Cedar shingles are common in the San Francisco Bay Area, but they age over time and require frequent maintenance, particularly near the water. The original siding and windows on this 1970s vintage house in Tiburon needed extensive repair and replacement and the overall building appeared massive and poorly defined. Without changing the house’s size or shape, we took this opportunity to use very low-maintenance cement fiber siding to differentiate the shape of the central house from the extensions and delineate more interesting and cleaner shapes. The previous house also lacked usable outdoor space, and we enlarged and enclosed the front patio to create a more modern and inviting space for entertaining.

The exterior materials are a combination of Nichiha Vintagewood vertical siding and Hardie Plank horizontal siding. The new windows and sliding doors are by Fleetwood. The steel cable guardrails are custom made.

Inside the house, we opened up a new media room in the middle of the house, improved the flow, simplified and brightened the materials and changed an old gas burning fireplace to an efficient Ortal corner fireplace.