View of Island and Family Room
Family room - mid-sized traditional open concept light wood floor and brown floor family room idea in New York with beige walls, no fireplace and a wall-mounted tv

We entered into our Primrose project knowing that we would be working closely with the homeowners to rethink their family’s home in a way unique to them. They definitely knew that they wanted to open up the space as much as possible. This renovation design begun in the entrance by eliminating most of the hallway wall, and replacing the stair baluster with glass to further open up the space. Not much was changed in ways of layout. The kitchen now opens up to the outdoor cooking area with bifold doors which makes for great flow when entertaining. The outdoor area has a beautiful smoker, along with the bbq and fridge. This will make for some fun summer evenings for this family while they enjoy their new pool. For the actual kitchen, our clients chose to go with Dekton for the countertops. What is Dekton? Dekton employs a high tech process which represents an accelerated version of the metamorphic change that natural stone undergoes when subjected to high temperatures and pressure over thousands of years. It is a crazy cool material to use. It is resistant to heat, fire, abrasions, scratches, stains and freezing. Because of these features, it really is the ideal material for kitchens. Above the garage, the homeowners wanted to add a more relaxed family room. This room was a basic addition, above the garage, so it didn’t change the square footage of the home, but definitely added a good amount of space. For the exterior of the home, they refreshed the paint and trimmings with new paint, and completely new landscaping for both the front and back. We added a pool to the spacious backyard, that is flanked with one side natural grass and the other, turf. As you can see, this backyard has many areas for enjoying and entertaining.

The new "window wall" opens the Westerly view to the Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. Mid-century frameless custom walnut cabinets were selected to contrast and complement the natural wood floors. Krogstad Photography-Judith Wright Design

Timber Tech composite deck
Home design - contemporary home design idea in Los Angeles

Photography by Alicia's Art, LLC RUDLOFF Custom Builders, is a residential construction company that connects with clients early in the design phase to ensure every detail of your project is captured just as you imagined. RUDLOFF Custom Builders will create the project of your dreams that is executed by on-site project managers and skilled craftsman, while creating lifetime client relationships that are build on trust and integrity. We are a full service, certified remodeling company that covers all of the Philadelphia suburban area including West Chester, Gladwynne, Malvern, Wayne, Haverford and more. As a 6 time Best of Houzz winner, we look forward to working with you n your next project.

We entered into our Primrose project knowing that we would be working closely with the homeowners to rethink their family’s home in a way unique to them. They definitely knew that they wanted to open up the space as much as possible. This renovation design begun in the entrance by eliminating most of the hallway wall, and replacing the stair baluster with glass to further open up the space. Not much was changed in ways of layout. The kitchen now opens up to the outdoor cooking area with bifold doors which makes for great flow when entertaining. The outdoor area has a beautiful smoker, along with the bbq and fridge. This will make for some fun summer evenings for this family while they enjoy their new pool. For the actual kitchen, our clients chose to go with Dekton for the countertops. What is Dekton? Dekton employs a high tech process which represents an accelerated version of the metamorphic change that natural stone undergoes when subjected to high temperatures and pressure over thousands of years. It is a crazy cool material to use. It is resistant to heat, fire, abrasions, scratches, stains and freezing. Because of these features, it really is the ideal material for kitchens. Above the garage, the homeowners wanted to add a more relaxed family room. This room was a basic addition, above the garage, so it didn’t change the square footage of the home, but definitely added a good amount of space. For the exterior of the home, they refreshed the paint and trimmings with new paint, and completely new landscaping for both the front and back. We added a pool to the spacious backyard, that is flanked with one side natural grass and the other, turf. As you can see, this backyard has many areas for enjoying and entertaining.

Geoff LLERENA
Example of a large trendy master black tile and ceramic tile ceramic tile bathroom design in Denver with beaded inset cabinets, medium tone wood cabinets, a one-piece toilet, beige walls, an integrated sink and marble countertops

Photography by Alicia's Art, LLC RUDLOFF Custom Builders, is a residential construction company that connects with clients early in the design phase to ensure every detail of your project is captured just as you imagined. RUDLOFF Custom Builders will create the project of your dreams that is executed by on-site project managers and skilled craftsman, while creating lifetime client relationships that are build on trust and integrity. We are a full service, certified remodeling company that covers all of the Philadelphia suburban area including West Chester, Gladwynne, Malvern, Wayne, Haverford and more. As a 6 time Best of Houzz winner, we look forward to working with you on your next project.

We entered into our Primrose project knowing that we would be working closely with the homeowners to rethink their family’s home in a way unique to them. They definitely knew that they wanted to open up the space as much as possible. This renovation design begun in the entrance by eliminating most of the hallway wall, and replacing the stair baluster with glass to further open up the space. Not much was changed in ways of layout. The kitchen now opens up to the outdoor cooking area with bifold doors which makes for great flow when entertaining. The outdoor area has a beautiful smoker, along with the bbq and fridge. This will make for some fun summer evenings for this family while they enjoy their new pool. For the actual kitchen, our clients chose to go with Dekton for the countertops. What is Dekton? Dekton employs a high tech process which represents an accelerated version of the metamorphic change that natural stone undergoes when subjected to high temperatures and pressure over thousands of years. It is a crazy cool material to use. It is resistant to heat, fire, abrasions, scratches, stains and freezing. Because of these features, it really is the ideal material for kitchens. Above the garage, the homeowners wanted to add a more relaxed family room. This room was a basic addition, above the garage, so it didn’t change the square footage of the home, but definitely added a good amount of space. For the exterior of the home, they refreshed the paint and trimmings with new paint, and completely new landscaping for both the front and back. We added a pool to the spacious backyard, that is flanked with one side natural grass and the other, turf. As you can see, this backyard has many areas for enjoying and entertaining.

View of Island and Family Room
Open concept kitchen - mid-sized traditional l-shaped light wood floor open concept kitchen idea in New York with an undermount sink, shaker cabinets, medium tone wood cabinets, granite countertops, beige backsplash, matchstick tile backsplash, stainless steel appliances and an island

Transitional kitchen photo in Minneapolis

This outstanding Deck was completed in West Chester, PA and was built with TimberTech Legacy Pecan Evolutions Decking.The Project features Custom stone columns with lanter style lights. Also featuring a custom stone fireplace and stone work throughout. A rain drainage system was also installed protecting the patio and outdoor kitchen below.a Photography By: Keystone Custom Decks

This outstanding Deck was completed in West Chester, PA and was built with TimberTech Legacy Pecan Evolutions Decking.The Project features Custom stone columns with lanter style lights. Also featuring a custom stone fireplace and stone work throughout. A rain drainage system was also installed protecting the patio and outdoor kitchen below.a Photography By: Keystone Custom Decks

Heiser Media
Powder room - farmhouse powder room idea in Seattle

The Atherton House is a family compound for a professional couple in the tech industry, and their two teenage children. After living in Singapore, then Hong Kong, and building homes there, they looked forward to continuing their search for a new place to start a life and set down roots. The site is located on Atherton Avenue on a flat, 1 acre lot. The neighboring lots are of a similar size, and are filled with mature planting and gardens. The brief on this site was to create a house that would comfortably accommodate the busy lives of each of the family members, as well as provide opportunities for wonder and awe. Views on the site are internal. Our goal was to create an indoor- outdoor home that embraced the benign California climate. The building was conceived as a classic “H” plan with two wings attached by a double height entertaining space. The “H” shape allows for alcoves of the yard to be embraced by the mass of the building, creating different types of exterior space. The two wings of the home provide some sense of enclosure and privacy along the side property lines. The south wing contains three bedroom suites at the second level, as well as laundry. At the first level there is a guest suite facing east, powder room and a Library facing west. The north wing is entirely given over to the Primary suite at the top level, including the main bedroom, dressing and bathroom. The bedroom opens out to a roof terrace to the west, overlooking a pool and courtyard below. At the ground floor, the north wing contains the family room, kitchen and dining room. The family room and dining room each have pocketing sliding glass doors that dissolve the boundary between inside and outside. Connecting the wings is a double high living space meant to be comfortable, delightful and awe-inspiring. A custom fabricated two story circular stair of steel and glass connects the upper level to the main level, and down to the basement “lounge” below. An acrylic and steel bridge begins near one end of the stair landing and flies 40 feet to the children’s bedroom wing. People going about their day moving through the stair and bridge become both observed and observer. The front (EAST) wall is the all important receiving place for guests and family alike. There the interplay between yin and yang, weathering steel and the mature olive tree, empower the entrance. Most other materials are white and pure. The mechanical systems are efficiently combined hydronic heating and cooling, with no forced air required.

Pool - mid-sized 1950s kidney-shaped pool idea in San Francisco

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

Chicago’s Fulton Market District, where major corporate headquarters rub shoulders with high-end restaurants, breweries and bodegas, has been white-hot in recent years. Sitting just west of Downtown and formerly home to cold-storage warehouses which supplied the Chicago hospitality and institutional food services industries, the area has transformed in recent years into a culinary creative hothouse and go-to hub of tech services. Our clients’ home atop the recently completed Hayden enjoys wide-open views of Downtown, south and north sides of the city. Our design intent was of course to preserve the views (our only concession a magnificent Tuuci umbrella), while creating a fully functioning living and entertaining space for our youthful clients. Plantings of many types grace and soften the terrace, providing seasonal and year-round interest. Dining and drinking naturally revolve around the custom bar/grill buildout we installed. Wet bar, fridge and Kalamazoo grill are ready at a moment’s notice when the owners decide a last-minute cocktail party on a summer’s evening might be fun (even if it’s a “school night).” After-dinner lounging takes place on the sectionals surrounding an over-sized, custom fire feature. An early breakfast or midday lunch takes place under the umbrella (with heating elements to take off any chill), and at night the Fulton Market District and Downtown Chicago come alive with light.

The client, a young woman working in tech, grew up living abroad in various places as a State Department kid. She picked up items along the way which she wanted to incorporate into the design – the most prominent pieces were the wool rug and crewel embroidered wallhanging in the Guest Room, both of which she found when living in Pakistan. Her parents now live in France and her grandparents live in Germany, so her more recent finds have been from family visits (for example, German ceramics as seen in the kitchen). When they began discussing a design scheme, the client sent Tara a Pinterest board that prominently featured Dawnridge, Tony Duquette’s home in Beverly Hills. Little did the client know that that happens to be one of Tara’s favorite sources of inspiration. Since Tony Duquette was a master at mixing and matching antiques from different places and periods, his work was a natural North Star for this project. The Chinese Art Deco carpet was the perfect “something old” to ground the space and aesthetically, it reminded Tara of the Eastern influences seen throughout Dawnridge. Since the kitchen, dining area, and living room are all collected, Tara had the built-in shelving painted to match the cabinets. Then, the shelves were lined with Roger Arlington wallpaper inspired by Chinese 18th century tea paper, the pewter paper used to line tea chests sent from China. There wasn’t quite the space for grand curtains like those Duquette found at the Paris Flea and hung in the Drawing Room, but something a bit smaller sourced at that same flea was included. From the Paris flea market, Tara texted the client a photo of the Louis XV gilt-metal sconces and got an immediate “Yes!” The antique floor lamp is from a shop not far from the client’s apartment — Humble House in Boerum Hill. The vintage tole chandelier is from there, as well. The client’s directive to source only things “with a story behind them” was a dream come true. Take the pleated silk shade for example — it’s got a few holes in it, but that wasn’t disqualifying. It was a pleasure to work with a client who sees the beauty in something sourced locally and dripping with character, even if it’s got a few imperfections. Tara transformed the closet in the Guest Bedroom into a dramatic little work-from-home nook. The floor-to-ceiling curtains cover the entire wall and handily conceal an unattractive tiny window looking into an airshaft. The client requested a “lush bedroom,” so a variety of textures were incorporated to make things feel layered and luxurious. She has an extensive collection of perfume bottles, and they won a 1950s Hollywood Regency style mirrored vanity at auction — the perfect place to display them. The green of the Living Room is carried to the bedroom with the silk taffeta curtains and block-printed bedding. The headboard is upholstered in a pleated silk Georgette. There was limited space on either side of the bed, so Tara suggested mounting swing-arm lamps to the wall and sourced sleek little metal and travertine nightstands, which add just the right touch of “today.” The Rococo wood mirror over the bed was also won at auction.