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Built with a heavy timber post-and-beam structure, this renovated Tiburon kit house retains its standard footprint, framing, and tiled roof. Massive sliding glass doors were added to create an indoor/outdoor living experience.

For the heart of the space, Hale designed a double vanity—fabricated with wood from the original house—around an existing column. The pendant is by Lindsey Adelman.

The light near the roof deck is by Roll & Hill

The kitchen features Japanese ash casework and Jacques Biny lights, made in 1956. A Semi pendant by Gubi hangs above a De La Espada table.

Openings in the ceiling allow sunlight to wash over the black slate floors and fir columns. A velvet-upholstered Mr. Chair by George Mulhauser adds color to the living room.

Prentis Hale of SHED Architecture & Design reimagined a kit home in Tiburon, California, that was erected in 1991. Photo:

More Japanese minka than Sears Roebuck, this kit home in the Bay Area—complete with a meditation room—provided the right bones for a renovation.

Architect Bruce Bolander made the most of a limited footprint in a house he designed in a Malibu canyon. With the small bedroom unable to accommodate any "normal" size desk, the architect designed a very thin custom steel desk where resident Heidi Wright works. The floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors from Metal Window Corporation open the entire corner of the room up to the outdoors. “The mountains across the way are almost like another wall—they contain the space to the point that you feel like you’re in a much bigger space, that you’re part of the overall landscape,” says Bolander. Photo by J Bennett Fitts.

When Greg Steinberg and Alexandra Becket, designers and owners of ModOp Design, conceptualized the renovation of their 1939 home in the Moreno Highlands in Silver Lake, their goals were to open it up to the lake's spectacular views and to create a vibrant, modern aesthetic—and to do it all on a budget. To add natural vibrancy and variable depths of color, they used tile selections from Heath Ceramics' Modern Basics line for the kitchen backsplash.

“The design encourages the concept that less is more.”

"The dining room table, the flat files bench, and the mobile shelving unit on the second floor were designed by Justin Godar specifically for the space. They all serve multiple purposes, and also marry form with function."

“There’s an interesting form of communication that happens when we’re both working. The music that is coming from the second floor starts to inform the painting that is happening on the first floor, and visa versa. It’s like we’re collaborating in an indirect way.”

On the street-facing side of the apartments are Japanese-style sitting rooms that are ideal for light meals or meditation. In this sitting room, screens can be slid open to views of the street, or closed for privacy.

The space is designed for easy indoor-outdoor access.