THE DELIGHT IS IN THE DETAILS
When reviving an old house, little things matter. Because it’s only when you add up the little things that you can appreciate the bigger story.
When Amy and Billy Reed came upon a modest 1937 cottage in Mill Valley, California, it was the small, everyday details that convinced them the 1,036-squarefoot house was not a teardown. And so they felt compelled to safeguard the home’s humble charms as they set about adapting it as a home for themselves and their two children, Margaret and Townsend.
Like many Mill Valley homes built in the waning years of the Great Depression, the cottage was a bit of a hodgepodge. “Sweet, historical, and worth preserving” is how project architect Whitney Schrauth describes it. But
