The NorCal was a project we completed in Northern California near Mount Diablo in San Francisco's East Bay. This project required updating of the living room, dining room, outdoor patio, exterior and rounded out by a garage renovation project. It also included a patio design to extend the living space into the outdoors to take advantage of the great outdoor weather.

With the living room, the main goal was to find a way to bring more light into the space as the room was very dark during the day as the main large windows light was blocked by the large tree in the front yard. Additionally, the side of the house has beautiful shrubs and the goal was to work around them versus cutting them down. The solution was to add two skinny windows to allow light to enter the living room. For the of the renovation, we repaired the fireplace as there was a missing stone, we painted the fireplace, replaced the mantle and updated paints, textures and lighting to the rest of the space.

The Dining room in this project felt dated so worked to bring the space up-to-date with the use of paints, textures and lighting.

Our favourite part of this project was the patio conversion. The weather in NorCal in the East Bay is between 70-120 all year round so it is possible to leverage the outdoors to create more usable space. For us, we wanted to create a space where you can relax and take in the climate.

The outside of this home needed a bit of work to add a bit more character. We decided that the key elements to update were the paints, fixtures, landscaping and flow. 

Having a place to feel empowered and excited to do laundry was the hack we were trying to implement with this project. Additionally, due to the size of the house, there was a lack of storage space so building in more storage was another goal for this project. Since it was in a garage and a 'nice-to-have' project, we leveraged IKEA to bring this project to life. The countertops, cabinets and sink are all IKEA.

Living in California, it is impossible to ignore the opportunity to grow an incredible garden. As such, we worked to develop two large raised beds. What we wanted to do with this build was include a work bench as well as a bit of a roof to help cut back on some of the extreme heat that comes in SF's East Bay at certain times of the year.