Completed client project. The owners in Earl R. Williams came to us with a one-story ranch built in 1972, about 2,817 square feet, with four bedrooms and three bathrooms in the main house, plus a detached two-bedroom, two-bath cottage. The composition-shingle roof, formal living and dining rooms, family room, country kitchen, and primary bedroom facing the backyard gave the house a clear structure, but the rooms felt more divided than the owners wanted. They asked us to connect the main living spaces without losing the double-sided, wood-burning fireplace or the family room’s illuminated wine closet. The photographs on this page came from the Designed & Curated portfolio, so they showed finishes rather than this house. My first question was whether the fireplace had to stay the boundary between the formal rooms and the family room, or whether the owners wanted a connection that kept its presence while changing how people moved around it.
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 fireplace wall between living and dining
On site, we found the raised-hearth fireplace worked as a shared center for the living and dining rooms, not just as a wall feature. The living room’s vaulted ceiling and deck access also made that end of the house feel open, while the family room’s built-in wine storage gave the informal space its own focal point. We measured the circulation around the fireplace and mapped the central heating and cooling registers before settling the room arrangement. The one-story layout and existing roofline made it possible to focus the work on the interior connection rather than change the home’s exterior shape.
We kept the fireplace and its position between the formal rooms. Instead of removing that anchor, we opened the route between the family room and the formal spaces beside it, so people could move through the main house without making the living and dining rooms one undifferentiated space. We kept the wine closet in place and arranged the family-room seating around it, with a clear path toward the backyard. A published Napa project, A Modern Napa Farmhouse Beckons Friends to Gather, reinforced the value of treating indoor gathering and outdoor connection as related parts of a home. Here, the covered deck and backyard-facing rooms already supplied that connection, so we strengthened what the house had rather than inventing a new destination.
The kitchen and the central rooms
The country kitchen already had a granite counter, an island, a pantry closet, a built-in gas range, and 220-volt electrical service. We kept the kitchen’s major services in their existing zone and refreshed its finishes and lighting, rather than relocating fixtures or asking the island to solve circulation on its own. That decision kept the kitchen practical while the new opening improved the relationship to the family room. We also kept the kitchen’s connection to its existing septic system in mind and avoided expanding the plumbing scope into a new fixture layout.
The main house had central heating and central cooling. We traced the existing supply and return locations on site and coordinated the new opening and furniture layout around them, so the expanded shared area did not block the system’s air paths. The raised-hearth fireplace remained a separate source of warmth and atmosphere. We refreshed lighting through the living, dining, family, and kitchen areas, and coordinated the flooring transitions across the existing carpet, stone, and wood rather than treating each room as an isolated finish decision. In the primary bedroom, we kept the backyard orientation and its direct relationship to outdoor living intact. The cottage stayed separate, preserving its privacy and its role apart from the main house.
The deck opening and exterior decisions
The covered deck already gave the living spaces an outdoor threshold. We improved that connection at the existing deck-facing opening without changing the house’s overall roof form. The property’s CAL FIRE map designation was High, so we treated exterior work as part of the fire-safety review, not as a purely decorative change. For the altered opening, we specified dual-pane tempered glazing and ember-conscious detailing in line with the guidance for projects subject to Chapter 7A (fire-resistant construction guidance). We also used the City’s Residential Design Guidelines as a reference for keeping the exterior change in scale with the ranch house.
Before we settled the exterior work, we checked the City’s historic-preservation process for confirming whether a property had a historic designation that affected alterations. The City described parcel reports and Planning Division review through its historic-preservation information, which helped us account for that review as we shaped the deck-side change.
The City of Napa required permit applications to go through its NapaON online permitting system, and we used that process for the permitted opening and related work. We also accounted for the Fire Prevention Division’s review of applicable fire-code compliance and inspection of residential construction (City of Napa Fire Prevention Division). After the work, the fireplace still anchored the living and dining rooms, the wine closet still gave the family room its own character, and the route between those spaces felt direct rather than divided. The kitchen remained in its service zone, and the backyard and covered deck stayed part of the everyday flow through the main house.
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