From Ugly Duckling to Sustainable Swan: A Bay Area Home

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Kelly’s first project was turning this front bedroom into a home office. She made a built-in desk from bamboo plywood and new wall shelves of formaldehyde-free Medite medium-density fiberboard. Here, too, she began to experiment with wall finishes; over a coat of light-colored acrylic paint she used a dry brush to apply tinted acrylic glaze. Salvaged French doors open the room to the cozy front patio. Photos By Barbara Bourne

The approach to Kelly Lerner’s home in the hills above San Francisco Bay includes a lush, colorful garden and a meandering stone path leading to a bamboo gate. Behind the gateway is a sunny patio and the front door, which opens into a sensory feast of expansive views, sunlight, and natural finishes. It wasn’t always this way.

In 1996, Kelly and her friends Jennifer Helmuth and Deborah McCandless bought a homely 1940s bungalow on a large sunny lot with great views. It was a fixer-upper’s dream: the worst house on a good street. As an ecology-minded architect, Kelly saw pure potential.

The house perched at the top of a sloping lot; from the street, at the uphill end of the property, it appeared to be one story high, but a daylight basement added some living space—and some headaches. Water ran like a small stream across the floor, the stairway to the basement was steep, the ceilings were less than seven feet high, and it was always cold.

The main level had its own problems. The southwest-facing living room overheated in the late afternoon and the single-pane windows fogged up easily. The living room was large, but it had doors on three walls and picture windows on the fourth, making furniture arrangement difficult. There was no dining room. The kitchen had the best location for views and sunlight, but its small corner windows allowed for neither. A single floor furnace provided heat, and the electrical wiring was ancient. In short, it’s a good thing Kelly had some construction skills.

First things first

Where to begin? The house itself set the agenda; the day after the women moved in, the sewer plugged up. Kelly replaced the sewer line and observed that as long as she was digging up the front yard, it was a good time to put in a French drain to curtail the basement stream, a pipe to capture rainwater from the downspouts, and an irrigation system for the landscaping.

With the emergencies addressed, Kelly, Jennifer, and Deb turned to landscaping. “We didn’t start with the inside,” Kelly says, “because the landscape always takes the longest to mature. Besides, if the front yard looks good right away, it makes you popular with the neighbors.”

They began by planting drought-tolerant native plants in the front yard; an orchard, herbs, and a vegetable garden in the backyard; and bamboo (with root barriers) front and back. “I knew I would want to use bamboo for future building projects,” Kelly says, “so I planted my building materials first.” She applied a basic eco-building principle to the landscaping: Take two problems and make a solution. She had both thirsty plants and groundwater and rainwater to dispose of, so she directed the water to the bamboo groves and the orchard.