accommodate his remote work. He tapped his brother, Scott Landy, Architect and Owner of Studio 101 Designs, to unlock the contemporary possibilities with a significant remodel. Take a closer look—and hear from Landry firsthand—to learn how he made the most of this stunning site.
The magic of the home, which started the first time I saw it, is when you take that first turn from the top of the driveway and seeing this dramatic bay view, just it was a shock. And how do we both maintain that, enhance it, work around it – everything became the bay view.
A Site with More in Store
Marvin Ultimate Direct Glaze Windows
Most of our projects are in the Bay Area of California. So, we have this opportunity to take advantage of the outdoors and blurring the lines between indoor and outdoor. So yeah, a lot of our designs speak to that California living.
We’re here at one of our projects called the Bayview Home, here in San Rafael, California. This is actually my brother and sister-in-law’s place. Part of the draw of this house is it doesn’t look like much as you’re entering upon it. It’s a very modest house, and there’s even like a lower entry, and then you get into this big hall where you’re just surprised by views. We have panoramic views starting from McNear Peninsula to the East Bay, all the way to Southern Marin, with a bridge in between.
Myself, my brother, and sister-in-law are all from Hawaii, so we tried to bring a bit of them, both in the finishes and the style of the house. There’s warm, tropical, modern wood accents inside the front door, the ceilings along with some of the fauna that give it a kind of tropical modern vibe.
We’re very family oriented, so a lot of design decisions revolved around that. We wanted to ensure that the backyard spaces were optimized for both functionality and entertainment. The house structure was here for the most part. A lot of the remodel had to do with cleaning it up. On the exterior was part of the major piece, and we wanted to bring action to the outside. It’s hard to envision, but there’s just little decks off the side and a cliff, and we wanted to expand the usable area outside, so we built a new pool that acted as a retaining wall to enlarge this yard outside. And that just brought a lot more usability to the space.
We also built a structure that is embedded into the hillside that expands the deck area. We built my brother an office and a little guest room down there, too, that’s hidden underneath the deck.
This room that we are sitting in was added in the ‘80s. So, they added about a third of the square feet from the original house in the ‘80s, including a lot of these big picture windows, which were previously aluminum. The window search was sped up by those aluminum windows failing, so we knew we needed to replace all the windows. And there’s 50-something, maybe 60 windows in this house, lots of square footage of glass and we needed the right product. We chose Marvin Ultimate for this project for a variety of reasons, primarily due to its reliability, which we found out by talking to our supplier on this, Golden State Lumber here.
Designing Lasting Views with Marvin Ultimate
Marvin Ultimate Direct Glaze and Awning Windows
Marvin Ultimate Direct Glaze windows
We chose a bronze exterior for the Marvin windows. Wood clad, the warmth of the wood, but also the insulation values of the wood was a huge consideration for this project. We get huge temperature swings pretty routinely, so that gives opportunities, you know, flushing out the house, capturing some cool ocean air, keeping that in the house, but yeah, you’re reliant upon well-performing windows like Marvin.
Also, we needed a lot of custom shapes. These are huge windows, we wanted them to be structurally sound. We have two gable sides to this room. Most of these were existing openings before that we had to fit a new window and a lot of times a new window style.
This room in particular, it was a challenge. As architects, we typically want as minimal frames as possible. These huge glazing pieces, most of them were direct glazed because of their size, but there were benefits to that as well, including those thin lines. Again, back to blurring the lines between indoor and out.
There are framed opportunities as well, as we walk in from the entry, there’s a big framed window to the oak tree. For instance. We enhanced the view, looking out from the kitchen in order to capture more morning light. And we have a nice vegetable garden on the side of the house, talk about framing a view to the garden from the kitchen, so it brings that into that space.
In the primary bedroom, we were working with the original footprint as well. We enhanced, in my opinion, the windows and the usability of the windows, there was a bunch of mullions that broke up the view. We tried to open that view as much as possible, but give the ability to capture some of the bay breezes at times, whenever they need it, but working with what we had, the original opening, and giving the action that we wanted, which was, casements plus as big a picture window as possible too.
The Marvin windows, again, an easy choice. It’s been now eight or nine years since we installed these and we feel the same as we did when they were originally installed, that they’ve been perfect. We are used to, coming from Hawaii, some ocean views. We’re not used to, you know, all this action and that’s part of what made this house special from day one, still does. You see something new every day.
Ready to refresh your space? See how Marvin Ultimate can help realize your vision with custom-crafted windows and doors.
