Completed client project. The owners came to us with their one-story home on Hillsborough Drive in PARSON ESTATE, Castro Valley, built in 1965, about 2,668 square feet on a raised foundation, with four bedrooms and two and a half baths. The single-family house had a tiled hip roof, stucco exterior walls, and an attached two-car garage. They wanted the kitchen to open toward the living and dining areas without losing its pantry, breakfast nook, island, or cooking capacity. They also wanted the mixed floors and dated tile counters brought into a more coherent finish scheme. We treated the existing brick, wood-burning fireplace as part of the design, not something to remove.
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 wall between the kitchen and living room
My first question was what the owners most wanted to keep working while the rooms became more connected. Their answer guided our decisions: the kitchen needed to retain its storage and working surfaces, and the living room needed to stay centered on the fireplace. On site, we found the kitchen, dining area, and living room separated by a wall that interrupted the sightline. The house’s one-story layout gave us a clear view of the existing ceiling and room relationships, while its raised foundation gave us access to the routes below the floor. We traced the kitchen drain and checked how the floor surfaces met before settling the scope.
We opened the connection between the kitchen and living area while keeping the sink and range in their existing locations. That preserved the established plumbing and gas routes and kept the island, pantry, and double ovens in service. We kept the fireplace as the living room’s focal point and positioned the opening so the kitchen could see into the shared space without turning the fireplace wall into part of the work zone. The house’s older construction made us assess the actual wall and framing rather than assume its role from the ranch-style footprint. The Castro Valley closing data showed that 86% of the 234 single-family homes in the supplied data were built before 1980, which reinforced our decision to base the opening on this house’s conditions rather than a generic layout (Redfin Castro Valley sold-home data).
The house’s one-story profile also shaped the design. Published Castro Valley projects included Eichler renovations and a pop-top, but neither matched this home’s tiled hip roof and continuous single-level plan. We used those projects as local context, then kept the remodel grounded in the house’s own form rather than adding a different architectural language (Dwell’s Castro Valley projects).
The floor and kitchen finishes
The existing floors included linoleum, tile, and carpet. We found changes in material and height at the connections between the kitchen, dining area, and living room, so we resolved those transitions as part of the opening rather than leaving the new sightline divided into separate patches. We installed one continuous, matte, natural-toned floor through the kitchen and connected living spaces, with carpet retained in the bedrooms. The warmer floor tone balanced the brick fireplace and made the shared rooms feel like one place without making every surface the same.
The kitchen’s tile counters were the finish we replaced. We chose a quiet, light-toned counter surface and kept the existing cabinet layout, pantry, and breakfast nook. The cabinet finish was refreshed in a warm wood tone, which gave the kitchen definition against the soft warm-white walls without competing with the fireplace. The island remained part of the existing kitchen arrangement, with clear circulation around it and through the opening. The double ovens and gas range stayed in place, so the owners kept the cooking capacity they valued and the work did not require a new appliance layout.
The fireplace and the shared room
The house already had zoned natural-gas heating, central air, and a brick, wood-burning living-room fireplace. We kept those systems and the fireplace in place, and coordinated the new lighting with the existing room arrangement. We added layered light at the kitchen work surfaces and over the island, with softer lighting toward the living room. That let the connected rooms serve cooking and sitting without relying on one bright ceiling setting. The attached garage and laundry room remained in their existing locations, as did the bedroom and bathroom layout.
The raised foundation and public sewer mattered to the plumbing decision: after tracing the existing drain route below the floor, we kept the sink where it was rather than relocating it. The individual gas meter supported retaining the gas range, while the house’s seller-owned photovoltaic panels and generator remained part of the existing electrical setup. We kept the zoned heating and central air arrangement, too, rather than shifting equipment as part of a kitchen opening. The result was a more connected kitchen and living area that retained its familiar work zones, fireplace, and room arrangement.
We checked the permit scope against the work we completed, including the wall opening and associated lighting changes, and kept the project within the home’s existing one-story footprint. The local Castro Valley housing context that informed our approach came from the recorded single-family closing data; we did not treat the age of the house or its neighborhood as a substitute for assessing the actual structure.
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