There was something quite liberating for Mark and Tammy De Mattei when it came to building their new Aptos beach house.  Unlike their home in San Jose’s Rose Garden neighborhood where they are raising their three school-age boys, the beach house needs no backback drop-zone, no big laundry room or computer hub.

“It’s about looks first and…

…function second,” said Mark De Mattei, of San Jose-based DeMattei Construction.

And boy does it have looks. The three-story wood, concrete and steel structure is built into a steep bluff, right at the edge of the sand. (The only problem is that darn crashing of the waves _ to a builder drifting off to sleep at night, it can sound like bursting water pipes. But he’s working through that.)

When it came to choosing a style for the family beach house, De Mattei, whose company has built four Sunset Idea Houses, departed from the traditional style of his Rose Garden home.

“I knew I wanted it to be contemporary, but not Jetsons contemporary,” De Mattei said.

What does that mean? It means warm contemporary. It means choosing a palette of honey, moss and sand.  It means less steel, and more cedar and mahogany. It means natural light streaming all the way to the bluffside of the house and Venetian plaster walls so smooth, they feel like silk to the touch. It means cabinets made of teak and zebra wood installed on a horizontal grain. It means radiant heat.

De Mattei hired Santa Cruz architect Tom Thacher to transform his vision into reality, including designing a two-story corner window of glass and steel built to withstand a landslide, wrap-around balconies and an elevator to cart weekend luggage to the third-floor bedrooms.

“It’s a bunker house. The back side is all concrete _it’s buried into the hillside,” said Peter Silva, associate architect on the project. “Our task was to enliven the structure using warm materials.”

With the help of Palo Alto interior designer Pamela Pennington, limestone floors were chosen that can be hard and loud for every day use, but are perfect for sandy feet.  Shallow sinks in the masterbath “really look cool,” De Mattei said, “but you wouldn’t do your laundry in them.”

To De Mattei, “everything is about the view. It’s more about the view and entertaining than practicality.”

The beach house has been a long time coming. De Mattei first spotted the property with a For Sale sign as he was jogging on the Rio Del Mar beach about eight years ago. The lot included 10 acres of bluff and beach, but had become embroiled in legal wrangling when the previous owner proposed building a number of houses on the site. To settle the issue, the lot was sold in 2004 when De Mattei promised to build just one. Construction began in June 2006 and last September, the family moved in their towels and surf boards.

This is the family’s first full summer at the new home. As De Mattei puts it, “It’s a 45-minute drive to paradise.”

—julia prodis sulek

Here’s the complete slideshow:

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 8:21 pm and is filed under Inside Stories, Inside Story, Julia, Vacation Homes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.