Designed by Thayer Design Studio. We are a full-service interior design firm located in South Boston, MA specializing in new construction, renovations, additions and room by room furnishing for residential and small commercial projects throughout New England. From conception to completion, we engage in a collaborative process with our clients, working closely with contractors, architects, crafts-people and artisans to provide cohesion to our client’s vision. We build spaces that tell a story and create comfort; always striving to find the balance between materials, architectural details, color and space. We believe a well-balanced and thoughtfully curated home is the foundation for happier living.

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Mid-sized trendy great room photo in New York with a standard fireplace

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This timber frame great room is created by the custom, curved timber trusses, which also open the up to the window prow with amazing lake views. Photos: Copyright Heidi Long, Longview Studios, Inc.

Client wanted a spacious kitchen with separate work zones so she could cook while her husband helped clean up. Kitchen island was designed to grow with the family and features seating for up to 5 people and a homework station, complete with outlets in the drawers, at the end of the island. Bar was intentionally designed as a more masculine version of the kitchen. The left side houses drinkware while the right side is a coffee and tea nook. Porcelain countertop runs the entirety of the bar to provide an anxiety-free coffee making experience (for us slightly OCD people out there!). Custom built parquet dining table with easy to maintain black chairs for the couples 2 young kids.

Photo credit: Louis Habeck #FOASmallSpaces
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What our clients needed: • Create a garden folly that doubles as a well-built shed for crafts and storage. • Size the structure large enough for comfortable storage without dominating the garden. • Discreetly locate the shed in the far corner of the rear yard while maintaining existing trees. • Ensure that the structure is protected from the weather and carefully detailed to deter access of wildlife and rodents. FUNCTION • Construct the shed slab close to grade to permit easy access for bicycle storage, while building shed walls above grade to ensure against termites and dryrot. • Install a French door and operable casement windows to admit plenty of daylight and provide views to the garden. • Include rugged built-in work bench, shelves, bike racks and tool storage for a rustic well-organized and efficient space. • Incorporate GFIC electrical service for safe access to power at this distant corner of the yard. • Position energy-efficient interior lighting to ensure space can be used year-round. • Switch control of exterior light from house and from shed for ease of command. AESTHETICS • Design and detail the shed to coordinate with the Arts and Crafts style house. • Include an arbor for future flowering vines, further softening the shed’s garden presence. • Simple and rustic interior surfaces ensure that the space is easy to clean. • Create an aged and softly weathered appearance, and protect the exterior siding by finishing the cedar with a custom-colored semi-transparent stain. INNOVATIVE MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION • Factory-built components were pre-assembled to allow for a speedy assembly and for a shorter on-site construction schedule. • Each component was easily transported through the yard without disturbing garden features. • Decorative exterior trim frames the door and windows, while a simpler trim is used inside the unadorned shed. OBSTACLE OVERCOME • The structure is located in the corner of the yard to avoid disturbance of a curly willow tree. • The low-profile structure is positioned close to property lines while staying beneath the allowable daylight plane for structures. • To comply with daylight plane close to fence, the roof form combines hip and gable forms, with door located at gable end. • The height of the modest interior is maximized, without exceeding the allowable building height. CRAFTSMANSHIP • The concrete slab was precisely formed and finished for ease of shed assembly before the factory-built components were delivered to site. • Precision planning meant the pre-framed door fit exactly between raised concrete curb.

Built for the Bluff, A Sea Ranch Home is Remade from the Inside Out The house had always been grounded, on an ocean bluff at The Sea Ranch. It sits unencumbered, adjacent to one of the most dramatic stretches of the Sonoma coast with protected commons meadow to the east, uninterrupted Pacific views to the west, and a bluff trail running alongside. What it lacked was the feeling of home, one that could hold up its own against the natural landscape. The owners are entrepreneurs with deep involvement across tech, real estate, and development and they know how things are built. The Sea Ranch house had been in their lives for years, a second residence and a place for family to gather. Built for a different time, it felt more compromising than comfortable. Sitting in a closed off nook, the kitchen fit one cook at a time and turned its back on the rest of the house. The entry was dim and compressed, divided by a structural column that presented itself at exactly the wrong moment. The primary suite was small relative to the view outside it. A large rear bedroom sat behind a lowered ceiling with a bathroom that had never been added. The house was certainly worth the trouble of doing it right. What followed was not one project but four, each with its own design challenge, each addressed over a period of time. Where the House Meets the Ocean The most complex piece of the project, in both structural and spatial terms, was the kitchen expansion. The existing room was a single-person galley squeezed in as an afterthought with no meaningful connection to the dining room, the living space, or the deck outside. To make it useful for a family that cooks and gathers, it needed to grow outward into an existing patio and flow into the rooms around it. A big challenge was the roofline. Several planes at different pitches and angles converged directly where additional volume was needed. A new form had to join that geometry without reading as a correction. The solution found the simplest possible connection between the existing angles, a roofline that from outside the structure, appears entirely original. From the bluff trail where the addition is visible, there is no discernible seam. Inside, the kitchen is now open to the living and dining rooms without interruption. A large sliding glass door connects the space onto the rear deck. The deck itself was expanded and oriented so that the body of the house shields it from the coastal wind which is a common consideration that determines whether outdoor space at The Sea Ranch actually gets used. The result is a room that works for large family gatherings where no one feels cutoff, and one that makes the boundary between being inside and outside easy to ignore. Welcoming Light A structural column stood at the convergence of eight distinct roof planes in the entry. It was load-bearing, but it was also the reason the entry had always felt like a hallway rather than a welcoming arrival. With the structural engineer, a custom steel connector was designed to receive beams from six separate directions, redistributing the load through a single new continuous beam. The column was surgically removed. Three triangular skylights were then cut into the roof above, their shapes drawn from the existing geometry of the planes around them. The entry is now bright and open. The skylights feel native to the structure because they follow the logic already present in the roof. Two Suites, Two Views At opposite ends of the house, the two bedroom suites were each reconfigured, and each found a different way to introduce more of the landscape into the room. An addition to the primary suite extended the structure outward to create a wraparound plan with a loop from the bedroom through bath and closet that had not been possible before. The expansion opened a slot view from the tub and shower toward the ocean. The view is precise and private. The ocean view is present and deliberate. The rear bedroom absorbed an adjacent storage room to transform it into a full second suite with a vaulted ceiling, a large bathroom with a tub, a shower, and a sauna. A private fenced garden courtyard sits just beyond the glass bringing the outdoors inside. The tub was placed so that, looking past the courtyard and through the bedroom beyond, the ocean is visible at the far end. It is a long view and it makes the room feel larger and more settled than its footprint would suggest. Glass on Four Sides, Fire at the Center The main living and gathering room had always been caught between two competing facts: glass on four sides meant exceptional views but at The Sea Ranch, it also meant a cold room. A 360-degree cylindrical fireplace was added at the center on a raised stone base, providing radiant heat in every direction and giving the room a focal point around which a group naturally orients itself, whether that means two people at the end of the day or the whole family after dinner. Owners Who Picked Up the Tools The owner was not a passive client. they came with construction knowledge, specific ideas, and the desire to be an active part of the process, a dynamic that other architects may had found difficult, which Klopf Architecture accepted as an asset. They took it upon themselves to complete some of the work during construction, including the installation of a new radiant heating system beneath the floors. The radiant system added to the older and less-desirable forced-air setup. At The Sea Ranch, that change matters as the house sits close enough to the ocean and moving air competes with the sound of it, where radiant heat does not. Solar panels were added to the roof as part of the new system. Insulation was upgraded throughout the walls, roof, and crawl space. The house that had always had the right setting now holds warmth the way a house on the bluff should. They were also deeply involved in the design and selections throughout, and the finished house reflects both of them in ways that are specific rather than generic. The process took longer and moved through more iterations than a more arms-length relationship might have allowed. The result is more defined and personal because of it. The Landscape Holds Priority Every exterior decision was shaped by The Sea Ranch Design Standards, which require that buildings defer to the landscape around them rather than compete with it. Because this house sits on the bluff and is visible from the public trail, the additions faced a close review. Existing materials were matched. Geometries were resolved. The additions had to become indistinguishable from the original building. From the trail, the house reads exactly as it always has — low, cedar-clad, secondary to the meadow and the water. The setting holds priority. Inside, the house has been remade. Klopf Architecture Project Team: Geoff Campen and Trenton Jewett
Contractor: Shawn Bettega Construction
Photography: ©2025 Mariko Reed
Year Completed: 2023
Location: The Sea Ranch, CA

Vista Estate Imaging
Cottage living room photo in Seattle with beige walls, a standard fireplace and a brick fireplace

The kitchen is open to the living space keeping it bright and connected. Bar seating as well as a table provide a large amount of seating for many guests. We layered some driftwood lights, a colorful custom beach painting, and some beach glass accents to keep the feeling of the ocean inside.

View from master bath towards master bedroom, through open shower/tub wet room and open courtyard. Manolo Langis Photographer
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The Back Bay House is comprised of two main structures, a nocturnal wing and a daytime wing, joined by a glass gallery space. The daytime wing maintains an informal living arrangement that includes the dining space placed in an intimate alcove, a large country kitchen and relaxing seating area which opens to a classic covered porch and on to the water’s edge. The nocturnal wing houses three bedrooms. The master at the water side enjoys views and sounds of the wildlife and the shore while the two subordinate bedrooms soak in views of the garden and neighboring meadow. To bookend the scale and mass of the house, a whimsical tower was included to the nocturnal wing. The tower accommodates flex space for a bunk room, office or studio space. Materials and detailing of this house are based on a classic cottage vernacular language found in these sorts of buildings constructed in pre-war north america and harken back to a simpler time and scale. Eastern white cedar shingles, white painted trim and moulding collectively add a layer of texture and richness not found in today’s lexicon of detail. The house is 1,628 sf plus a 228 sf tower and a detached, two car garage which employs massing, detail and scale to allow the main house to read as dominant but not overbearing. Designed by BC&J Architecture.