Jeff Roberts
Sunroom - coastal sunroom idea in Portland Maine with a standard ceiling

Design Architect: Stephen Sullivan, AIA; Architect of Record: Sullivan Conard Architects; Project Team: Jim Romano (project architect), Andrea Ermolli, Maria Simon; Interior Designer: Doug Rasar Interior Design; Contractor: Toth Construction, Inc.; Landscape Architect: Allworth Design; Photographer: Aaron Leitz

David O. Marlow Photography
Bedroom - mid-sized rustic guest medium tone wood floor bedroom idea in Denver with white walls, a corner fireplace and a stone fireplace

A modern yet cozy living room with blue painted cabinets, a large gray sectional colorful accents, and custom drapery panels. The exposed brick fireplace givess the space a casual feel. The Gold accents on the coffee table add polish to the family room.

Caleb Collins - Nested Tours
Inspiration for a country medium tone wood floor entryway remodel in Oklahoma City with beige walls and a dark wood front door

Trendy multicolored three-story mixed siding exterior home photo in Minneapolis

This modern green home offers both a vacation destination on Cape Cod near local family members and an opportunity for rental income. FAMILY ROOTS. A West Coast couple living in the San Francisco Bay Area sought a permanent East Coast vacation home near family members living on Cape Cod. As academic professionals focused on sustainability, they sought a green, energy efficient home that was well-aligned with their values. With no green homes available for sale on Cape Cod, they decided to purchase land near their family and build their own. SLOPED SITE. Comprised of a 3/4 acre lot nestled in the pines, the steeply sloping terrain called for a plan that embraced and took advantage of the slope. Of equal priority was optimizing solar exposure, preserving privacy from abutters, and creating outdoor living space. The design accomplished these goals with a simple, rectilinear form, offering living space on the both entry and lower/basement levels. The stepped foundation allows for a walk-out basement level with light-filled living space on the down-hill side of the home. The traditional basement on the eastern, up-hill side houses mechanical equipment and a home gym. The house welcomes natural light throughout, captures views of the forest, and delivers entertainment space that connects indoor living space to outdoor deck and dining patio. MODERN VISION. The clean building form and uncomplicated finishes pay homage to the modern architectural legacy on the outer Cape. Durable and economical fiber cement panels, fixed with aluminum channels, clad the primary form. Cedar clapboards provide a visual accent at the south-facing living room, which extends a single roof plane to cover the entry porch. SMART USE OF SPACE. On the entry level, the “L”-shaped living, dining, and kitchen space connects to the exterior living, dining, and grilling spaces to effectively double the home’s summertime entertainment area. Placed at the western end of the entry level (where it can retain privacy but still claim expansive downhill views) is the master suite with a built-in study. The lower level has two guest bedrooms, a second full bathroom, and laundry. The flexibility of the space—crucial in a house with a modest footprint—emerges in one of the guest bedrooms, which doubles as home office by opening the barn-style double doors to connect it to the bright, airy open stair leading up to the entry level. Thoughtful design, generous ceiling heights and large windows transform the modest 1,100 sf* footprint into a well-lit, spacious home. *(total finished space is 1800 sf) RENTAL INCOME. The property works for its owners by netting rental income when the owners are home in San Francisco. The house especially caters to vacationers bound for nearby Mayo Beach and includes an outdoor shower adjacent to the lower level entry door. In contrast to the bare bones cottages that are typically available on the Cape, this home offers prospective tenants a modern aesthetic, paired with luxurious and green features. Durable finishes inside and out will ensure longevity with the heavier use that comes with a rental property. COMFORT YEAR-ROUND. The home is super-insulated and air-tight, with mechanical ventilation to provide continuous fresh air from the outside. High performance triple-paned windows complement the building enclosure and maximize passive solar gain while ensuring a warm, draft-free winter, even when sitting close to the glass. A properly sized air source heat pump offers efficient heating & cooling, and includes a carefully designed the duct distribution system to provide even comfort throughout the house. The super-insulated envelope allows us to significantly reduce the equipment capacity, duct size, and airflow quantities, while maintaining unparalleled thermal comfort. ENERGY EFFICIENT. The building’s shell and mechanical systems play instrumental roles in the home’s exceptional performance. The building enclosure reduces the most significant energy glutton: heating. Continuous super-insulation, thorough air sealing, triple-pane windows, and passive solar gain work together to yield a miniscule heating load. All active energy consumers are extremely efficient: an air source heat pump for heating and cooling, a heat pump hot water heater, LED lighting, energy recovery ventilation (ERV), and high efficiency appliances. The result is a home that uses 70% less energy than a similar new home built to code requirements. OVERALL. The home embodies the owners’ goals and values while comprehensively enabling thermal comfort, energy efficiency, a vacation respite, and supplementary income. PROJECT TEAM ZeroEnergy Design - Architect & Mechanical Designer A.F. Hultin & Co. - Contractor Pamet Valley Landscape Design - Landscape & Masonry Lisa Finch - Original Artwork European Architectural Supply - Windows Eric Roth Photography - Photography

The functional program called for a generous living/gathering room, kitchen & dining, a screened porch, and attendant utility functions. Instead of a segregated bedroom, the owner desired a sleeping loft contiguous with the main living space. The loft opens out to a covered porch with views across the marsh. Phillip Spears Photographer

Inspiration for a contemporary open concept light wood floor and beige floor family room remodel in San Diego with white walls and a wall-mounted tv

Inspiration for a transitional home office remodel in Dallas

Inspiration for a rustic family room remodel in Minneapolis with a standard fireplace and a stone fireplace

Regency style home has a wonderful space off the kitchen, a walled courtyard with a fountain and brick floor. Flowering vines cover the pergola over the doorway to the kitchen.

Photography: Stephen Allen Design: Tina Marie Interior Design
Example of a transitional bedroom design in Orlando with gray walls

Beach style u-shaped medium tone wood floor kitchen photo in Other with a farmhouse sink, recessed-panel cabinets, white cabinets, gray backsplash, stainless steel appliances and an island

Eric Roth Photography
Kitchen - traditional l-shaped light wood floor kitchen idea in Boston with an undermount sink, shaker cabinets, white cabinets, gray backsplash, stainless steel appliances and marble backsplash

Stuart Wade, Envision Virtual Tours The second-largest and most developed of Georgia's barrier islands, St. Simons is approximately twelve miles long and nearly three miles wide at its widest stretch (roughly the size of Manhattan Island in New York). The island is located in Glynn County on Georgia's coast and lies east of Brunswick (the seat of Glynn County), south of Little St. Simons Island and the Hampton River, and north of Jekyll Island. The resort community of Sea Island is separated from St. Simons on the east by the Black Banks River. Known for its oak tree canopies and historic landmarks, St. Simons is both a tourist destination and, according to the 2010 U.S. census, home to 12,743 residents. Early History The earliest St. Simons Island Village record of human habitation on the island dates to the Late Archaic Period, about 5,000 to 3,000 years ago. Remnants of shell rings left behind by Native Americans from this era survive on many of the barrier islands, including St. Simons. Centuries later, during the period known by historians as the chiefdom era, the Guale Indians established a chiefdom centered on St. Catherines Island and used St. Simons as their hunting and fishing grounds. By 1500 the Guale had established a permanent village of about 200 people on St. Simons, which they called Guadalquini. Beginning in 1568, the Spanish attempted to create missions along the Georgia coast. Catholic missions were the primary means by which Georgia's indigenous Native American chiefdoms were assimilated into the Spanish colonial system along the northern frontier of greater Spanish Florida. In the 1600s St. Simons became home to two Spanish missions: San Buenaventura de Guadalquini, on the southern tip of the island, and Santo Domingo de Asao (or Asajo), on the northern tip. Located on the inland side of the island were the pagan refugee villages of San Simón, the island's namesake, and Ocotonico. In 1684 pirate raids left the missions and villages largely abandoned. Colonial History As Fort Frederica early as 1670, with Great Britain's establishment of the colony of Carolina and its expansion into Georgia territory, Spanish rule was threatened by the English. The Georgia coast was considered "debatable land" by England and Spain, even though Spain had fully retreated from St. Simons by 1702. Thirty-one years later General James Edward Oglethorpe founded the English settlement of Savannah. In 1736 he established Fort Frederica, named after the heir to the British throne, Frederick Louis, prince of Wales, on the west side of St. Simons Island to protect Savannah and the Carolinas from the Spanish threat. Between 1736 and 1749 Fort Frederica was the hub of British military operations along the Georgia frontier. A town of the same name grew up around the fort and was of great importance to the new colony. By 1740 Frederica's population was 1,000. In 1736 the congregation of what would become Christ Church was organized within Fort Frederica as a mission of the Church of England. Charles Wesley led the first services. In 1742 Britain's decisive victory over Spain in the Battle of Bloody Marsh, during the War of Jenkins' Ear, ended the Spanish threat to the Georgia coast. When the British regimen disbanded in 1749, most of the townspeople relocated to the mainland. Fort Frederica went into decline and, except for a short time of prosperity during the 1760s and 1770s under the leadership of merchant James Spalding, never fully recovered. Today the historic citadel's tabby ruins are maintained by the National Park Service. Plantation Era By the start of the American Revolution (1775-83), Fort Frederica was obsolete, and St. Simons was left largely uninhabited as most of its residents joined the patriot army. Besides hosting a small Georgia naval victory on the Fort Frederica River, providing guns from its famous fort for use at Fort Morris in Sunbury, and serving as an arena for pillaging by privateers and British soldiers, the island played almost no role in the war. Following the war, many of the townspeople, their businesses destroyed, turned to agriculture. The island was transformed into fourteen cotton plantations after acres of live oak trees were cleared for farm land and used for building American warships, including the famous USS Constitution, or "Old Ironsides." Although rice was the predominant crop along the neighboring Altamaha River, St. Simons was known for its production of long-staple cotton, which soon came to be known as Sea Island cotton. Between Ebos Landing the 1780s and the outbreak of the Civil War (1861-65), St. Simons's plantation culture flourished. The saline atmosphere and the availability of cheap slave labor proved an ideal combination for the cultivation of Sea Island cotton. In 1803 a group of Ebo slaves who survived the Middle Passage and arrived on the west side of St. Simons staged a rebellion and drowned themselves. The sacred site is known today as Ebos Landing. One of the largest owners of land and slaves on St. Simons was Pierce Butler, master of Hampton Point Plantation, located on the northern end of the island. By 1793 Butler owned more than 500 slaves, who cultivated 800 acres of cotton on St. Simons and 300 acres of rice on Butler's Island in the Altamaha River delta. Butler's grandson, Pierce Mease Butler, who at the age of sixteen inherited a share of his grandfather's estate in 1826, was responsible for the largest sale of human beings in the history of the United States: in 1859, to restore his squandered fortune, he sold 429 slaves in Savannah for more than $300,000. The British actress and writer Fanny Kemble, whose tumultuous marriage to Pierce ended in divorce in 1849, published an eyewitness account of the evils of slavery on St. Simons in her book Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 (1863). Another Retreat Plantation large owner of land and slaves on St. Simons was Major William Page, a friend and employee of Pierce Butler Sr. Before purchasing Retreat Plantation on the southwestern tip of the island in 1804, Page managed the Hampton plantation and Butler's Island. Upon Page's death in 1827, Thomas Butler King inherited the land together with his wife, Page's daughter, Anna Matilda Page King. King expanded his father-in-law's planting empire on St. Simons as well as on the mainland, and by 1835 Retreat Plantation alone was home to as many as 355 slaves. The center of life during the island's plantation era was Christ Church, Frederica. Organized in 1807 by a group of island planters, the Episcopal church is the second oldest in the Diocese of Georgia. Embargoes imposed by the War of 1812 (1812-15) prevented the parishioners from building a church structure, so they worshiped in the home of John Beck, which stood on the site of Oglethorpe's only St. Simons residence, Orange Hall. The first Christ Church building, finished on the present site in 1820, was ruined by occupying Union troops during the Civil War. In 1884 the Reverend Anson Dodge Jr. rebuilt the church as a memorial to his first wife, Ellen. The cruciform building with a trussed gothic roof and stained-glass windows remains active today as Christ Church. Civil War and Beyond The St. Simons Island Lighthouse outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 put a sudden end to St. Simons's lucrative plantation era. In January of that year, Confederate troops were stationed at the south end of the island to guard the entrance to Brunswick Harbor. Slaves from Retreat Plantation, owned by Thomas Butler King, built earthworks and batteries. Plantation residents were scattered—the men joined the Confederate army and their families moved to the mainland. Cannon fire was heard on the island in December 1861, and Confederate troops retreated in February 1862, after dynamiting the lighthouse to keep its beacon from aiding Union troops. Soon thereafter, Union troops occupied the island, which was used as a camp for freed slaves. By August 1862 more than 500 former slaves lived on St. Simons, including Susie King Taylor, who organized a school for freed slave children. But in November the ex-slaves were taken to Hilton Head, South Carolina, and Fernandina, Florida, leaving the island abandoned. After the Civil War the island never returned to its status as an agricultural community. The plantations lay dormant because there were no slaves to work the fields. After Union general William T. Sherman's January 1865 Special Field Order No. 15 —a demand that former plantations be divided and distributed to former slaves—was overturned by U.S. president Andrew Johnson less than a year later, freedmen and women were forced to work as sharecroppers on the small farms that dotted the land previously occupied by the sprawling plantations. By St. Simons Lumber Mills 1870 real economic recovery began with the reestablishment of the timber industry. Norman Dodge and Titus G. Meigs of New York set up lumber mill operations at Gascoigne Bluff, formerly Hamilton Plantation. The lumber mills provided welcome employment for both blacks and whites and also provided mail and passenger boats to the mainland. Such water traffic, together with the construction of a new lighthouse in 1872, designed by architect Charles B. Cluskey, marked the beginning of St. Simons's tourism industry. The keeper of the lighthouse created a small amusement park, which drew many visitors, as did the seemingly miraculous light that traveled from the top of the lighthouse tower to the bottom. The island became a summer retreat for families from the mainland, particularly from Baxley, Brunswick, and Waycross. The island's resort industry was thriving by the 1880s. Beachfront structures, such as a new pier and grand hotel, were built on the southeastern end of the island and could be accessed by ferry. Around this time wealthy northerners began vacationing on the island. Twentieth Century The St. Simons Island Pier and Village opening in 1924 of the Brunswick–St. Simons Highway, today known as the Torras Causeway, was a milestone in the development of resorts in the area. St. Simons's beaches were now easily accessible to locals and tourists alike. More than 5,000 automobiles took the short drive from Brunswick to St. Simons via the causeway on its opening day, paving the way for convenient residential and resort development. In 1926 automotive pioneer Howard Coffin of Detroit, Michigan, bought large tracts of land on St. Simons, including the former Retreat Plantation, and constructed a golf course, yacht club, paved roads, and a residential subdivision. Although the causeway had brought large numbers of summer people to the island, St. Simons remained a small community with only a few hundred permanent residents until the 1940s. The St. Simons Island outbreak of World War II (1941-45) brought more visitors and residents to St. Simons. Troops stationed at Jacksonville, Florida; Savannah; and nearby Camp Stewart took weekend vacations on the island, and a new naval air base and radar school became home to even more officers and soldiers. The increased wartime population brought the island its first public school. With a major shipyard for the production of Liberty ships in nearby Brunswick, the waters of St. Simons became active with German U-boats. In April 1942, just off the coast, the Texas Company oil tanker S. S. Oklahoma and the S. S. Esso Baton Rouge were torpedoed by the Germans, bringing the war very close to home for island residents. Due in large part to the military's improvement of the island's infrastructure during the war, development on the island boomed in the 1950s and 1960s. More permanent homes and subdivisions were built, and the island was no longer just a summer resort but also a thriving community. In 1950 the Methodist conference and retreat center Epworth by the Sea opened on Gascoigne Bluff. In 1961 novelist Eugenia Price visited St. Simons and began work on her first works of fiction, known as the St. Simons Trilogy. Inspired by real events on the island, Price's trilogy renewed interest in the history of Georgia's coast, and the novelist herself relocated to the island in 1965 and lived there for thirty-one years. St. Simons is also home to contemporary Georgia writer Tina McElroy Ansa. Since Epworth by the Sea 1980 St. Simons's population has doubled. The island's continued status as a vacation destination and its ongoing development boom have put historic landmarks and natural areas at risk. While such landmarks as the Fort Frederica ruins and the Battle of Bloody Marsh site are preserved and maintained by the National Park Service, and while the historic lighthouse is maintained by the Coastal Georgia Historical Society, historic Ebos Landing has been taken over by a sewage treatment plant. Several coastal organizations have formed in recent years to save natural areas on the island. The St. Simons Land Trust, for example, has received donations of large tracts of land and plans to protect property in the island's three traditional African American neighborhoods. Despite its rapid growth and development, St. Simons remains one of the most beautiful and important islands on the Georgia coast.

This stunning 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath home sits on just over one very private, mostly flat acre located at 22 Pigeon Hollow Rd San Rafael CA. The spacious home features a chef’s kitchen with granite counters, custom cabinets and high-end appliances. Adjoining the kitchen is a wonderful family room with cathedral ceilings, gas-burning fireplace and opens to the expansive patio, yard and gardens. The south-facing formal living room with wood-burning fireplace gets all day sun. With the formal dining room opening wide to the patio, you will enjoy indoor/outdoor living and entertaining at its finest. Three spacious bedrooms, including master suite with walk-in closet and access to yard through French doors, are all on the ground floor. The second floor fourth bedroom features a beautiful spa bath with jetted tub and separate stall shower. A great office with built-in bookcases also features exterior access through French doors. Hardwood floors throughout, except bedrooms, which are carpeted. A children’s play structure, trampoline and kids’ zipline, while out of site, complete the back yard, which also features a rose garden, raised beds and a pool site. Adjacent to the parking area at the front of the house is the sunken sports court. This spectacular property, located just one mile from Highway. 101, and in the Glenwood School District, is a home you will never want to leave.

Master Bedroom Suite featuring navy and gold color palette. Photo by Exceptional Frames.
Mid-sized transitional master carpeted bedroom photo in San Francisco with blue walls and no fireplace

The juxtaposition of raw, weathered and finished woods with sleek whites, mixed metals and soft textured elements strike a fabulous balance between industrial, rustic and glamorous – exactly what the designers envisioned for this dream retreat. This unique home’s design combines recycled shipping containers with traditional stick-building methods and resulted in a luxury hybrid home, inside and out. The design team was particularly challenged with overcoming various preconceived notions about containers to truly create something new, luxurious and sustainable.