861 Lovell Avenue in Mill Valley, California is surrounded by redwood trees and offers that California dream of living an indoor/outdoor lifestyle. Sounds of the Cascade Falls stream in from the East, while the afternoon sun floods the courtyard and swimming pool to the West.

The house sits on 1.25 acres of land and has a deck that connects the interiors with the outdoors throughout the property. Little points out, “Some of the old-growth redwood he used has up to 25 growth rings in a single inch!”

“I believe Jones designed these houses to be living things. They’re not museums," says architect and resident Bruce Norelius.

Alongside the redwood shade screen, which keeps the house from overheating, Freeman and Feldmann grow vegetables in an 18-inch-wide garden but frequently bike to nearby eateries for the local Mexican cuisine.

Lambert pours wine in the kitchen, which is defined by a low concrete-block wall and serves as the home’s central core. The seating-area chairs are from Herman Miller.

Near the house, Cooper clustered lush, big-leafed plants philodendron, purple heart, and flowering canna. Farther out, vegetable gardens sprout in raised beds, and thyme and mint thrive beneath citrus trees. Native California silver wild rye and matilija poppies bind the slope, bordering the low “snake wall” that winds around the yard, narrowly ducking beneath a big ficus tree with just enough clearance for a sprinting kid. Wide stadium steps connect the garden levels, turning the steep hillside into amphitheater seating.

In order to give the redesign a seamless feel, Brigham and Archuleta carried the use of wood throughout the room—including the shower. Archuleta researched types of wood that can withstand a high-moisture environment, and the most visually appealing was coastal redwood. He came across an unlikely source of reclaimed redwood: old pickling vats from a company called Trestlewood. Experience in working with reclaimed wood taught Archuleta that “wood that’s been exposed to liquid for long periods of time pulls in minerals that it wouldn't naturally have access to in its living state.” In this case, the iron bands and nails that held the barrels together reacted with the pickling liquid, leaving behind a rich, dark patina.

For their A. Quincy Jones house in Los Angeles, architect Bruce Norelius and his partner, Landis Green, retained and restored core elements, such as the living room’s redwood paneling and concrete-block wall.

In the living room, local artwork and an elegant redwood ceiling watch over a side chair by Warren Platner for Knoll and an Easy Edges side chair by Frank Gehry for Vitra.

The owners replaced the original decking material, which was pressure-treated pine, with a clear redwood grade, allowing the deep, reddish hues to contrast with the sparkling blue water steps away.

The new façade, glazed from floor to ceiling, opens up the house to its natural environment. “We transformed the exterior into a modern wood structure that responded to the surroundings,” says Olle Lundberg, Design Principal at Lundberg Design.

Katherine Lambert, a partner at Metropolitan Architectural Practice (MAP), and her business associate Christiane Robbins, painstakingly restored a 1950s redwood-and-glass house in Napa, California, originally designed by Jack Hillmer of Telesis.

In addition to seven bedrooms and an open-concept kitchen, the home also features an indoor sports court.

Since the project was completed earlier this year, Soria's parents enjoy their backyard every day.

The interior metal grating motif is continued in these stairs made out of redwood from a tree on-site. A centrally-located gas fireplace distributes heat evenly throughout the home as an energy-saving measure.

A John Baldessari photograph rests on a shelf above a built-in desk just around the corner from the kitchen.

What American-made products are you tired of seeing? Anything that is cheaply made and isn’t thoughtfully designed, junk that will be thrown away within a few years, or products that still have the same form as they did in the ’70s. Deep Redwood Traditional Bowl, $150.

The existing partitions were tongue-and-groove redwood. To update the interior, each panel was painstakingly removed, refinished in a darker hue, and replaced. The centerpiece, a four-strand rattan couch, is complimented by other wooden pieces, like this original Cherner chair, also a Craigslist purchase.

A concrete-block wall and a built-in bench line the living room, where a photo by Robbins and a painting by Barry McGee hang near a Catenary chair by George Nelson.

In the bedroom, a Margaret Kilgallen print joins a Brionvega Algol television, lamps from Patricia Urquiola and Pablo, and a Hans Wegner chair.

The house wraps around a sycamore tree planted at the time of construction. The outdoor furniture is from Selamat Designs. “In most buildings, everything is set,” Robbins says. “In this house, you have three ways you can dine—I love that. The most surprising wonder about the project has been the ability to move things around.”

Beckmann stands in front of one of the four Lautner-designed units, each of which opens onto the concrete walkway and have a private entrance and private patio (set behind the redwood fence to the left).

The two-story house is wrapped in redwood. Its box-like form would become one of the architect's signature design moves. A large double-height window in the living room provides views of the surrounding foliage.

MAP restored the original kitchen cabinetry; the faucet is from Arwa.

The concrete continues in a bathroom, with an MGS faucet and a toilet from Foshan Fuly Bao.

She removed the original light-blocking redwood stairway from the center of the house and replaced it with channel and bar grate treads.

When not in use as the headboard, the large redwood slab folds down to become a desk.

A view of the newly constructed modern Back House seen from the street. Custom redwood fencing wraps around the home.

"Overall, the lot was flat and grassy with a few beautiful trees," Lum says. "We nestled the house among the heritage redwood tree and the other mature oaks on the property."

Woven into a stand of redwoods on Jason Titus and Nerija Sinkevičiūtė-Titus’s property in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a tree house by San Francisco designer/artist Jay Nelson gives the couple and their three boys a new perspective on the forest.

To date, the pair and their pals have built a compound complete with sheds, tree decks, a pavilion, a wood-fired hot tub, an outhouse, an outdoor shower, and, now, a redwood cabin where an ever widening network of friends gather for skill-sharing workshops and events.

Some 35 percent of the materials from the renovation were resurrected in the yard: Redwood panels became fencing. Blocks cut from original concrete patios form the snake wall. And Purdy plans to crochet colorful cozies over various branches and stumps.

Galvanized-aluminum flashing is used to hide lighting fixtures and to delineate the tops of the redwood-strip walls. “It’s a simple palette of materials,” says Bornstein.

The exterior is clad in a mix of redwood and aluminum.