As a project manager at a high-end homebuilder in the Santa Barbara region, Clint Unander is used to working on projects that involve 70 subcontractors with budgets as high as $20 million. So when it came to renovating his own home—a 1,936-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom ranch in the San Roque neighborhood—he was more than prepared to meet the challenge of a strict, four-month timeline (he and his wife, Corinne, had a baby on the way) and a modest budget.

In fact, Clint’s professional expertise ensured that the project was able to be completed within the timeframe for a total hard cost of $625,867.

$6,000 Permits	$250 Plans & Prints	$22,000 Supervision & Management
$9,750 Miscellaneous Construction	$25,000 Landscape & Irrigation	$19,780 Demolition
$8,000 Trenching & Utilities	$5,500 Fences & Gates	$2,000 Landscape Lighting
$14,050 Miscellaneous Site Work	$39,500 Foundation	$32,000 Concrete Flatwork
$5,000 Structural Steel	$58,700 Rough Framing	$6,500 Finish Carpentry & Millwork
$25,000 Cabinetry	$500 Cabinetry Hardwood	$4,500 Insulation
$16,500 Roofing	$3,500 Gutters & Downspouts	$2,780 Flashing & Sheet Metal
$41,370 Windows & Doors	$1,900 Shower Enclosures	$2,470 Shades
$700 Skylights	$26,000 Drywall & Plaster	$18,250 Tile, Slab, & Stone
$22,500 Wood Flooring	$25,500 Painting & Staining	$500 Mirrors
$5,500 Fireplaces	$500 Bath Accessories	$150 Mail Box
$10,500 Appliances	$28,440 Plumbing & Fixtures	$2,800 Water Treatment
$12,700 HVAC	$19,100 Rough & Finish Electrical	$500 Decorative Lighting
$10,000 Contingency	$80,420 Contractor's Fee	$9,259 Cost of Insurance
Grand Total: $625,867

“It’s hard to get high-quality design completed and executed on a small budget,” says architect Dan Weber of Anacapa, who assisted on the project. He notes that his firm does a lot of projects in this range, but the clients often have design goals beyond what their budget can achieve.

For these parameters to work, he says, “you need a team that has a really strong creative design sense from the owner’s side, and you need a contractor who can fill in the gaps and make good design decisions.”

And that’s the secret sauce of this project: Clint brings both those elements to the table. “This was his vision, his design,” says Weber, who met Clint while working on a house in Montecito. “He was the leader of this whole project. We just helped him get a building permit, really.”

The modest budget is even more impressive when you consider that the project was essentially a rebuild: They only kept 70% of the original slab and 50% of the framing.

The original house, built in 1952, had an awkward layout that chopped up the interior—to get to the backyard, you had to go through four rooms—so Clint’s primary goal was to open it up. The third-of-an-acre property is sizable for Santa Barbara, but the previous house “in no way took advantage of the backyard,” says Clint. And with three small kids, it was important for the family to have a yard close to the main living space.

They removed a bedroom and an interior wall that split the house in half to create a more open kitchen and living room, and added a wall of sliding glass windows that leads out to the yard.

Now, you can see through to the backyard as soon as you open the front door, and the house embraces the region’s near-perfect climate with a large concrete patio that holds a dining table and lounge area with a built-in fire pit and fountain.

“The patio is a more important room than the indoor living room,” says Weber. Clint also did all of the landscaping himself, turning what was an overgrown expanse of weeds into a true oasis.

Native plantings of succulents, olive trees, and sea grasses surround the patio. A large grassy lawn offers plenty of room to play, and fragrant lavender bushes ring a recent addition: a stock tank pool that’s quickly become a favorite spot on the property. Set at the back of the property, the pool and nearby chaise lounges have a view of the Santa Ynez Mountains.

While Clint kept the kitchen where it originally was to keep costs down, he made a special request of Weber’s team to design a coffee bar adjacent to the windows overlooking the backyard.

The revamp includes the refrigerator with built-in storage that holds the pantry and a pull-out java station. “It’s really cool,” says Clint. “It embraces the outside, but it’s still close enough to the kitchen.”

A window separates that area from the rest of the kitchen, so to make that space usable, they added a small bench below. With a hinged top, it offers additional storage, but it’s also a place for guests to linger when someone is working in the kitchen.

Plus, it’s the perfect kid-sized counter. “They make cereal in the morning there. When my wife bakes, the kids stand there to help,” says Clint. “It’s such a sweet little space. A lot of memories on that little bench, already.”

The wall that serves as the back of the kitchen was turned into a focal point of the living room with a new fireplace and television.

The other half of the house holds the two bathrooms and three bedrooms. In the main bedroom, in lieu of a walk-in closet, which would require additional walls to be built, they opted for wardrobe-style storage, borrowing some square footage from the garage. By bumping out the wall, they created a jog to hold the laundry closet, solving for two needs at once.

To keep costs in check, Clint used the same tile and marble wherever he could, incorporating the remnant pieces from the primary bathroom shower into the kids’ bath.

He also didn’t spring for top-of-the-line everything; plumbing fixtures are Kohler and Delta, while appliances are KitchenAid. “We didn’t really splurge on anything,” he says. “The scope was always correlated with the budget.”

Working with Weber and the Anacapa team was key to translating budget-friendly finishes into a refined final product. “They know how to achieve a higher-end look with modest materials,” says Clint. “And that’s the trick to doing a project like this successfully.”

More by Anacapa:

A Soulful Renovation in Santa Barbara Brings the Mountains Front and Center

A Gorgeous, Off-Grid Guesthouse Perches Lightly on a California Ranch

A Dark Midcentury Becomes a Luminous Gem

Project Credits:

Architect of record: Anacapa / @anacapa_architecture

General contractor: Leonard Unander Associates, Inc.

Structural engineer: Hume Engineers