Completed client project. The owners came to us with their house on Atherton Avenue in El Camino to Alameda, Atherton, a 2026-built contemporary home of about 12,854 square feet on a one-acre lot. It had three levels, flat rooflines, stucco and stone exterior elements, seven bedrooms, ten and a half baths, and large floor-to-ceiling windows. Inside, the living room fireplace wall was one of five fireplaces, alongside the family room, primary bedroom, and outdoor spaces. The owners wanted a whole-home update that brought warmth to the clean architectural lines and made the rooms feel more connected to the garden. I shaped the work around the house as built, including its fixed features, its systems, and the way the large windows brought daylight into the rooms.
The photographs on this page are from the Designed & Curated portfolio and show finishes we have used on other projects. They are not photographs of this house.
The living room fireplace wall
My first question was what the owners wanted to keep as the visual anchor when the living room and its neighboring spaces were in use. They chose the fireplace wall. On site, we found that the home’s tall volumes and broad glazing gave the fireplace a strong presence, but also made the shared rooms feel more exposed to glare and sound. We kept the fireplace wall intact and arranged the living room around it, rather than letting new finishes compete with it. The family room fireplace remained its own gathering point, and the media room stayed distinct from the great room so that different activities did not have to share one large sound space.
The home’s records described both one-story and three-story information, while the design and rooms we encountered were organized across three levels. We followed the actual room connections and vertical circulation on site. The kitchen already had a stone countertop island with a sink, and we kept the sink in place. That decision respected the slab foundation beneath the kitchen and avoided moving a drain through the concrete. We oriented the island to the great room and used its existing stone as a steady, durable element in the new palette.
The kitchen slab and flat roof
The slab foundation was a key constraint in the kitchen. We found the floor plane continued beneath the island, so we kept the plumbing location and coordinated the kitchen work around it. We selected finishes that made the kitchen and great room read together without relying on a change in floor level to define them. The flat roof also shaped the kitchen decisions: we coordinated the cooking ventilation with the roof form before finalizing the ceiling and lighting details, preserving the clean lines of the interior.
The house had central forced-air heating and multi-zone central cooling, as well as solar and natural gas available. We kept the room layout legible to the existing zones and coordinated the lighting and finish choices with the broad window exposure. Atherton’s Electric Readiness Reach Code required infrastructure for future electric water heaters, heat pumps, and electric cooking appliances, so we carried that readiness into the home’s systems decisions rather than treating its current energy sources as the only option (Electric Readiness Reach Code fact sheet). The home’s public water service and existing solar also informed how we coordinated the selected equipment and its electrical requirements.
The glass, garden, and entry sequence
The floor-to-ceiling windows brought in abundant natural light, but the same large panes created glare and heat in the rooms. We added exterior shading to control that exposure and layered interior shades for privacy without closing off the views. We used warm wood accents to soften the stucco and stone exterior, and we made the approach from the long driveway feel more welcoming. A covered outdoor sitting area created a transition from the interior gathering spaces to the garden instead of leaving the doorway as the only connection.
The lot was flat, with mature trees and complete perimeter fencing supporting privacy. We checked the local map layers as we located the outdoor work: FEMA classified the property as Zone X, an area of minimal flood hazard, and CAL FIRE classified it as NonWildland. The soil survey identified Botella-Urban land complex, with zero to five percent slopes, well-drained conditions, hydrologic group C, shrink-swell potential up to 4.5 percent, and clay up to 32.5 percent. Those site conditions informed the placement and detailing of the outdoor transition. A published Atherton project also explored indoor-outdoor connection, which we used as a local design reference while shaping this home’s own garden connection (Luxe Interiors + Design, A Contemporary Atherton Abode with Indoor-Outdoor Connection).
We checked the work against Atherton’s permit requirements, which covered construction and alterations, and prepared the permit drawings through the Town’s electronic ePlan submission process (Building Department, Building ePlan Submittal). We also scheduled construction within the Town’s allowed hours of 8:00 a.m. through 5:00 p.m. excluding weekends and holidays (Construction Hours Ordinance).
If you are planning a whole-home project, get in touch.
