“I only wanted a cottage kind of house here,” Annette says, “a modest home that would look like it belonged.” It’s an approach that made her neighbors happy. After all, “they have enjoyed this view for decades,” she says.

The house she built is small and practical. “There was no need for separate dining rooms, family rooms, or any other little-used rooms,” the talented gardener and weaver explains. “I simply wanted a large light-filled space for my spinning wheels, looms, and fiber; a loft bedroom so I would never feel cut off from the living and weaving spaces; and a few extra bedrooms for when my family comes to visit.”

To create her cottage homestead. Annette enlisted Judith Landau, a designer and co-owner of Timbercraft Homes. “Working with Judith was harmonious – a wonderful collaboration,” she says. “We had such similar tastes that after a while it became hard to tell what was Judith’s idea and what was mine. I’d have ideas, and she’d make them work!”

Designer and client both admired the houses of Bernard Maybeck, a celebrated San Francisco architect who practiced in the Bay Area from the 1890s through the 1930s. Drawing inspiration from his projects, they incorporated his unique blend of finely crafted Gothic-European and Asian design elements in almost every corner of the cottage.

Specifically, Judith studied a house that the architect had built for his son and daughter-in-law in Kensington, California.

That’s where she got the idea for the huge, arched cruck timbers (see Glossary) of Annette’s ceiling and the tall – in some cases, floor-to-ceiling – true divided-light windows.

Annette’s cottage may have been inspired by Maybeck designs, but this house is emphatically hers. With Judith’s help she built a house that “was simply designed to suit me, and me alone. It is not just a place to live in for a while and then sell. This is home.”