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The two-bedroom ADU features built-ins in every room

Zen Den floor plan

Floor Plan of Cloud DADU by Cast Architecture

Alice, the mother and grandmother, enjoys morning coffee on the deck with her daughter Claudia, who lives in the main house with her husband and two sons.

Floor Plan of Slope Prefab by Manta North

"The space is limited, but feels generous,

Designed for energy efficiency, the home features insulation above code and hydronic radiant heating. Note the Morso 6148 wood-burning stove in the entry hall that’s fueled by locally felled lumber.

The exterior is still clad in timber like the original, but Jo took the palette darker and selected wider planks to modernize the look. “We kept the rhythm, but changed it slightly,” she says.

The family in 2020.

A slide-and-pivot door leads directly from the living room to the deck.

Before: The tweaks the family made to the kitchen back in 2015 remained largely untouched in 2020.

The design team removed a bookshelf and rearranged the cabinetry to create a whole new layout for the bottom floor of the home.

A pass-through window connects the kitchen to the long, sunny patio.

The batten frame on the ceiling and walls got a coat of white paint to blend in with the wall panels.

Upstairs, it was more of a reconfiguration than a structural overhaul. “We took every wall out so it was one big space, and we all slept in it like the Waltons,” says Jo. “There were stacks of timber everywhere for months on end until we decided where we wanted the bedrooms to be, putting the same material back.”

There’s a place for everything, and everything in its place.

The aqua hue of the staircase appears again to brighten up the millwork of a built-in home office, as well as the front door.

Quiet, separate spaces now give the family the room they need.

That workspace isn’t the only built-in furniture: The shelves and beds are, too.