From our interview with designer and homeowner Jennifer Ott.

We were living in San Francisco. My husband, Russ Poldrack, is a professor at Stanford University, and he was commuting. I’m a designer and color consultant. I wanted to live in the city, but I told him that if he ever got sick of the commute, I would consider moving. Then COVID happened, and when he had to start taking the train back down to work, he was like, “Uh, I really don’t want to have to do this again.”

So we started looking, and everything’s expensive throughout the Bay Area, but in Palo Alto, [California], near Stanford particularly, it’s very expensive. I hadn’t fully understood this previously, but Stanford started allowing faculty to build homes on university-owned land in the late 1800s. There are around 900 of these homes on campus. The deal is that you can only buy them if you’re a qualifying Stanford faculty member. In our case, the price ended up being a little lower than if anyone in the area could buy it.

I started looking at these properties and saw that there were a number of Eichler houses. The whole manifesto of Joseph Eichler, the developer, was that he wanted to make good architecture accessible to the middle class. I’ve always been a fan of Eichler and Midcentury Modern architecture. So I told my husband, “If we can get into an Eichler, I’ll move.” And we ended up finding this one.

The house was designed by Claude Oakland and built in 1970. It’s just about 2,300 square feet. It had the same owner [the whole time]—he was a physician at Stanford and had the house built for his family. [From what I can tell,] they never did any remodeling. As much as we could, we tried to keep the original [materials and finishes].

The tongue-and-groove redwood ceiling is a hallmark of Eichler homes. The wood was stained a grayish-tan color to soften the redness. This was a semitransparent stain so that the grain was still visible. Our Eichler originally had that finish, but there were some areas with water stains. The seller was advised to paint over the ceilings versus trying to sand and re-stain them. I realize it would have been tough to match, and white ceilings are nice because they make the space so light and bright, but I wish I had had the chance to try to do some spot refurbishment of the stains. The original ceilings gave such a warm vibe, and the woodgrain was more interesting versus flat white.

We kept the footprint of the house intact except for the kitchen. It is a very large room, but it originally had a tiny island and not much countertop or deep storage space. It was designed in a different time, when people had less stuff. We kept the sink, the refrigerator, and the perimeter counters and cabinets in the same place. But we wanted a larger island, and the only way to expand it was to reorient it, turning it 90 degrees. We kept the original range hood shell intact and rotated it. This new configuration gives us much more storage space, as well as surface prep space.

Both of us love to cook. We’re avid chefs; we’re in there at the same time together. Hence we added a second sink, because the sink was always an area of congestion for us. So now we have two good-size sinks in there. It’s amazing how preparation and cleanup for dinner is so much easier and more fun. We can both be in there and we’re not in each other’s way. It’s that balance of making it functional while trying not to veer too far from the intended original aesthetic.

We ran the plan by Stanford and replaced it with a very plain, [wood-panel] garage door, so it looks very similar to the original. We replaced all of the sliding doors and operable windows because they were in pretty bad shape. The new window frames are the exact same size and material, same thickness of frame around the doors and windows as before.

I’ve heard the style of our house called a double-gable atrium Eichler. I know the original Eichlers were more the flat-roofed ones. The element that most speaks to it being a later Eichler is that clipped gable on the front elevation. From the front, the house is pretty modest looking. But it’s kind of fun when people come over and they see the outside, and then they come through and see the atrium and the peaked internal gables. It’s just so much grander inside, and you have all the glass. There’s something nice about [that experience], when you see a house that’s modest from the front and then you go in and it opens up.

We have a very minimal, xeriscaped yard. It’s nothing fancy. But there’s something about sitting in the house. You feel like you’re outside, even though you’re not. I think that feeling of connection to the outdoors is amazing. And yet you have privacy. One really ingenious thing is the idea that the front of the house is kind of closed off. There’s this skinny slot window and the front door sidelights, and then my husband’s office has a slot window. Nobody can see in through the front, and we can’t see out, so we just really live in the atrium and the backyard. Even though it’s glass and it’s open, it feels very private, and it’s cozy. You don’t feel like you’re on display.

It’s a beautiful home but it’s also comfortable. It doesn’t feel like we’re living in a museum. It has that casual-California-living, inviting feel to it. I’m always noticing how planes come together in the house, because it is so open. Especially with all the rooms that connect to the atrium. You can tell there’s a lot of care and thought that went into the design of it. We’ve had subcontractors work on the house who remark on the same thing. The guy who installed the flooring said he could tell it was designed by a good architect.