Completed client project. The owners came to us for a whole-home remodel of their two-story, 1,886-square-foot house on Balboa Drive in Milpitas. Built in 1991, the stucco house had four bedrooms and three bathrooms on a 3,800-square-foot lot, with a multi-gabled red tile roof and an attached two-car garage. They wanted the stair and its landings to make the two floors feel connected, and they wanted the finishes to carry that sense of connection from the raised entry into the open living and dining room. My first question was where the stair made the route between floors feel least clear. We grounded our decisions in the house’s own construction and room arrangement, rather than imposing a generic whole-home layout.
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 raised entry and stair
On site, we found that the entry sat a few steps above the main living area, so the route changed level before it reached the open room. The stair then connected the two stories, making its landings the natural points to clarify how the levels related. The vaulted ceiling and large arched windows already gave the living and dining room a strong sense of volume and daylight. We kept those features intact and treated the stair, entry steps and landings as one continuous visual route.
We carried a warm, restrained wall color through the entry and stair hall, then coordinated the wood tones with the existing laminate in the living and dining room. We installed layered lighting at the entry and stair landings so the changes in level read clearly after dark, without competing with the daylight from the arched windows. We also replaced the decorative black light at the front door with a fixture that related to the updated interior palette and the red tile roof.
The house had no basement, and its two-story layout meant the stair was a daily connection rather than a detail that could be treated separately. We kept the path from the front doors through the living and dining area open. A low built-in with closed storage went along a wall where it did not block the arched windows or interrupt that route. That gave the shared room useful storage while preserving the open view and the room’s light.
The living room, kitchen and floor transitions
Milpitas’ recorded single-family closings gave us a useful local comparison: among 171 homes closed in the preceding twelve months, the median build year was 1971, the median size was 1,730 square feet on a 5,998-square-foot lot, and 11% were built before 1960 while 61% predated 1980. The most common decades were the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and 30% had an HOA fee. We used that context to keep this house’s 1991 architecture in view, rather than styling it as an older home (Milpitas sold-home data).
The combined living and dining room had laminate flooring, while the house also had carpet. We replaced the laminate in the shared area with a durable wood-toned finish and made the entry and kitchen transitions work with the actual floor levels. We kept carpet where it already served the private rooms, so the open shared space had a more continuous finish without forcing the same surface throughout the house. We kept the kitchen layout, including its breakfast bar, island, stone counters and gas range, and coordinated the flooring with those existing surfaces instead of moving the cooking area.
The house’s systems shaped the boundaries of the work. It had forced-air heating, a gas water heater, a gas range, public water and public sewer, as well as third-party-owned photovoltaic panels. We kept the range and water heater in place and left the photovoltaic equipment outside our scope. That let the remodel focus on the stair, finishes, storage and lighting rather than changing the routes of the home’s core services.
The stucco exterior and front garden
The flat front yard received good sunlight, and the stucco exterior, brick porch edge and red tile roof gave us a clear palette to work with. We refreshed the front approach with more varied planting and pathway lighting, and coordinated the exterior color with the new front-door fixture. We treated the leafless-looking front-yard tree cautiously rather than assuming its appearance meant it needed removal. San Jose Water Company was identified as the water supplier for Milpitas, and its conservation guidance, alongside the city’s landscape-irrigation restrictions during drought conditions, informed our planting choices (San Jose Water Company).
The local map layers also informed how we treated the lot: FEMA placed it in flood zone X, an area of minimal flood hazard, while the state seismic map placed it inside a liquefaction hazard zone. We kept the exterior work focused on finishes, planting and lighting, rather than changing the ground or the house footprint.
For the code check, we reviewed the City of Milpitas adopted building codes page, which listed the city’s adoption of the California Energy Code. We used that local code reference when checking the lighting and electrical scope (City of Milpitas adopted codes).
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