Modernizing Today with Ease - Page 2

Homeowners also want more and easier-to-access storage in both kitchens and bathrooms than provided originally by Joe Eichler.

While referring to one of her recent Sunnyvale projects, Scott remarks, "The new kitchen is a more open space with a functional European type of all-drawer storage for the base cabinetry, instead of doors and shelves. The upper cabinetry has doors that flip open and out of the way making it easy to prepare food and access needed items."

For clients with strong modern sensibilities who wanted the warmth from a fireplace in a new living area, Scott had to provide instead of a wood burner an eco-friendly bioethanol fireplace, "which creates a real fire but does not need a flue. You can't put in a wood-burning fireplace any longer [because of regional regulations]."

"The owners [of the fireplace home] wanted it to be energy efficient and not create pollution," she adds. "But they wanted real fire."

"The goal today," she says, "is marrying current technology and current lifestyle and still having reverence for the [Eichler] house. With this approach, we're not really changing things much, and preserving the open plan and the natural light. You're trying to honor the existing design, but improving it for today."

Eichlers can be remodeled while preserving the Eichler look in toto. But Scott's work often adds 21st century elements in a way, she says, that harmonize with Eichler's aesthetic in the use of warm materials and textures. "We want warmth if we're doing modern," Scott says.

"In the living space," she says of her Sunnyvale project, "the built-ins I added were rectilinear, and open and warm, with the natural wood tones."

In some ways, as smart-home technology has advanced, it has become even easier to bring Eichlers into the 21st century. Because Eichlers lack crawl space or attic space, and because running wires along beams can be tricky and unappealing, hooking up lighting or other functional devices decades ago was often challenging.

But today who needs wire? "We do a lot with wi-fi," Scott says. The world may have changed a lot since Joe Eichler was building his homes, but the homes seem to have evolved along with changing ways of life.

"It's a phenomenon," says Scott, "that the Eichlers have been preserved, and they are revered."