The outdoor fire pit.

All of the Jenn-Air appliances, including the washer and dryer, are electric, as the owners asked the city to cut the gas line to the house. The kitchen cabinetry is from IKEA and features custom, matte-gray doors and Silestone countertops. The floorboards are reclaimed maple from an old tire factory, sanded and stained gray.

Builder Ross Percival helped finesse the finely tuned detailing that separates the internal slope from the rock outside (opposite). The Pedro wire stool is by Craig Bond for Candywhistle.

The clients nixed a powder coating on the stair treads, fearing it would wear away, but approved it for custom, gray steel vanities in the master bathroom. Bathroom floors look like poured concrete but are actually thin, troweled-on microtopping.

While the second level has more privacy, the first floor’s airiness continues upstairs. Sliding doors are kept open to allow light to pass through the bedroom, which has a cherry-stained walnut floor.

The master bedroom is defined on the north side by a series of indoor louvers, which allow the couple to frame and manage their views.

A lofted sleeping pod offers a bit of privacy and helps maximize space. Beneath it is a zippy yellow bathroom.

Mahogany flooring, a continuation of the mahogany backyard deck and front porch, is enhanced with a clear finish. Vintage suitcases sit near rough sawn cedar walls, which are finished with an ebony stain.

The house is oriented toward the expansive backyard, where the family spends 80 percent of its time. Alfredo’s wife Lorena, son Lorenzo, nieces Camila and Valentina, and Castillo’s daughter, Regina, hang out by the pool—the focal point of Transepto’s restrained landscape design.

“There’s not a single place where you’re not aware of the larger landscape,” Moffitt says. “The double-height living room is such a generous space that it feels big.”

Benedetta's son's bedroom, which is on the second floor of the villa. The bed is her own design.

To help define the kitchen, the architects designed a wall of storage with cubbies on one side and a pantry with appliances on the other. Colorful doors add a playful touch, and DP3 Series cabinet pulls from Doug Mockett & Company keep the surfaces streamlined.

The house is intended to be experienced as a continuous sequence from the public living areas to the private office and bedrooms. Instead of organizing the plan linearly, Priatman thought of it as a spiral that wraps around a central green space.

Ask the Expert on Remodelista, The Ins and Outs of Wood Floors: An interview with a floorer on how to choose the best wood flooring from your home.

AnTeak by Walker Zanger AnTeak, by Walker Zanger, is made of FSC-certified reclaimed wood. It comes in seven patterns, from herring-bone (above) to penny tile.

Adding wood floors to the home proved to be a challenge, both in terms of approval and execution. Since the flat is located in a historic mansion block, the license to alter it was very strict. Once approved, floating oak parquet floors were installed above a high-performance acoustic system to offer sound insulation for the neighbor below. The open dining room exemplifies the clients’ wish for a “fun yet minimalist” home. A copper Habitat pendant lamp hangs above a solid oak dining table fabricated by INTERIOR-iD. A whimsical mustard sofa pops against the blue Tabu veneer wall.

An LC4 lounge by Le Corbusier for Cassina keeps company with a trio of large planters and a surfboard in the space between the kitchen and the dining room.

Joseph Walsh and Lauren Strongin, seen here in their dining room, have also kitted out their unit with vintage furniture.

The living room of an unoccupied apartment showcases refinished original hardwood flooring. The joint between the two containers is left exposed.

Architect Alexandre Blouin designed a rectangular staircase at the center of this house, positioning it beneath an operable skylight that draws in sunshine that otherwise would have struggled to penetrate the core of the building, which is 50 feet deep.

“Because the property is so narrow, we had to be strategic in laying out the plan,” Mitchell says. “Our goal was to create an open plan that spanned from exterior wall to exterior wall in order to make the home feel as large as possible.” Solid oak flooring fills the space and pendants from Kenroy Home illuminate the kitchen.

Natural bamboo flooring was used throughout the home, as well as dimmable LED lighting. The house incorporates a hybrid heat pump water heater, which draws in ambient heat from the surrounding air, moves it across condenser coils, then transfers it into the tank to heat the water. This device creates the same amount of hot water as a traditional electric water heater, but reduces water-heating expenses up to 62%.

Volcano Porcelain Tile by Nemo Tile Nemo Tile’s Volcano line of porcelain tile is a dead ringer for natural stone. Volcanic rock found in southern Italy inspired the seven available colorways like Grigio, shown above.

Smith designed the custom cabinets, which were fashioned from medium-density fiberboard with a white lacquer finish. There are three drawer heights. "The faces are consistent but some, when you open them up, are triple-height," Smith says. "So that helps with things that are really large, like sleeping bags or camping stuff or whatever. They're three feet deep, so it goes into the knee wall, which is really handy. So you get lots and lots of storage."

Maintenance problems can be extremely expensive to repair.

For a cost-conscious 2,000-square-foot renovation located 30 minutes outside of Austin, Texas, architect Nick Deaver took a look around for inspiration. He spied galvanized metal cladding on the region’s sheds and co-opted the inexpensive, resilient material for his own design. He then applied locally quarried Lueders limestone near the entrance—a warm contrast to the steely facade.

The LC4 lounge is by Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, and Pierre Jeanneret for Cassina. Operable porthole windows on the east facade offer ventilation.

The living-dining room replete with a Wells sofa from Room and Board, occupies what was formerly a classroom.

A pair of lights from IKEA hang above the first floor, which houses the living room, kitchen, and bathroom. Pine floors, painted black, run throughout the residence.

Wood envelops the home’s second story. The floor is made of Brazilian pine salvaged from a warehouse. The walls are also recycled boards, sourced from the ceiling of a conventillo, or tenement, in the La Boca neighborhood, and sliced into 12-inch-wide planks. The ceiling is made of ipe from the NET workshop. In the family room, cushions knit by Teresa’s mother, Griselda Sposari, sit on a Lennon armchair by NET.

Locally sourced Canadian plywood was used for the flooring throughout the home, and all doors and windows were replaced with low-energy upgrades. The couple shares their space with guide dogs they foster through a local organization.

As for the interior detailing, “In contemporary construction you have a layered approach to materials. Everything is on top of something else. We tried to avoid that.” Indeed, the house’s materials are few and hardy: polished concrete, maple, and Douglas fir, and white walls with a few bold accents of green and blue.

Amy finds precisely what she’s after in a refrigerator by Sub-Zero in the kitchen.

At the opposite end of the house, the soaking tub gets almost daily use. The bath and shower fixtures are by Dornbracht

The kitchen, which sits at the center of the house, features recycled glass countertops, Ikea cabinets, and carbonized bamboo floors. “We had Thanksgiving dinner there,” says the daughter. “There’s no sense of the house as small. It feels like a house.”

Treanor's bedroom.