Cabin Fever

Friedmann reimagined the cabin façade in Benjamin Moore’s Onyx to allow the green hues of the neighboring trees to pop.

- Chantal Lamers

EXTERIOR: Friedmann reimagined the cabin façade in Benjamin Moore’s Onyx to allow the green hues of the neighboring trees to pop. She swapped antique-inspired lamps for sleek industrial fixtures, added a $40 salvaged-wood door, and scraped more layers of brown paint off the redwood deck to make it feel like an extension of the interior floors. The heart of the deck features a 10-foot custom tabletop from Arborica in West Marin. Ceramic nesting bowls and plates, vintage flatware, bone-handled knives, blue overdyed napkins, wood cutting boards, and stoneware vases; all elsiegreen.com.

On a Sunday afternoon three years ago, interior designer Blythe Friedmann (bly thedesignco.com) was at the tail end of an hourlong drive up to Point Reyes Station, near the start of her favorite hike to Bear Valley Visitor Center, from her San Francisco apartment. But when she and her hiking companion noticed an open-house sign pointing up a winding road into the West Marin woods, they couldn’t resist a quick detour.

There, amid a dense patch of Douglas fir, oak, and bay trees, stood a candy-apple red A-frame. The property was dotted with rose bushes and fuchsia, and a circular gravel driveway lead to a sprawling chocolate brown deck with Parisian-style lampposts. Friedmann, who grew up in New York City, had never stepped foot in one of these iconic California cabins but coincidentally had recently designed one for a project in a 3-D rendering course through University of California, Berkeley's extension program. As she chatted up the selling agent, her friend noted the striking similarities between the A-frame they were standing in and the one Friedmann produced for the assignment.