From the exterior, Ligne Roset’s complex in Briord, France, is little to look at, just workaday cement- and-metal factories near the base of the Alps. But once you step inside, the operation bursts into colorful life, with dozens of workers hefting gigantic bolts of fabric, manning robotic sewing machines, and operating cartoonish foam cutters and glue sprayers.

The family-owned company has been making furniture in this location for 38 years. On a recent fall afternoon, the cavernous Briord 1 factory was running full throttle, all the workers focused on turning out French designer Inga Sempé’s Ruché sofa, introduced in 2010 and already iconic. The sofa’s simple form—a slim beech frame draped with a cushiony quilt—belies the effort it takes to produce one: ten-and-a-half hours of labor and up to 11 different craftspeople’s hands.

“When you see a finished object, you can rarely imagine all the work that went in to it,” muses Sempé. “All the sleepless nights for the designer, who stays up thinking about just one curve, all the people who built it.” We tour Ligne Roset’s factory to learn just what it takes to make a Ruché.

1. The Frame
Each Ruché is made on demand, and with 35 fabric and leather choices, hundreds of color options, and four frame variations (natural beech or stained red, blue, or gray), the piece is almost endlessly customizable. The frame starts as raw timber housed underneath a corrugated-metal canopy on Ligne Roset’s 15-acre Briord campus. When an order comes in, workers feed the wood into a high-tech preprogrammed machine that mills it into ten square-sided posts and drills holes where the pieces will connect. A craftsman then assembles the ends of the frame, connecting the pieces using wooden pegs and glue. Next, it’s passed along to a technician in a ventilator mask who sprays the wood with a transparent stain or varnish. Once dry, the frame components, seat, and steel- springed backrest are joined with glue and pegs, and Velcro and strips of zippers are stapled to the places where the quilted cover will eventually attach.

2. The Foam
In one corner of the 382,000-square-foot factory, stacks of colorful, spongy foam await their fates, each hue indicating a different density and use. After quick work on the computerized foam cutter, the three pieces of foam that will eventually comprise the backrest travel on a wheeled trolley to the glue booth, a white-walled space resembling a walk-in industrial fridge. A technician sprays a sheet of pliable purple memory foam with a water-based adhesive and then carefully folds it over the other two foam layers and a steel spring grill to complete the backrest. All these cushiony layers will be invisible beneath the quilted cover but will immensely improve the sofa’s comfort.

3. The Cover
Ligne Roset is fanatic about fabric quality. Before a bolt is used, workers unroll it completely and inspect it carefully for color variation, nubs and pulls, and other defects. If the quality is suitable, an automated 17-foot-long Gerber Cutter cuts the fabric according to the pattern. The colorful cutouts are piled one stack per sofa and labeled with the future owners’ names and hometowns before they are wheeled to the sewing area, where they meet up with thin sheets of precut batting. Seamstresses layer the fabric and batting and attach them to a frame that temporarily holds the pieces together. The frame is then inserted into a gigantic preprogrammed sewing machine that quilts the surface with the “broken grid” of lines that Sempé devised to create the cover’s signature texture. It takes an hour and a half for the machine to make its 2,008 stitches, with cold air constantly blowing on the needle to prevent broken threads caused by friction and overheating. Once the quilting is complete, the women remove the cover from the frame, speedily snip off loose threads with scissors, and use an electric cutter to trim it to its final shape. Other sewers then stitch zippers on to the cover’s edges to enable it to attach securely to the wooden sofa frame.

4. The Final Assembly
The physically taxing job of assembling the final product is most frequently handled by men in the factory, but Laurence is a nimble, notable exception. After assembling the sofa and fluffing the cover she readies it for shipping and boxes it up.

“I love to see the different parts from the factory all united at the end,” says Laurence, a small, muscular, ponytailed woman who has the glory job of transforming the various pieces into a finished Ruché, all in about 15 minutes. She starts by carefully arranging a final sheet of foam inside the cover, ensuring it lies flat. Then she drapes the piece over the frame, aligns the seams, attaches the corners and edges with the zippers and Velcro, and then firmly and deliberately places well-calibrated karate chops to the corners. If she needs to, she can consult her quality-control photo, a glamour shot of one single perfect Ruché. After a few additional adjustments, which include hitting the cover with both hands outstretched to “fluff” it, this particular Ruché is ready to ship to Germany. “It’s not an easy model to make,” Laurence says proudly, “but it’s such an interesting one.”

Click here for an extended look at designer Inga Sempe’s creative process.

Bill and Abbie Burton have experienced their share of construction drama. The Solana Beach, California– based landscape architects have been working together for 25 years, overhauling landscapes and buildings alike. So when the time came to build a vacation house on the 330-acre oak-speckled woodland they purchased in Mendocino County, nine-and-a-half hours north of their main residence, they opted for the easy way out: a custom prefab house designed by Los Angeles firm Marmol Radziner. “We weren’t able to make lots of trips up here, so we couldn’t babysit the process,” says Bill. “Stick-built construction requires a lot of hand-holding. Going prefab made it pretty seamless.”

The couple met with the firm just six times to hammer out the design: a two-bedroom, 2,200- square-foot house with an additional 1,440 square feet of covered decks. Made up of ten prefabricated steel modules, the structure took three months to build in Marmol Radziner’s dedicated factory, including installation of all cabinetry, plumbing, fixtures, and drywall. The modules were trucked to the site one morning, and were swiftly craned into place atop concrete block piers.

“We literally sat on the hill in lawn chairs and watched the house come together,” says Bill. “It was instantaneous. We went from having just a foundation on our site to walking around our house a few hours later. You never see architecture come together like that.” Six weeks later the finish work was complete—seams where the modules met were patched, an 18-foot kitchen island was installed—and the Burtons moved in.

Click here to view more photos of the house; click here to seen an extended slideshow chronicling how the residence was assembled in a single day.

Stay

Set in an 1872 mansion, the 21-room Inn San Francisco (doubles from $175) brims with authentic Victorian details—ornate woodwork; marble fireplaces; featherbeds—minus the chintz (not a weathered doily in sight). Don’t miss the rooftop deck with 360-degree views of the city.

Eat

The izakaya Nombe (dinner for two $50)—its name translates, roughly, to “drunkard”—serves haute Japanese pub food (grilled shishito peppers with bottarga; grilled skewers of chicken thigh with ume and shiso) accompanied by a great sake list. Added bonus: the kitchen is open until 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, an anomaly in the city. Chef-owner Matt Straus turns out simple, yet delicious, seasonal dishes at the intimate Heirloom Café (dinner for two $80). But for a real treat, ask for the off-menu burger with Époisses cheese.

Shop

Siblings Danielle and Luke Teller helm the well-edited Afterlife Boutique, which carries reconstructed antique jewelry by the shop’s Adoura Demode line and collectible rock-concert T-shirts priced from $45 to $1,000.

The light-filled Gravel & Gold is a treasure hunter’s dream, filled with everything from Japanese paper goods to wool blankets made on Prince Edward Island.

Do

A showcase for local, cutting-edge artists, Southern Exposure relocated last fall to a soaring 4,000-square-foot gallery.

Since 2005, Burgundy-born Gilles de Chambure, director of wine education at Napa’s Meadowood resort, has arranged vineyard visits and tastings for guests and nonguests alike. Arrive during the fall harvest or in early spring for fewer crowds, and don’t miss his top picks.

Sweet Start: The brioches at Bouchon Bakery (breakfast for two $20) lure early risers, but de Chambure goes for the chocolatey bouchon.

Outward Bound: Try the three-hour hike along Calistoga’s Oat Hill Mine Trail. “It’s especially beautiful in spring, when the lupine is flowering,” says the sommelier.

Safe Passage: Napa Valley Tours & Transportation (707/251-9463; half-day from $300) has the best cars—sedans, limos, minibuses—and savvy drivers familiar with the back roads.

Sips with a View: Head to Howell Mountain and swirl a glass of ‘V’ Petit Verdot at Viader or a Cabernet Sauvignon at Cade. On the valley floor, Gargiulo Vineyards is “a magical place dotted with oak trees.”

New Pours: On de Chambure’s try-now list? The Albariño from Hendry, a Charbono from Robert Foley Vineyards, and a peachy Truchard Vineyards Roussane.

Insider’s Lunch: How to avoid the crush at pan-Asian Redd (lunch for two $60): “Walk in at noon and sit at the bar for the hamachi tartare.”

Off-Duty Dining: De Chambure is often on hand at the Restaurant at Meadowood, but for a more intimate meal, he opts for Terra (1345 Railroad Ave., St. Helena; 707/963-8931; dinner for two $132). His order? The cod in shiso broth, with Kurikomayama sake.

T+L’s Hotel Tips: Meadowood Napa Valley (doubles from $625) has epitomized Napa’s laid-back luxury for decades. Calistoga Ranch, an Auberge Resort (doubles from $750) feels like adult summer camp, with spa treatments and 157 acres laced with hiking trails. Or try Avia Napa (1450 First St., Napa; 866/644-2842; doubles from $229), in the city’s buzzing downtown.

Working as ER doctors at a hospital in eastern Anchorage, Alaska, Tanya Leinicke and Rick Navitsky are accustomed to high-pressure situations, like ministering to the aftereffects of moose stompings and bear maulings. So when two stressful events intersected at the same moment in the couple’s life—a political revolution in Nepal jeopardized their adoption of a son just as the design and con­struc­tion of their 2,100-square-foot house ramped up—they handled the situation with an uncommon meas­ure of grace and perspective. Four years later, the couple told us how it all began—and how hiring the right architect made all the difference.

Navitsky: We came to Alaska from New Mexico in 2001, not necessarily to make it our home, but for adventure.

Leinicke: I had to pay back my Air Force scholarship to medical school, so I worked at the Air Force base in Anchorage for four years. We fell in love with the place. Every time you go outdoors you feel like you’re in a National Geographic article. And the community’s very strong. Alaska’s still the kind of place where if your car gets stuck in a ditch, three people will immediately stop to help you out.

Navitsky: We looked downtown for a house, but we weren’t able to find the right place. We wanted something small, efficient, and green, but also light and airy. Then a colleague told us about this property.

Leinicke: Land like this isn’t easy to stumble upon. We drove up, took a look, and were like, Whoa, we better buy this. Or somebody else will, quick.

Navitsky: On a clear day you can see the whole Anchorage bowl from here: Denali, the snow-covered Alaska Range, the three volcanoes to the west.

Leinicke: Finding an architect was easy. We had a close friend in Seattle who’s an architect and she recommended Steve Bull, the founder of Workshop AD. They’d worked together before, and she thought we’d be a good fit. We didn’t even talk to any other architects. That’s kind of how we are—we’re instinctual and we know a good thing when we see one.

At our first meeting, instead of asking us how we wanted our house to look, Steve asked us general questions about how we like to live our life. For example, he asked: “How do you like to spend the majority of your time?” We responded: “We like to play outside a lot, and we like to spend time with friends and family.” We told him we felt a family should be able to do different activities but all together. We also said we wanted to separate our bedrooms from our entertaining and play spaces—we work night shifts a lot, so we need a quiet place to sleep.

When we met again three weeks later, it was amazing how he’d incorporated our ideals and ways of living into a design. He created a house that feels like it’s outside, with large shared spaces and small individual areas. There’s a wing off the side, where the bedrooms and bathrooms are. It has a sliding door to accommodate our odd waking and sleeping hours. We can also shut it if someone shows up unannounced and there’s laundry all over.

Navitsky: As a Buddhist wannabe practitioner I wanted a space where I could meditate. Steve created a cantilevered room with tatami-mat floors and a low window that looks onto the birch grove. That’s our guest area as well—we have a pull-out futon.

Leinicke: Steve took our design education into his own hands. He discovered early on that we’re the kind of people who would rather take a free day to go rock climbing or on a long run with friends than to rip through design magazines. He totally respects that—he’s a cross-country ski fanatic and a crazy runner himself.

Navitsky: We mentioned liking Japanese architecture, so he brought us a few books and asked us to put tabs next to things that appealed to us. He also limited the choices for us—he’d hone in on a finite list of materials that he thought fit with our taste. He really made it easier.

Leinicke: At the same time as we chose Steve as our architect we started the adoption process. I think we sort of neglected to anticipate how involved we’d get in both efforts. Well into the design of the house we found out we could go to Nepal and meet our son—but because of political turmoil, we couldn’t take him home. So we started commuting between here and Kathmandu every six weeks. After our fourth visit we managed to push the adoption through. We got Suresh in February, and the house was done in March.

Navitsky: As a result, Steve probably had to be more hands-on during the building process than many architects.

Leinicke: In the end I think we benefited from that. Because we were gone so much, Steve had a lot of artistic freedom—and because of that a lot of great things happened in the house.

Navitsky: I have to say, we did not get stressed about building the house.

Leinicke: That’s the thing, when you rank your priorities—the child or the house—your child takes priority. It wasn’t as hard as you might expect. We love this house but at the same time we had this beautiful perspective. When you go to a place like Nepal, and all you can think about is your soon-to-be-son who lives in an orphanage, you suddenly realize how unimportant all the details are. You stop worrying about things like picking the right tile color. Fortunately, we picked the right architect.

For more photos of the house click here.

Architect Jeff Sherman, of Delson or Sherman Architects, has more guts and gall than your average home renovator. In 2000, strapped by a “very finite budget,” he bought a wrecked row house in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, that had been used as an illegal breeding kennel. Over the next ten years, working as his own general contractor and builder, he transformed the scariest building on his block into a high-design home, all for about $100 per square foot. “I’m a little wary of the construction-on-a-dime myth trumpeted in the press,” says Sherman. “Construction is ridiculously expensive. But yeah, I wound up doing a house for next to nothing.”

Jeff Sherman: I’ve seen a lot of really bad houses and apartments, because, you know, I’m an architect, but this one was so bad my business partner, when she came to help me measure it, had to keep running out to the sidewalk because her gag reflex kept kicking in. There was dog crap everywhere. The front porch was kind of dangling off the front facade and bits of the floor were missing. It was gross—no doubt about that.

My reaction was basically, “Hey, I can afford this!” It was a row house, it didn’t seem to be falling down, and it had a big backyard. I started drawing well before I closed on the place. I knew I didn’t have enough money to do a real renovation, only a bare bones renovation. But I thought it would be a fun project. Ha! I was so in over my head.

The day after closing, in November 2000, the contractor started demolition. By January the structural work was done. The entire middle of the house was opened up to bring light in and counteract the darkness typical of row houses. When he was finished, I had an insulated shell with utilities and big structural cuts and an opening for a skylight. I moved in, kind of camping out in my own house. Before I got a proper front door the place was broken into three times. It was pretty harrowing. And I was the poorest I’d ever been.

My renovation policy was: If it was okay, I kept it—like the pressed tin on the walls and the exposed subfloor upstairs. I uncovered the marble fireplace under a half dozen layers of paint. Every time I got a paycheck, I’d go buy some materials and think of the next thing to do. It forced me to pace myself. I began by taking care of basic needs, like building a rudimentary kitchen and a closet so I could put away my clothes. I also knew I really wanted a big tree in the backyard, so I planted a baby American elm, knowing it takes a long time to grow. Ten years later, it’s taller than the house.

After I decided to cut that giant hole in the center, the room configuration quickly laid itself out. The kitchen went in the back, the living room in the front, and the two-story space became the dining room. Upstairs, there’s a bedroom in the front, a bedroom in the back, and a catwalk connecting the two. I also wanted to separate the living room from the foyer and to activate the full height of the space, so I built a volume that contains storage space and extends from the first floor to the roof. I covered it in inexpensive copper flashing so it would read as a single object.

I thought wrapping the volume in copper would be easy to do, but, of course-like everything in the house-it turned out not to be easy at all. Copper is really heavy and floppy; it’s like holding a 100-pound noodle. So I had this crazy system rigged up where I had this rope connected to pulleys, and I’d hoist up the copper and nail it in, then move on to the next one. About four years into the renovation I burned out, and for about three years I just stopped and lived in a half-finished house.

Toward the end, certain things happened in big leaps. As my architecture office became more successful and I had more money, I was able to hire people to do things, like install bam-boo plywood flooring and build the downstairs bathroom, which I think is the nicest room in the house. It’s got a brick floor and a showerhead in the middle of the room. When the window is open and a breeze comes through, it feels like the outdoor shower I’ve always wanted.

Throughout the renovation, I used a lot of local artisans. Albert, from around the corner, did the striped stained glass on the back door, and a local storefront company mounted the glass. My next-door neighbor Ullah is a mason, and he built my stoop. I’m pretty antisocial by nature, so bringing in neighboring craftspeople was an attempt to help create a community for myself. Also, because I was working as my own general contractor, I ended up getting pretty good prices.

It’s taken me a long time to really get that I’m living in a finished house now. Six months ago I volunteered to be on a neighborhood house tour as publicity for my firm. People came and oohed and aahed over my house, and it caught me by surprise. I kind of still thought of it as a half-finished piece of crap. It took me a while to see what they were seeing: some kind of fantasy house.

See more photos of the house here. Click here for a behind-the-scenes video and design tips from Jeff Sherman.

Now that you’re expected to work from almost anywhere—your sofa, an airplane, a rickshaw in Kathmandu—and your “desktop” fits in the palm of your hand, are actual desks still necessary? We thought it over, called in six of our favorites, and came away answering, emphatically, yes!

Desks are more than places to park your unopened bills or pound away at your laptop; they are receptacles for your creative dreams, holding the promise of inspiration and focused attention every time you pull up a chair. (And you can’t really say that about the kitchen table.)

Trundle Desk
Designed by: Eric Pfeiffer
Made by: Offi & Company

Pros: The 15-inch trundle drawer slides forward to nearly double your workspace­. When you’re done working, a gentle shove makes your mess disappear. There’s also a small compartment in the back for stashing cords. It’s made in the USA­—to our surprise, the only domestically produced desk in our roundup (even the Herman Miller piece sported a Made in China sticker).

Cons: We’re not opposed to exposed hardware in principle, but we do wish the inelegant metal drawer gliders were hidden with wooden end caps. Another sticking point: The drawer jams unless you push from the center.

StudioDesk XL
Made by: Bluelounge
Price: $800.00

Pros: This is the most tech-friendly of the bunch. The writing surface slides forward to reveal a hidden compartment that stows power strips, chargers, and USB hubs, which allows just a single cord to plug into the wall and individual cables to snake through the desktop slot. No more tangles!

Cons: The cavernous interior is great for cords and cables, but with no dividers and rather awkward access from the top, it’s useless for office supplies­—a veritable Davy Jones’s locker for pens. We wish it had drawers.

Tanis Desk
Designed by: Pierre Paulin
Made by: Ligne Roset

Pros: The combination of black lacquered steel, walnut veneer, and black laminate (or, for a price bump, Corian) lends this reissue of a 1950s classic a luxurious feel, as do the self-closing drawer gliders. It’s almost too chic for a home office­—unless you live on the set of Mad Men.

Cons: When closed, the double-decker drawers appear to be two different sizes, but it’s a front: Upon opening, they’re revealed to be equally puny, just over two inches deep. In the digital age, have roomy drawers gone the way of the eight-track?

Stash Desk
Made by: Blu Dot
Price: $399.00

Pros: It’s compact and curvy, and it lives up to its name with a small drawer for pens and supplies. Bonus: The drawer’s interior is painted fire-engine red, a happy surprise. One could say the desk is secretly wearing sassy underwear.

Cons: We are fans of flat-packing­—it’s eco-friendly and cost-effective­—but we couldn’t help groaning at this 48-item kit of parts. The bright side of DIY assembly: You can mount the drawer on either side, a boon for lefties.

Enchord Desk
Made by: Herman Miller
Price: $749-849

Pros: The Enchord packs a double whammy­—it’s both the biggest and most flexible desk we reviewed. There’s no defined front or back, so it can float in the middle of a room, with people working on both sides. The lower surface hides wires and papers and juts out an additional 14 inches: the ideal place to prop a printer or break for snacks.

Cons: Its strength is also its weakness: You need a lot of square footage to fit this bad boy into your life. And if you push it against a wall you lose half your storage since there’s a center divider running through the interior.

Parsons Desk
Made by: West Elm
Price: $299.00

Pros: The compact Parsons is ideal for a small apartment: Its shallow depth hugs the wall, and since it doesn’t look overbearingly desk-ish it can double as a console table or even a bar. If you need the piece further scaled down, there’s also a mini version that’s 18 inches shorter.

Cons: Upon close inspection, it appears West Elm may have cut a few too many corners in making this piece affordable: Our model had crooked drawer fronts, bumpy lacquer, sticky sliding mechanisms, and splinters on the bottom drawer lip. Still, $299 is a pretty sweet deal.

In 2006, inspired by Oaxaca’s plethora of indigenous communities, who, says industrial designer Gustavo Fricke, “inherit craft traditions that are older than Columbus,” Fricke opened blackbox. To stock the shop, located in a colonial house in downtown Oaxaca city, Fricke and other designers collaborate with local artisans to create stylish, contemporary objects in time-honored ways. By spotlighting native talent—from city and village alike—Fricke and shop managers Roberto Vega and Rosario Martinez Llaguno hope to provide a sustainable livelihood for Oaxaca’s underemployed artists and craftspeople and, as Fricke says, “push their work forward.”


blackbox
5 de Mayo #412
Oaxaca, Mexico
la-blackbox.com

Where: Oaxaca, Mexico
Who: Gustavo Fricke, Roberto Vega, and Rosario Martinez Llaguno
Specialty: Handmade furniture, clothing, and objects by artists and artisans throughout the state of Oaxaca
Top Seller: Woven wool bags emblazoned with silhouettes of birds and telephone poles, $75
Best Deal: Limited-edition screen-printed posters by local artists, $17
Coolest Find: Chairs made from pipes and fluorescent plastic tubing by architect and artist Joel Gomez, from $100

Why did you open blackbox?
Each village outside Oaxaca city has a crafts specialty—making black pottery, wool weaving, carving alebrijes [fantastical wooden figures]—and the artisans pass their skills down through the generations. But to cater to tourists’ tastes they started producing the same designs over and over again. I thought it would be interesting to collaborate with these artisans, to use design as a tool for social improvement.

What’s your overarching goal?
To build trust and working relationships with these communities and give them a new channel for their work. I want the younger generation to feel proud of their skills, to realize: “Shit, man, this is cool and I made it. I learned this from my grandpa, and now this is giving me my bread.”

And what’s the biggest challenge?
The indigenous people in Mexico have been betrayed all their lives. It takes time to prove we’re worth their time. They still call me güero, or “blonde”—meaning an outsider.

How has the shop evolved?
It started with 12 products that I designed in collaboration with handcrafters. Now it is open to more local designers, artists, and artisans. I moved to San Francisco in 2008 for graduate school, so Roberto and Rosario, young artists who founded the Lapiztola street art collective, have been running the shop day to day.

How do you define good design?
Good design is when you strip all the designer BS away and you are able to experience the soul of an object.

Can you give an example of a successful collaboration?
I met my favorite artisan, Sergio Lazo, when he was in the city selling his woven wool bags. I went to his village, Teotitlan del Valle, and sat with his family in a circle; it was like having a meeting with a Cherokee chief. I pulled out a blueprint for a rug design–—I had traced the shadows from a tree on a big piece of paper–—and asked, “Can you make this?” I told him I was promising a relationship. They started talking in their indigenous language and then said okay. We’ve been working with his family ever since. Today he’s so proud of his work that he signs every piece he makes. The challenge for us is to create more stories like that.

What’s next for blackbox?
I want to establish a cooperative model of management, to open the responsibility and profit of the store to more people. I’m also designing two new lamps made out of carrizo [a bamboo-like material] for a crafts community in Papalutla, and I’m looking for more ceramic and glass objects to sell.

In the summer of 2007, Charlie and Rebecca Fisher noticed something odd about their weekend house, a boxy 1960s cottage in Amagansett, Long Island: “When the washer was on the spin cycle, the whole place would shake,” says Rebecca. That’s when they knew they couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time to renovate.

The Manhattan-based Canadian couple had bought the house three years earlier, drawn to its space-efficient, family-friendly layout (four bedrooms and two bathrooms in 1,200 square feet) and its location 60 steps from one of the loveliest beaches in the Hamptons. Over the years, they’d rented various share houses in the Dunes, as the neighborhood is called, and they remember admiring this one on their evening walks. “There was a big juniper pine and maple out front,” says Rebecca. “It looked like a really happy place.” One spring, the home became available to rent, and they booked it. A month into their stay, a real estate agent called: The owner wanted to sell the house. Were they interested?

The couple decided to go for it. The house was small and scruffy, and the seller was motivated, so they snagged it for $15,000 below the asking price; they paid an extra $1,500 to buy it as-is and furnished, complete with sagging beds in the kids’ rooms, board games in the closet, and a fully stocked kitchen. The Fishers and their three children loved the laid-back vibe of the place (“We come in Friday night, take off our shoes, and don’t put them on again till Sunday—it’s that kind of mood here,” says Charlie) and the luxury of having the beach so close it felt like an appended backyard. It soon became apparent, though, that the uninsulated wooden structure “was starting to come to the end of its useful life,” as Charlie puts it. “It was turning into cheesecloth—you could hear and feel the wind whistling through all the gaps and cracks and crevices.”

They didn’t picture an extensive renovation. “We just didn’t want it to fall down on us,” says Rebecca. Intimidated by the idea of working with an architect (“I don’t know how to talk to them, don’t have the vocabulary, and I thought they might laugh at our budget,” says Charlie), they turned to dwell.com and looked through some of the architects on the site. Two or three clicks in, they found Page Goolrick.

“Her projects looked exactly like our style—lots of light, lots of bookshelves—decorated the way we envisioned our house,” says Charlie. “It also struck me that she said she loves the efficiency of sailboats and likes working with small spaces.” An initial phone call put him at ease. “I had the notion an architect would want to make the thing theirs—so you could tell it was her house. But Page was pleased we wanted to retain the character of the existing building.”

To the Fishers’ surprise, Goolrick’s design process started not with grand architectural moves but with a slew of specific nuanced questions. Where does Rebecca put her bag when she gets in? Do your kids sit down to put on their shoes? When you have people over, do you barbecue? Where do you like to curl up with a good book? Goolrick explains: “To solve design problems, you have to look at how a family really lives and works. I think an architect’s job is to celebrate what people really care about and simplify and streamline the rest.”

To that end, Goolrick embraced the particular challenges of oceanside living and selected materialsthat “just evolve and soften over time, like driftwood,” and require little maintenance. She essentially rebuilt the house using dry construction methods, foregoing inflexible, crack-prone materials like plaster, Sheetrock, and Spackle in favor of those (like wood) that can expand and contract.

The exterior, once flecked with peeling paint, is now clad in cedar plywood paneling scored with a router every eight to ten inches, so you can’t tell where the standard four-by-eight sheets begin and end. Only four things in the house are painted: small areas in the bathrooms, the bright blue front door (a color Charlie first spied on an old Land Rover Defender and had Benjamin Moore custom-match), the bookshelf in the living room, and three blue-gray sliding panels in the kitchen. Everything else—the floors, walls, and newly exposed ceiling rafters—is stained or oiled wood. Anticipating the weathering effects of the salty sea air, Goolrick intentionally selected matte stainless steel hardware: “When you work in a context like this, you know all the metal will lose its sheen anyway—things tend to get rough. So I started with something that was soft and brushed in appearance.”

Goolrick’s experience with boats—she races sailboats and owns one—combined with living in Manhattan has made her something of a small-space guru. “After you live in New York City for a while, you learn to measure very carefully and find space,” she says. Limited by strict setback rules, she squeezed every buildable inch out of the site, enclosing an existing carport and bumping out the walls under the eaves to increase the footprint by just 157 square feet. “It’s the perfect diagram of how you use land well,” she observes.

On a tour of the house, Goolrick takes pains to point out how every millimeter is held to account. To maximize the limited square footage, there are few swinging doors in the house; instead, each bedroom has a pocket door that slides into the wall. In lieu of lower cabinets in the bathrooms and kitchen, Goolrick installed drawers, which increased the storage space. “Storage functions better that way—rather than opening doors and crawling in to look. That’s the sort of thing you’d definitely do in a boat. You’d never waste that space.”

There are several spots where space is “borrowed” from an adjoining room—where a build-out in one room creates a recessed storage nook on the other side of the wall. A tiled shower seat in the master bath, for example, translates into an inset bookshelf in Emily and Henry’s room. The dialed-in detailing continues in the hallway, where shelves are narrower at the top and deeper at the bottom to accommodate board games and oversize kids’ books.

To make the place feel bigger, Goolrick employed some architectural tricks. She established what’s called a “datum line”: a consistent horizontal point—in this case, at six feet eight inches—that almost everything in the room hits, from the top of the windows to the top of the range hood. “You establish order by height,” explains Goolrick. “If I could force the fridge to be that height I would!” She also stained the floors a soft gray that matches the deck, so the outdoor area feels and looks like an extension of the living room, visually doubling the space.

Today, little of the original house remains, save for the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the brick chimney, and a few token items transferred in the purchase, including a coffee table, a set of red plastic tumblers, and a framed map of Long Island.

The house may have undergone a structural and interior makeover, but its mellow spirit, as well as its exterior appearance, has been respectfully maintained. While the house was under construction, “neighbors would walk by and say, ‘You’ve been working on that for a long time and it looks exactly the same,’” recalls Charlie. “And we’d say, ‘Thank you.’ We’re not the kinds of people who use words like ‘karma’ or ‘feng shui,’ but something about the place has always felt right for us. As soon as our feet hit the sand out front, everybody just chills.”

To see more photos of the house, click here.