Aldercrest is a house with extraordinary bones and almost no soul left in it — a 1978 hillside home with a wall of west-facing glass, oak floors hidden under beige carpet, and a layout that has been renovated into blandness over three decades.
You didn't fall for the finishes. You fell for the light at 5pm, the way the land drops away to the bay, and the feeling that this could be the last house you ever need. Our work is to make every room earn that feeling — to take a builder-grey shell and turn it back into somewhere warm, collected, and unmistakably yours.
This proposal sets out how we'll design all 5,400 square feet across two floors — what we'll do in each space, the material direction we're proposing, how the work sequences over the year, and exactly what the investment looks like, fee and furnishings both.
We design slowly and specify completely. Nothing in your home arrives by accident — every surface, fixture, and piece of furniture is chosen for how it ages, how it feels underfoot or under hand, and how it sits beside the four or five things next to it.
Light first, always
We design around your light, not against it. Warm, low-LRV plaster and timber that flatter the west sun rather than fight the glare — finishes that look alive at every hour, not just in the showroom.
Collected, not decorated
A home should look gathered over years, not delivered in a week. We mix vintage and bespoke, the imperfect with the precise, so nothing feels like a catalogue page.
Material honesty
Real limewash, solid walnut, unlacquered brass that patinas, natural stone with movement. Materials that earn their keep and only get better with handling and age.
Specified to the screw
You receive complete drawings, schedules, and a single procurement spine — so the trades build it right and nothing gets value-engineered out behind your back.
Full interior design and specification across both floors. Each space below is fully designed, drawn, and furnished end to end.
A warm, low-contrast envelope — plaster and travertine for the bones, walnut and ochre to ground it, aubergine for the moments that should feel like an exhale. Brass threads through it all, left unlacquered so it lives.
Physical sample boards for each space presented at the Design Development review — these are direction, not final SKUs.
A twelve-month arc from first concept to the day we hand you the keys, styled and photographed. Procurement and trade work overlap deliberately so the house comes together as one composed whole, not a sequence of unrelated rooms.
Concept & direction
Survey, space-planning, and the overall narrative. You approve floor plans, the palette direction, and concept boards for every room before a single thing is ordered.
Design development
Full drawings, joinery details, lighting and electrical plans, finish schedules, and physical sample boards. We pin every material and fixture down to the screw and sign it off together.
Sourcing & procurement
We place and manage every order — bespoke pieces in production, vintage sourced, trades scheduled. You get one tracked procurement schedule and one point of contact, not forty invoices.
Installation & styling
Site supervision through the build, then the install: furniture placed, art hung, beds made, the last brass knob set. We hand you a finished, photographed home and a binder for everything in it.
Our fee covers the thinking, drawing, and management; the FF&E budget is the allowance we'll spend on your behalf, against approved selections, for everything that isn't nailed down. The two are kept transparently separate so you always know what's design and what's the house itself.
Procurement on the FF&E budget is handled at our trade pricing and billed at cost plus a flat 15% management fee ($53,000, included above) — in practice the trade discount typically offsets most of it. Any unspent FF&E allowance is returned to you in full; nothing is ordered without your written approval of the selection and price.
We are a six-person studio in San Francisco that takes on eight whole-home projects a year — never more. The principal who sits with you at the kitchen table is the one who draws your house and stands on site when it's built. Twenty-two years, and we still only do this one thing.
Fee schedule
The design fee is billed by phase as each is approved. A retainer is due on signing and credited against Phase I. FF&E is funded in advance of each space's procurement.
Approvals & changes
Nothing is ordered without your written sign-off on the selection and price. Revisions to approved designs are billed hourly at $185; we'll always flag the cost before we start.
Trade & procurement
We purchase at trade and pass the goods to you at cost plus the 15% management fee. All warranties and receipts are transferred to you in the handover binder.
Validity
This proposal and its pricing are held for 30 days from the issue date. Your project slot is reserved on signature and the return of the retainer.
Shall we bring Aldercrest back to life?
Signing below approves the scope, material direction, phased timeline, and the investment outlined on the preceding pages — a $115,000 design fee and a $318,500 FF&E budget ($486,500 all in) — and reserves your place in our 2026 calendar. We'll send the design agreement and schedule your kickoff the same week.