Not much surprised Iris Harrell’s family when she left Virginia in her 20s to work as a history teacher on a Navajo Indian reservation, then toured the country for five years as a guitar player and singer in a pop and country band.

But when she put on a tool belt in her 30s and started doing carpentry, “they thought, ‘Have you lost your mind?’”

It all made perfect sense to Harrell, who is 62 now and CEO of her own Harrell Remodeling company based in Mountain View.

“If you can control a public school sixth period class on Friday afternoon and you can control drummers and other free-spirited, independent people and travel all over the country,” she said, “it’s pretty powerful training.”

For the past three decades, she’s been orchestrating designers, carpenters and subcontractors to create beautiful homes for people all over the Peninsula. She finally was able to focus on her own home in Portola Valley, which she shares with her partner of 30 years, Ann Benson. They completed a major remodel last year that is both universal — meaning it works for all ages and abilities — and it’s sustainable, meaning it’s “green” and has a roof with 54 solar panels. They built it as much for Benson’s 91-year-old mother as themselves. They installed an elevator as well as a bathroom vanity that lowers to wheelchair height.

The couple was first drawn to the area when they visited a friend in the Portola Valley Ranch subdivision, an early 1980s-era development of 200 homes nestled among hills, oaks and meadows. A nature corridors runs through the development, so wildlife is free to meander. That means all gardening is relegated to a fenced-in “community garden” near the pool and tennis courts. In 1992, the house that was built as the developer’s office — with 10 “bedrooms”, one-and-a-half bathrooms and no kitchen — came on the market. Harrell and Benson, seeing the potential, took it “as is”.

They did a temporary remodel back then to reconfigure the house to a four-bedroom, with a kitchen. But in July, they finished a substantial remodel, turning it into a showcase of modern green technology as well as comfortable, lifelong living. They started with a demolition party and invited Benson’s mother and her friends from their San Francisco senior citizens’ home. But many in wheelchairs and walkers couldn’t navigate the hillside house.

What a difference a remodel makes. They built a wooden ramp from the street level down to the front door, winding through oak trees along the way. They removed a wall in the entry hall and a closet in the living room to open the vista from the front door through the living room and out to the hillside views. To make the living room with 14-foot ceilings seem more intimate, they hung what they call “lighted quilts” from the ceiling. Made of glass that is stained in traditional quilt patterns, the floating piece of art is an homage to Benson’s love of quilting.

They reconfigured the kitchen to allow for “hers and hers” refrigerators and sinks. Since Benson is the main chef for the couple, her fridge stores all the fresh food for cooking. With Harrell’s fridge, on the other hand, “you take it out and eat it or put it in the microwave.”

The kitchen opens to a small eating area as well as an intimate sitting area that faces an energy-saving, gas fireplace, one of five in rooms throughout the house. They provide their main source of heat and turn them on only when they spend time in those rooms.

They also made “green” plans to cool the house, especially when the morning sun pours into the living room on hot summer mornings. They installed exterior “European Rolling Shutters” that not only descend at the push of a button, but flap shut.

The laundry room doubles as a kitchenette for the downstairs master bedroom. Except for towels, they hang up all their clothes to line dry across the long back wall. A heated counter top for folding dries the moisture from the air.

They installed a sauna in the master bath and curbless showers for the day when they might need wheelchairs themselves. The house has won several awards for universal and green design, including most recently the National Contractor of the Year Award from the National Remodelers Association (NARI) for Residential Universal Design.

This house, Harrell and Benson say, is their “forever house.”

When they completed the remodel last summer, including the ramp and elevator, Benson’s mother and her friends from the senior home returned for a “wrap” party. They all easily navigated the space.

(Photographs by Bill Enos. Harrell and Benson portrait by Desiree Northend.)

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Update:

This post is featured in the San Jose Mercury News Home and Garden section here.

Here’s the complete slideshow: