Completed client project. The owners came to us wanting their whole home to feel more useful and composed, without sacrificing the garage or erasing the separation between active and quieter rooms. Built in 2008, the two-story, stucco-sided house measured about 3,000 square feet on a 9,148-square-foot lot, with four bedrooms and three bathrooms. Its attached, front-facing garage sat beside the ground-floor entry, while the kitchen and family room already connected. The house also had a separate dining room, a den, a loft, and bedrooms upstairs. My first question was: how could the garage do more for the household while still working as a garage?
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 garage and its connection to the entry
On site, we found a clear division built into the two-story layout: the garage, entry, kitchen, family room, and laundry were on the ground floor, while the bedrooms and loft occupied the upper level. There was no basement to absorb storage or household equipment, so the garage had to remain useful rather than become an extra room on paper. We kept it as a working garage and organized it around parking, household gear, and closed storage. That decision gave the owners a practical edge to the house without taking space from the living rooms.
We also measured the route from the garage into the ground-floor rooms and kept the threshold simple and durable. The laundry was already inside on the ground floor, with cabinets and a sink, so we kept household storage near that service area instead of duplicating it in the garage. We installed sturdy storage and even lighting in the garage, and kept the entry from feeling like an extension of the parking area. The garage did not become an office or a proposed accessory unit; it stayed part of the everyday functioning of the house.
Olivehurst's broader housing record helped us resist importing a small-house layout into this one. Among 96 single-family closings in the local record, the median house was built in 1978, measured 1,298 square feet on an 8,803-square-foot lot, and 0% had an HOA fee. The recorded build decades most often represented were the 2020s, 1960s, and 1950s; 22% of the homes dated from before 1960 and 51% from before 1980. This house was larger and newer than those median figures, so we kept its existing room distinctions and garage capacity rather than chasing a one-room plan (Redfin Olivehurst sold-home data).
The kitchen, family room, and separate dining room
The kitchen already had an island with a sink, a pantry closet, granite counters, and a breakfast area that joined it to the family room. We kept the sink and island where they were. Instead, we brought the connected rooms together through a restrained finish palette and lighting that served cooking and sitting separately. The dining room remained a distinct place to eat, rather than becoming a route through the kitchen or an overflow work surface.
The house had carpet, laminate, and tile, so we mapped the transitions across the main floor before choosing finishes. We kept the durable tile where it made sense and used the other existing floor surfaces to define room edges, rather than forcing one finish through every space. The result made the kitchen and family room read as a connected area while letting the dining room retain its own character. We kept the den and upper loft as separate retreats too; the two-story arrangement already gave the owners places to step away from the shared room.
Stucco, tile roof, and the front approach
The covered porch extended across most of the front, and its wooden railing sat against a broad stucco facade beneath the concrete tile gable roof. On site, that combination confirmed that the house had a strong, simple outline, but few changes in texture at the entry. We kept the stucco and roof, then used a more considered contrast at the garage door and refreshed the porch details so the entrance had definition without competing with the roofline. We chose planting to add visual variation beside the porch, keeping the established lawn and the mature tree on the right in the composition.
The flat lot, fenced backyard, and built-in pool also shaped what we left alone. We kept the front approach clear and preserved the separation between the public-facing porch and the private outdoor area. Inside, central heating and cooling and ceiling fans supported a lighting-and-finish approach across the connected rooms, rather than a change to the house's basic systems. The recorded 220-volt electrical service, public water, public sewer, and absence of a basement all reinforced our decision to keep the work within the existing rooms and service locations.
We checked the permit scope before construction and kept the completed work to finishes, storage, and lighting within the existing house; we added no room, exterior opening, or new plumbing route. If you are ready to make your house work better for you, get in touch.
