This is the ongoing saga of our experiences building a beautiful Modern Chateau in Atherton.  Live the process vicariously with us as we do this together in real-time…

Part 2: How to Design a Palace

October 21, 2020

It was September 28, 2019.  We had just closed escrow the day before (see Part 1 for that story!).  The mood was jubilant.  After spending almost $5 million on an extremely attractive lot, we were starting to spend millions more to realize its destiny.  It was a beautiful autumn day in Northern California in a pre-coronavirus world.  It was thrilling to start!

The first sprint was to gain Planning approval from the Town of Atherton.  Arborists, civil engineers, and geotech engineers sprinted off the bench and got into the game.  One nerve-wracking factor was the vicious dog in the back yard; the sellers were staying on for a few months and we were doing our prep work while they were still living there.  We had a good relationship with them.  We were terrified, however, of the hell hound, and were constantly warning our engineers not to get eaten by accident.

The best part of building a home is the architectural design process.  It’s like your teenage years when everything is possible and the future is unlimited.  We were delighted to be working with Steve and Jackie from Young & Borlik.  We’d designed a home on behalf of clients with them before, and loved the experience.  Being a good architect is to have a distinct design vision.  Being a *great* architect is to listen to a client’s design vision, shaping it and growing it and making it better.  And these guys are certainly great.  We sent them our Program- a succinct text doc of our intended owner, the business targets for the project, and what rooms the home should have.

The increasingly specific pen drawings of the plan (overhead) view became computer-based soon enough.  We iterated several times as a new idea for symmetry bubbled up, or areas that were too tight got loosened.  The merciless requirements of the Town pulled us back to reality, as we’d go over-budget by 100 square feet and everything needed to be shrunk a bit. 

Because we knew what we wanted pretty sharply, we never really backtracked or dithered, which is where projects like this can drag on.  We have crystal clear requirements about where AC condensers are allowed to purr away, so that your back yard soiree is a success.  Or how some space needs to be held back for a chase (vertical column of nothing), so that the GC has easy solutions for tomorrow’s problem instead of complex ones.  Or the ratio of closet to bathroom to bedroom in the Primary (f.k.a. Master) suite, so that buyers at the high end view it as not just acceptable, but dreamlike. 

In all our builds we try to distill what works for us and for our clients into cost-effective packages at the high-end of spec.  We borrow ideas from $15 million houses we see to our $8 million builds, and repurpose $30 million features to our $15 million projects.  We also make our houses with several “wow factor” moments that the owner sees on first visit, and their guests will be awed by-- because we talk about houses that blow us away and why for *years*. If we just focused on profit, we’d have cheaper, less memorable homes.  But we are targeting extraordinary buyers with extraordinary tastes, and our goal is to make them fall in love within 60 seconds, at very deliberate points, on their first walkthrough.  It might not be for everybody but this is the kind of work we want to do, and the kind of client we want to sell to.  Our realty business makes us design better houses, and our experience building makes us better realtors.   

With the design we came up with, we were confident we were speeding towards victory.  We submitted for Planning approval on February 25, 2020, a mere 151 days after Close of Escrow.  Our band was making great music together.  We were creating commercial art at top speed.  What could possibly derail all this?

Coronavirus locked down San Mateo county on March 16th.  There was a lot of initial confusion about what was allowed.  Construction sites kept going at first, then shut down hard, but reopened haltingly over the next month.  Real estate was the reverse; initially no one was allowed to do anything.  Then it was classified as an “essential service”, but activity was very slow as no one felt safe visiting houses (not agents, not buyers, not sellers).  Government agencies, like the ones approving our plans, were shuttered and atomized, and slowly came back to cohesion as employees adjusted to remote working.  Things got a little weird, as everyone struggled to find a balance between safety and economic activity.

Days turned into weeks.  Flowers bloomed and then wilted.  Leaves grew and then fell.  We really weren’t sure if the real estate market would come back, or if everyone would hunker down where they were for years.  The seasons turned, but somehow the gods of Fate, Time, and Bureaucracy smiled upon us.  We got Planning approval (“We hereby decree that we have no objection to you building this planned house”) in the summer. 

Civil engineers immediately figured out how to drain water away from our citadel, and structural engineers figured out how to make it rock solid.  It took a month, but thus fortified, we submitted a bigger set of plans to the Building department.  And we waited. 

And waited. 

And waited some more, with only a property tax bill on an unused lot to keep us reminded of this project’s previously supersonic pace. 

We finally got our building permit (“We hereby decree that this house will not hurt anybody; let the big machines roar”) on August 31. It was 339 days since we first bought the property. Slower than we had hoped, but still faster than most homes of this scale. Hooray!

So… what did we do to celebrate?  

Let the real action begin!

Up Next: Part 3: Up from the Bowels of the Earth!