Homeowners Rory and Ryan didn’t necessarily set out to incorporate a laundry list of hot home trends into their renovation. But you could chalk up a round of design-detail bingo in their perfectly playful Oakland bungalow. There’s the poppy Concrete Collaborative terrazzo island in the kitchen, the pegboard storage space in the entryway, the surprising Sandberg Elin wallpaper in the powder room. (Built-in cat cubby? Check. Strike-through shelving? You know it.)

All that being said: This thoroughly updated Craftsman home is anything but cookie cutter.

Architect Sky Lanigan took the fusty 1,360-square-foot stucco house with bland, closed-off rooms and turned it into something funky and fresh. He started by taking out as many walls as possible between the entryway, living room, dining room, and kitchen. “We wanted to connect all the public spaces and bring light in,” he explains.

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen and Living Room

To make the most of the budget, Lanigan encouraged Rory and Ryan (a passionate home cook and a software engineer, respectively) to leave the bedrooms, bathroom, and hallways untouched, focusing on the communal areas. Curvaceous millwork wraps the bedroom wing, hiding the private spaces behind closed doors while providing storage galore. “We mummified it in birch,” says Lanigan. “It’s a big chunk that goes through the space, but it has a softness.” The curving walls lead you in, creating a flow from front to back.

That birch box isn’t the only monolith here—Lanigan also designed a kelly green cube to divide the new dining room and the kitchen. It houses pantry items and a hidden powder room. “The idea was to strip everything back and have the shell of the house interact with these new volumes,” the architect says.

Before: Dining Room

After: Pantry and Powder Room

But these eye-catching interventions are really just the warm-up act. Creating a big, beautiful, functional space to cook the day away was the driving force behind the whole renovation.

“It’s a really good day if I get to spend eight hours in the kitchen,” says Rory. And more often than not, he does, prepping meals on the colorful terrazzo countertop, grabbing bowls from the open fir shelves that sit in front of the window, and sautéing the night away at the oversized range. (“It’s really a kitchen with a house around it,” says Lanigan with a laugh.)

The colored backsplash of Zia concrete tiles takes inspiration from Le Corbusier, Italian modernism, and ’80s color blocking. “I was having a hard time deciding on a color,” admits Rory, “but Sky told us, ‘you don’t have to pick just one.’” Now, a grid of peach, dusty rose, sage green, and baby blue runs the length of the kitchen and into the pantry.

Lanigan also played with different sheens—the backsplash has a mottled finish, while the paint on the green box is satiny, and the custom purple hood vent is matte.

Before: Living Room

After: Dining Room

It’s a home filled with so many thoughtful details and design delights that it shines even through the mess of everyday life. “When it’s a total disaster and I’ve failed to clean up for the day, it still looks so nice and open,” says Rory.

Although the interior is defined by two big, bold cubes, the approach clearly involved thinking outside the box. “It’s so fun to work with people who are excited by being weird, but want to do it right,” says Lanigan.

Before: Entryway

After: Entryway

After: More Photos

More Before & After stories:

This Reinvented Monterey Bungalow Shows That Sometimes, Smaller Is Better

To Revive Their Dated Bungalow, First They Chopped It in Half

They Gave Their Dilapidated Washington D.C. Home the Renovation of a Lifetime

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Sky Lanigan Studios / @skylaniganstudios

Builder/General Contractor: Elemental Homeworks

Structural Engineer: CRES Engineering

Landscape Design Company: B&B Horticulture

Terrazzo Slab Fabrication: Concrete Collaborative / @concretecollaborative

Architectural Metalwork Fabrication: Cjay Roughgarden