You may have heard about accessory dwelling units – sometimes referred to as ADUs, Secondary dwelling units, or in-law units – and you’ve been wondering if you could build one at your property. But you don’t know where to start. Here’s what you can do: Call your local Planning or […]
Oakland
42 posts
2017 has been a busy year. As the year wraps up, and before we head into the holidays, I thought I’d share just some of what has been going on “behind the screen” here in the studio. I wrote and published a book: Working With An Architect was published in […]
The following images were made this week as I was working on a small cottage project that was recently re-started by the clients after a break of almost 2 years. In the intervening years, the building code changed and the Oakland’s planning regulations changed, so we had to make some […]
As architects we do a lot of different things. It’s more than making drawings. As an example, in August I finished the permit drawings for a commercial project in San Francisco, an accessory dwelling unit in Sunnyvale, the conversion of an existing garage into an accessory dwelling unit in Oakland. […]
With the recent changes to state law regarding Accessory Dwelling Units, you can see how various municipalities are dealing with changing their planning ordinances to come into compliance with the state legislation. In Oakland, they are allowing development within a house, and development attached to a house. They are allowing […]
In California right now, there is a significant amount of interest in “accessory dwelling units” (ADUs). These used to be called “granny flats”, “in-law units”, or “back yard cottages”. Now they are most commonly called “accessory dwelling units” or “secondary dwelling units”. By definition, an ADU is a smaller dwelling […]
The project to update a long neglected mid-century modern house in the Oakland hills is coming along. At what feels like a snail’s pace, but moving along none the less. In this post we’ll look at a nearly completed bathroom, a detail that makes my eye twitch, and a little […]
One of the projects in the office at the moment is the remodel of mid-century house in the Oakland hills. I have written about this project before here and here. The construction is moving along. Here are some photographs of the construction in progress. The Master Bedroom is small, but […]
Today I visited my Oakland remodel project. The owner and I met with the contractor to discuss tile details – where grout joints will be, alignments, and so on. The owner and I also discussed the paint colors for the remodeled Master Suite and came to some decisions. This above […]
This post is about a bathroom remodeling which is part of a larger remodeling project to a mid-century house in the Oakland Hills. The bathroom has a good size, but the fixtures are arranged in a strange way and date to the late 1940’s – and not in a good […]
This is a project that I have been working on for a while. For a variety of reasons, we have only just applied for the building permit. Two main situations have held up the project: gaining Planning approval took a ridiculous amount of time – and we didn’t have any […]
The schematic design phase of the Bay Vista project is over. Now is a good time to recap the design. As you may recall, the Bay Vista project, in Oakland, is a whole house remodel + an addition to a faintly Swiss cottage style California Ranch house that dates from […]
I’m really excited about this project. I started it about a month ago and it’s off to a great start. The project is to remodel and expand an existing house in the Oakland hills. The house sits on a down sloping one acre site with a tremendous view of the […]
This project is one that I don’t think I’ve written about. The client for the deck on the Oakland hillside house decided that she wanted to rebuild a previously existing detached garage. The garage had been demolished prior to her buying the property, but the foundations, which also functioned as a […]
I think it’s time to update the progress on one project and introduce a new one. Here we go! San Bruno Hits A Snag Ah, the continuing saga of the San Bruno project. As a reminder, the project is a simple 200 square foot extension at the back of the house. […]
This post is a bit different from previous posts in that it is a little bit about this, a little bit about that. A potpourri of news, if you will. Previous Projects Updated: The Edwardian remodel in Oakland has been stalled for a few months for reasons outside my control. […]
Last week I wrote that I was about to accompany the client in to the Oakland Permit Center to apply for a permit for the project. The project is fairly small: we are adding a deck, replacing one window, replacing another window with a sliding glass door, and rebuilding a bathroom […]
Following up on last week’s post: after modeling the existing house, I made the changes we had discussed. I also sent a drawing of the proposed deck to the structural engineer. He came back with some suggestions that make things simpler. The new deck is shown in the illustration above. […]
This week I got started on two new projects. The project illustrated above is one of them. It is a simple remodel to a house in Oakland on a fairly steeply sloped site. The only changes planned to the exterior are adding the deck. This 3D image is produced by […]
The whole house remodel project in Oakland is well underway. The house is 104 years old. All the exterior doors and windows have been replaced and some relocated. The old chimney has been removed. Just get a look at interior: All the interior plaster has been removed, some existing walls […]