Tour a Charming Backyard ADU Surrounded by Outdoor Rooms

Photos by Paige Coleman

House at a Glance
Who lives here: Interior designer Paige Coleman and her teenage daughter
Location: San Jose, California
Size: 900 square feet (84 square meters); two bedrooms, one bathroom
Architect: Brad Cox
Landscape Design and Construction: Koch & Associates

Cox’s help was key in completing the site planning. Coleman’s property is a flag lot, meaning it is composed of two rectangles that are perpendicular to each other. The shape of the lot means there are five houses around it. “It was really important to site the ADU correctly for privacy,” he says.

When they began their plans, the city of San Jose’s rules limited ADUs, or accessory dwelling units, to one story and required them to be the same style as the main house. After they’d procured their permits and started digging the foundation, those rules changed. This allowed Coleman to add a second story for her daughter’s teen lair. And it meant she had the freedom to build a home in any style she liked.

“The front house is Spanish Colonial, which is not my style. I changed the ADU to a California board-and-batten style that was much more me,” she says. The footprint Cox had come up with worked just as well with this style and kept his site planning intact.

Siding paint: Basil Green; trim paint: Swiss Coffee, both Benjamin Moore

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The shape of the flag lot allowed the front house and the ADU to each have their own rectangular areas for separate yards. Coleman divided hers into different outdoor rooms. Closest to the house is a dining and lounge patio, and beyond it is a patio with a fire pit surrounded by Adirondack chairs.

The overhang at the center of the house protects a pass-through window for serving the patio. “I wanted to make a space out of that area,” Coleman says. On the opposite side is a countertop for putting out food and drinks.

“I didn’t want the yard to look like one big patio, I wanted separate outdoor rooms,” Coleman says. So she used different materials on each patio and raised the fire pit patio a foot off the ground to differentiate the two. The dining patio serves the ADU, while the fire pit patio has a relationship with an old barn on the property. This structure once served as a carriage house for a big Victorian home in the neighborhood before the lots were divided.

When Coleman bought the property, the barn had some fire damage inside but was still a fabulous structure. A few years before building the ADU, Coleman found a contractor who replaced the burned beams and the roof to make sure it was structurally sound. The smaller portion of the roof on the right is clear acrylic that lets in the daylight.

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The barn saved the day when Coleman was downsizing to the smaller house and needed to stash her stuff, and lately it’s been serving as a gym. But she has more plans for it, including a more complete gym in the front. And in the back, she plans to add a big table for projects and store her tools and supplies for gardening and bird-feeding.

The pros at Koch & Associates helped with the landscape design and installed it. Part of their site planning included directing water — they put in a drain to take care of a wet spot in the lawn and protected the barn by installing a French drain in front of it.

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Another consideration for organizing the outdoor yard was finding the right spot for Coleman’s beloved 1965 Airstream trailer. She placed it just past the barn and an adjacent acacia grove.

“We use the trailer as an office, a guest house and sometimes an extra bathroom! It is hooked up to the sewer system and power, though most of the fixtures run off the two solar panels on the roof of the Airstream,” she says. Next to the Airstream, an 8-foot circular patio provides another outdoor room.

This photo also shows the wonderful sliding doors along the barn. “It’s fun to slide them different ways. For my 50th birthday we had a big baked potato bar in front of the doors. We opened them up and everyone was able to circulate in, out and around the barn,” she says.

The gabled roof seen here provides a vaulted ceiling over the living room. A fountain is visible on the right side of the photo. “I feed the birds so much that the landscapers suggested I give them someplace to drink and bathe,” Coleman says. There is also a birdbath in the yard.

A stone path leads around the left side of the house to a grilling patio. “I’ve always loved a modern farmhouse look, but the style has just exploded around here, so I wanted to make it different enough so that it wouldn’t look stuck in a certain time period later,” she says. Overhangs, rafters, gooseneck lamps and siding give her home lots of character. “Those gables were high, so it was good to break up the facade by using horizontal siding below and the vertical board and batten above,” she says.

Also giving the house character is its happy green paint and orange-red gooseneck lamps. “I wanted this house to have lots of personality,” she says.

Gooseneck barn lights: Barn Light Electric Co.

Around the other side of the house, Coleman continued the planter cramming, this time in large galvanized troughs. She added a simple trellis for an espaliered apple tree, which has been trained to grow in a flat plane along the wall, and tucked a citrus garden with Valencia orange and Meyer lemon trees in the corner.

This is the pass-through window mentioned earlier. The French windows swing inside. “At first we were going to put the bathroom here but realized the bathroom needed a more private spot. So we put the laundry room here,” Coleman says. She added a counter over the machines so she could set up a serving station here when entertaining. “Putting in this window and adding the overhang outside turned that little spot into a place,” she says.

Extra cabinets in the laundry room fill in as catch-alls in the small house. The counter also accommodates the printer and serves as a place to spread out plans.

The kitchen is a simple galley with an eat-in peninsula. “I’ve never had a really nice kitchen before, and this was my chance. You know when you have an idea in your head, and you know it’s not the most practical, but you really want it? That’s what happened in here,” Coleman says. “I did not want upper cabinets. I wanted to be standing and cooking at the range and have it feel like it was its own place. And I wanted to be able to see and just reach up and grab whatever I needed — easy access.”

She used the space for walnut floating shelves. Note the way the walnut continues over the top of the fridge surround. The backsplash is a tumbled subway tile. The cabinet to the left is a pantry cabinet outfitted with pullout shelves.

The linear pendant is walnut with brushed aluminum details and cutouts. The vaulted ceiling is high, so Coleman needed a fixture that had long wires to hang it at the right height. “I called the company to see how low we could hang this. They were great to work with,” she says.

Cabinet paint: Fairview Taupe, Benjamin Moore; pendant: Aeris, Cerno

The end of the peninsula accommodates a microwave drawer with a drawer beneath it, as well as five skinny drawers. “The contractor asked me what the heck I was going to put in these skinny drawers, and I said ‘skinny things.’ I keep items like candles, a lighter and keys in them.” Every inch of storage counts in here.

She also had a handy niche installed just off the kitchen. It provides extra storage and allows her to enjoy her collections — Le Creuset mugs, Gator French presses, Bauer pottery and funky vintage objects including art, metal trucks and a bear paperweight.

Coleman knew having just one bathroom could cause issues, so she wisely added a mirror and shelf just outside the door. “There’s always going to be a time when we both need to dry our hair. And the 16-year-old usually dominates the bathroom, with makeup all over the counter,” she says.

The shower surround has a large-format tile with a delicate 3D design. “The pattern on it reminded me of dandelions,” she says.

The book A Pattern Language inspires Coleman’s work. “One thing they mention is trying to bring natural light into rooms from more than one side. I love my bedroom because it has windows on three sides,” she says.

She added wall sconces for reading to save room on top of her nightstands. “They tend to fill up so fast when you have lamps on them,” she says. Five-panel doors cover her closet.

Coleman has named the property Birdsong Ranch.

“It conveys the feeling of the property by incorporating our home and that super-cool vintage barn, as well as the fact that I have many, many avian friends. I have seven feeders on the property, lots of habitats, a birdbath and a fountain,” she says. “We see crows, blue jays, cedar waxwings, brown towhees, chickadees, goldfinches, house finches and more. We wake up to birdsongs every day.” She had an artist make this sign for the barn.

The result of all the work is a magical place full of cozy interior spaces, welcoming outdoor rooms and those lovely birdsongs. Cox was more than impressed watching his client handle the project.

“Paige was an amazing client. When it came to changing the plans as the city’s rules changed, she was beyond flexible. I started out as her architect and consulted on the site planning and volume at the beginning, but as we progressed she took over the role of designer,” Cox says. “The look and feel of the house and all the character is all her as a designer and a homeowner.” He was so impressed that sometime during the construction process, the architect asked her what her career plans were, and before she knew it, she had shifted from working in staging to taking a job in his firm.

Contractor: Rick Sangetta of RGS Enterprises

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