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The first floor is where the family spends most of the day. “The girls will be playing, and we’ll be working on projects and cooking,” Honora says. “It just all happens right here.”

Details like a plywood staircase and pine flooring lend the home extra warmth. A Splügen Bräu Flos pendant adds a touch of shine to the dining room.

A Danish Morso wood stove is a focal point of the living room, where the family's Miniature Bull Terrier Hank naps on the sofa.

A 12-foot-tall wood-clad multi-slide door in the open plan living-dining room offers an ocean view.

An outdoor shower provides a place to wash off sand after summer trips to the beach.

The single-volume home has been designed to appear to float over the lot on its deck. Ryan upgraded the existing foundation to support its passive design. "Originally, I wanted to make the whole house powered with wood pellets," he says. "But I decided against shoveling pellets in the snow. I'll get weird in a little bit less of a cold climate."

The new home quotes the forms and materials of the neighborhood, but remixes them in a more contemporary combination.

The side walls have been treated as vertical extension of the horizontal surface of the garden, and are used for growing climbers such as jasmine, grapes, honeysuckle, raspberries, beans, peas, and even a climbing fig. Colorful bird’s houses and bug hotels are also mounted on the walls.

Green hydraulic tiles create a soothing scene in one of the couple's newly-refreshed bathrooms.

The oak countertops in the kitchen are the same as the flooring.

"One of the main problems with the house before was that you were a little isolated, it was hard to get out to the environment," says Gylfir. Doors and windows galore solve that problem in the renovated home.

The little red cabin is a nod to the classic summer cottage of Sweden.

Workshop .Interior paint is Ryokan Guesthouse from Backdrop.

Ferm Living Desert lounge chairs, Fat Boy Bolleke globe lamps, and a concrete gas fire pit.

A desk area provides a workspace away from the main living area.