“The husband loves surfing, and the wife grew up in Malibu. They had always wanted a beach house,” says Triggs, the owner of San Francisco–based Artistic Designs for Living. “They hired a real estate agent, and I came on board to look at five or six projects. We found this one at the end of the Bolinas Lagoon, so you don’t see any other houses. It feels a little more isolated than your typical Seadrift home.”
The unspoiled view of the lagoon—a stopover for tens of thousands of birds each year, including herons and egrets—was the clincher for Triggs. “The window in the primary bedroom literally looked like a piece of art,” she says. “That was one of the most ‘wow’ parts of the house. We wanted to keep the physical shape of the house intact, but almost everything else needed to be redone. There was a lot of dark wood paneling.” Not to mention maple cabinetry, tiled countertops, and small windows.
Triggs had already designed the couple’s primary residence in San Francisco, 30 miles away. “It’s a Spanish-style home with lots of color, lots of pops of bright pink and blue,” she says. “It’s very vibrant and very colonial. You don’t want all that craziness in a beach house unless it’s in Cabo or something. The owners wanted their second home to be wildly different.”