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For decades, California’s Bay Area has been a hotbed for counterculture, especially when it comes to art and design. For designer and builder Nick Maimone, that history of DIY craft and making, along with a stunning coastal setting along the Russian River, made renovating this 1960s home in Jenner, California, something of a dream project.

Having studied sculpture and worked in the museum world before moving into carpentry and the building trades, Nick has an affinity for projects with an artistic bent. So, when he was approached by a client who wanted to reimagine a 1967 cabin in Goat Rock State Park with an approach grounded in history and craft, Nick was ecstatic. “When I got the phone call from my client Earl, the first words he said to me were, ‘You’re the contractor we want to work with,’” recalls Nick. “There was something he saw in my approach with my company, Sunrise Homestead, that resonated with him.”

That “something,” it turns out, was Nick’s ability to converge art, craft, and the natural world in his design and construction projects. Considering the cabin’s quirky midcentury design and its idyllic location in a coastal prairie landscape dotted with windswept Bishop pines and Monterey cypress trees, Nick set out to create a place that embraced its setting, both in terms of the region’s design legacy and its stunning locale. “As a builder, you have this idea of what an ideal project would be, where you get to do all the creative things you dream of,” says Nick. “This became that project for me.”

Sculpting Space

Nick Maimone: I grew up outside of Philadelphia and went to art school for sculpture. I was interested in conceptual ideas, as well as the building and trade-related processes like woodworking, welding, and casting that go into sculpture, so I learned a lot of trade skills along the way. When I left art school, I worked in museums as an art installer and helped fabricate exhibition spaces. My art background is really the beginning of my work as a builder, and it has hugely informed my way of thinking when it comes to design.

When I started my contracting business in Occidental, California, in 2016, I wanted to focus on craft and aesthetics, bringing my sensitivities to materiality, design, history, and place. For this project at Goat Rock, my client Earl and his best friend Olivia had bought the property after revitalizing several old, funky houses in the region. Earl has romantic visions of saving them all, and this one was no different.

The property has two houses on it, so we started with this one, the upper house. It seemed like this quaint little cabin, but there was a dark side. It was built in 1967, and everything was falling apart. It was infested with mice, there was a lot of termite damage, and everything on the back of the house was just rotten. At first, Earl wanted to just spruce things up, but as we started uncovering all the damage and rot, pretty quickly we discovered we needed to reframe and rebuild a lot of it. I wanted to approach the design in a way that would update the house, but without stripping it of its character and existing style, and doing something inspired by the history of craft in the region. Luckily, Earl was game.

Passion for Craft

I remember an early meeting where I showed some material samples to Olivia and Earl, and they were pretty giddy about what I was showing them. Olivia is a poet and a creative, and Earl used to be a graphic designer, so they felt my creative energy and they were really stoked on what I was showing them. I said, “We can design cabinetry exactly in line with the original 1960s vision for the project,” or “we could make a wide-plank Doug fir flooring from reclaimed wood.” Things like that were on the table. They realized the potential of how custom everything could be, and that, with my passion for the work that I do, anything was possible.

I was trying to channel the creative energy of the 1960s and ’70s counterculture movement that took shape in this part of the state. At that time, a lot of folks in the Bay Area were moving up to West Sonoma county to experiment with new ways of living and designing homes with things like solar power, composting toilets, and organic gardens. There is this niche history of craftsmanship here, so with this renovation, I tried to channel the creative energy that was happening at that time.

At the same time, I wanted to clean it up and create some cleaner, more contemporary details, but without taking away the essence of that period of architecture. It’s a very simple gable house with gable wall windows, but a lot of the original details were pretty hodgepodge. I took the shell of the house and tried to source materials and finishes that would bring a higher level of precision and craft, and include nods to period details in things like the tile layouts and the cabinetry details.

Focal Point

A big influence on my work is a book by Zen Buddhist priest and legendary Japanese timber frame carpenter Paul Discoe called Zen Architecture: The Building Process as Practice. It made me think about what it means to be a craftsman and a builder, and how the act of being a maker has the potential to go beyond the surface. A common thing in Zen practice is this very precise focus and attention, which I bring to my work as a carpenter.

I had to reframe a lot of the walls with engineered lumber, and we rebuilt all the doors and windows out of old-growth redwood. Earl really pushed for no aluminum-clad windows and doors, and he wanted to have these old-school, push-out casement-style windows; it’s a throwback to the old cabins out here. We used a shaker detail on them, which has square edges and is a little more sharp and crisp. It keeps them feeling modern.

A lot of the cabinetry is old-growth redwood, including the daybeds and the ladder and loft in the secondary bedroom. The flooring is wide-plank, vertical-grain old-growth Doug fir. It came from some friends up in Portland who have a deconstruction company; they are quirky artist folks, so they have a branch of their company where they reconstruct stuff into new projects. They took some of the old-growth framing from an old Portland house and created one-off tongue-and-groove planks. The wood has a lot of character, and they’re trying to make sure it doesn’t go into a landfill. The material sourcing on this project was really important.

In this house, there is not a single bead of caulk—all the millwork is scribed to the floors and walls. There isn’t a single visible fastener in any of the millwork, as it is all mortise and tenon and glued up like furniture. Even the door and window casing is applied so there are no finish nails or screws showing. We were trying to get this seamless, serene finish.

Creating a Vibe

We really wanted to create this 1960s artist vibe in the house. When I was designing it, I imagined it being inhabited by some really rad 1960s/’70s artist who, over the years, had accumulated work and objects from their creative community. So, for example, my friend Julie Cloutier is a ceramic artist, and when the house was finished, I suggested Earl order a full set of ceramics from Julie for the kitchen. They’re very minimalist and I thought they would be perfect for the house.

Not only with things like the dishware, rugs, and lighting, but also in the construction, I tried to work with people who are really inspired and have a similar approach, intention, and attention to detail as me. People who are open to being better and better as craftspeople. I try to align myself to that as a contractor, so that the project ends up being a conglomeration of all these amazing creative people who care deeply about their work.

In the end, I feel like this project is the culmination of my whole life up to this point—from my art background, to becoming a contractor, to being able to wrangle a lot of my creative community and artist friends to get involved. For me, the act of building this project felt like a self-portrait of some kind. It has my identity and my whole life and my path wrapped up so intimately in it. It’s like that saying: “How you do anything, is how you do everything." There’s something about being in a space like this, one of intention and care, where even though it might be hidden in the walls, it shows. You can feel it.

More Construction Diary stories:

She Envisioned a Dome Home—Then Made It a Reality Outside Joshua Tree

This $250K Prefab Cabin Is an Ode to the Finnish Sauna

How a Designer Crafted His New Family Home—On Top of Their First Home

Project Credits:

Design, Architectural Plans & Material Specifications: Sunrise Homestead / @sunrise_homestead

Builder: Nick Maimone, Sunrise Homestead

Lighting Design: Sunrise Homestead

Casework: Michael Mellon and Benjamin Winslow

Article updated on 6/25/25: Nick studied sculpture, not ceramics. Photo captions adjusted to provide additional and more precise sourcing detail.

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