Before & After: How a Retired Couple Adapted Their Forever Home for Aging in Place

Almost 50 years after building their Bay Area home, Larry and Pearl Toy call on Blue Truck Studio to make it more comfortable and accessible while preserving all the things they love.

Text by

Issa Hung

Photos by

Gregg Segal

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When Larry and Pearl Toy first built their house in Orinda, California, in the mid-1970s, they didn’t know what they wanted, except that it should be comfortable. "I was just 30, and my wife was 28, and we really did not know much about architecture at all," says Larry. Through a recommendation, they hired San Francisco architect Henrik Bull to design their house. "We relied on his expertise to give us a beautiful home, which he did," Larry explains.

In Orinda, California, Pearl and Larry Toy hired Blue Truck Studio to update and adapt the home they built in the ’70s for improved comfort and accessibility.

Over the years, the house grew with them—the couple built an addition after the birth of their daughter. But recently, after nearly 50 years, the house was showing its age and it was time for an update. Comfort remained a primary concern for the couple, especially as they were now retired—Pearl from a career as a hematologist and professor, and Larry as an astronomer and the founder of a higher education nonprofit—and they planned to age in place in their home.

The Toys tapped Blue Truck Studio for the renovation after their daughter, a landscape architect, heard about the practice through a colleague. The firm set about making the home safer and more accommodating for Larry, now 80, and Pearl, 78.

Before: Primary Bathroom

Before: The primary bathroom had one sink, and the bathtub was seldom used.

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One of the couple’s top requests was for more accessible bathrooms designed with aging and mobility in mind. Most of the home’s bathtubs, which the Toys rarely used, were removed in favor of walk-in showers. The curbless shower in the primary bath is large enough to accommodate a wheelchair, should one be needed in the future. Redone in gleaming blue tile of varying shades, the space now connects to the bedroom as an en suite for easier access.

After: Primary Bathroom

The shower now has grab bars, and it can accommodate a wheelchair if needed. The floor is slightly slanted so that any water that splashes will flow to the drain.

Double sinks were on the Toys' wishlist for the primary bathroom.

The house, situated on a steep hillside, spans three stories, and features a deck overlooking the woods. The firm added handrails to the deck, and ensured that the wall framing along the stairwell could accommodate a stair climber in case one is needed.

Even small changes, like installing automatic lights in many of the rooms, are helpful. "As you get older and don’t see as well as you used to, having lights that respond to you—rather than having to fumble for where the light switches are—is very nice," Toy says.

Before: Kitchen

Before: The kitchen was originally enclosed.

As fans of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, the Toys had a passthrough window in their enclosed kitchen, just like the star—but it turns out they never used it. Blue Truck Studio opened up the kitchen to the dining room so that the Toys can move seamlessly between the two, although the couple mainly dine at the new built-in kitchen table, which they find more convenient.

After: Kitchen

The renovated kitchen features a Fisher & Paykel fridge and a Bosch dishwasher.

The couple take most of their meals at a custom, built-in table near the kitchen.

The original floor plan also included an aviary. "It’s a design that we regretted doing," Toy says, as the birds created a lot of debris and cleaning it was cumbersome. The renovation reclaimed that unused space for a hallway and additional square footage for the living room.

Before: Exterior

Before: The house, originally designed by Henrik Bull in the 1970s, sits on a hillside and spans three stories, which required a variance.

Outside, the firm made some major changes to the home’s exterior focused on safety and energy efficiency. "Fire safety and thermal comfort were a couple of the main drivers of the project," says Peter Liang, principal of Blue Truck Studio.

The house originally had wood siding, an asphalt roof, and single-paned windows. "When we were first building the house, we were tight on money. And one of the sacrifices we made was to use single-pane sliders for our windows," Toy says.

After: Exterior

The home is located in a moderate fire hazard severity zone. To address fire safety, Blue Truck Studio replaced the wood siding with noncombustible cement-board siding, and swapped the asphalt roof for a metal one.

Now, the home sports Fleetwood windows, a thicker metal roof, cement-board siding, and flame-resistant Vulcan vents that prevent embers from entering. "Basically, our house is about as fireproof as one can be," Toy says.

Other upgrades include better climate controls systems, heat pumps, additional insulation, and updated solar panels. The house stays cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter—and it can store energy via Powerwalls. It is so energy efficient, in fact, that the Toys are able to sell energy to PG&E on high-demand days.

Before: Media Room

Music is a big part of the couple’s life. A media room houses Larry Toy’s collection of more than 2,000 reel-to-reel tapes.

While the house has been thoroughly refreshed—with high-end appliances and fixtures and furnishings picked out by the couple’s daughter—the Toys’ favorite aspects of the house remain the same. These includes the general layout, skylights that bring in natural light, and a media room for Larry’s extensive collection of reel-to-reel tapes—now with a multichannel sound system.

After: Media Room

The media room now has new speakers and a multichannel sound system.

Honoring the original architecture of the house while updating it was top of mind for Liang. "We were sensitive to working within the style of the house and not changing it drastically," he says. "They were able to move right back in and feel at home."