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Introduction: There are few home styles more inviting and charming as a Southern California beach house. But finding out what “makes a beach house a beach house” can be hard to quantify. So I dug through my photo archive of my favorite beach houses in North County San Diego to share with all of you DIYers out there who want to add beachy touches to their own homes. To be clear, there is no strict formula for what defines a Southern California beach house, but there are distinct architectural and design details that creative homeowners can apply to their homes. Let’s get started…

Pour yourself a cup of coffee and listen to Jack Johnson.

Big Design Inspiration in Humble Buildings

A life guard tower in Carlsbad, CA

Before we get into the houses, let’s first stop to appreciate the icon of the beach: the lifeguard tower.  The three details to notice here are the color, and railing, and roof:

1. Color. Over the decades, the Southern California lifeguard towers have always been aqua in colored: power blue, teal blue, teal green, mint green, etc.
2. Railing. Here the railings are modest bent piping, probably stainless steel. Although pipe railings might have reached peak popularity in the 1980s (think art-deco Miami Beach around the time of Miami Vice), they’re still a stylish and low-maintenance option that let you maximize ocean views.
3. Cantilevered Roof. Notice that the roof extends out far beyond the walls of the tower without any structural support. These cantilevered roofs shade the lifeguard from the sun, but they also point the way to the ocean view, a detail you will see in many beach houses. Although you won’t see it in this tower, early lifeguard towers had simple, low-pitched roofs that accentuated the forward-looking overhand.

Now lets take a look at some beachy details on some modest buildings at my favorite campground overlooking the Pacific Ocean. These buildings and structures are important to a DIYer because they are low-cost and simple to build, yet they still glow with beachy details.  Click on the photos below to get large images with detailed descriptions.

What details did we see?

1. Layers of painted woodwork: white and aqua in color
2. Cantilevered roofs / deep overhangs
3. Exposed rafters / no soffit or fascia boards
4. No elaborate wood cuts
5. Slender support posts
6. Staircase posts (or balusters) that attach the the exterior of the staircase and dip below the structure.

Let’s see some of these details from both the lifeguard tower plus beach side buildings and structures can be applied to a home.

Elements of Beach House Design

I snapped this photo below in Leucadia, a beach side community in North County San Diego. Notice the aqua colors and the low-pitched cantilevered roof, both details taken from traditional lifeguard towers. What is interesting here is that this room above the garage doesn’t even have an view of the ocean. The windows facing left open up to the side of their neighbor’s home; the real ocean view on the far side of the home. But the simple details give this low-cost structure an undeniable beachy feel.

A simple home with big charm.

Although the builder used fascia boards to hide the ends of the rafters, he opted not to use soffit boards so the rafters would be exposed. (Look under the overhang by the white door into the home.)

Below is another small but attractive beach house within walking distance to the beach. The details to appreciate here are the low-pitched roof, exposed rafters, white painted trim work, and clerestory windows on the left structure and above doors to the deck. These windows maximize natural sunlight without sacrificing privacy.

Notice too that the deck railing is constructed of both painted and natural wood.

The two photos below are of one of North County’s more remarkable ocean side homes. Clearly, the homeowner had a larger budget than the homes above. But it’s interesting that they did not deviate from the mystique of the lifeguard tower.

The stunning interpretation of a lifeguard tower gives a commanding view of the ocean in the distance.

Notice the multitude of exposed rafter tails.

The front entry is filled with good design.

The photo above reveals a multitude of architectural details.

• Exposed rafters are exposed beyond the roof, capped with galvanized steel to prevent them from rotting.
• Slender support posts that hang below the cement block stair structure.
• Hand rail the uses taught lines of cable, not unlike the cable found on yachts.

Let’s take a look at another well-thought-out home in quiet neighborhood close to Encinitas’s Moonlight Beach. The details to notice cantilevered roof supported by simple four-by-four post. The railing that wraps the deck is similar to the staircases that lead people from the bluff down to the beach.

A small beach house with contemporary leanings.

Again, a cantilevered roof suggests a beautiful view in the distance. But in the case of the home above, the only view is of street-side parking (notice rear window of the black SUV). The home was built on a peculiar plot of land that dipped a good 15 feet beneath the surface of the street. But clever design with well-placed beachy details allowed a charming home to rise out of made a scrappy lot.

Architectural Details

Now let’s take a look at a dozen beach homes and see how they repeat design details.

Ranch House >> Beach House

So how do you apply these architectural details to a home that wasn’t “built for the beach”? Let’s take a look at a straight-forward ranch style home that was redesigned to look like it belonged by the ocean…

My Favorite Home: Modern & Beachy

I want to close with a gallery of one of my favorite homes in San Diego. The architect successfully combined traditional beachy elements like white-painted trim, exposed rafters, steal cable railings, and sunshine-colored siding. But you’ll also find boxy contemporary details including concrete fencing, tall contemporary windows, and the boxy stuccoed structures that wraps the garage and continues along the side of the home. Although this homes leans towards contemporary, it is without a doubt a beach home.

First, some random photos from the last couple of months. After clicking on each photo, be sure to read caption on the lower left.

Over the past four weeks, I’ve been a speaker/presenter at three big events: summer camp for junior high kids at Covecrest, a Steubenville Conference for teenagers in Ohio, and the Life Teen Training Convention for adults in Carefree, Arizona. Each stop was a powerful experience of community–people taking time to care for other people. It is good for the soul.

My wife is an impulsive photographer. She will carry Norah into the other room while she’s looking for her flip flops. Fifteen minutes later, I get curious and explore the house to see what happened to my two ladies. In the corner of the living room, I’ll find Norah laying on a black blanket by the windows. Candyce will have the camera on a tripod. She snaps photos with one hand while shaking a baby toy with her other hand. I’ll ask Candyce, “Didn’t you come in here to find your flip flops? I’m confused about what is happening here.”

Candyce continues to snap photos and shake the toy and then slowly explains, “She just looked so cute I couldn’t help myself.”

Whenever Norah had on a particularly “precious” outfit, Candyce would carry her outside and trample through our front yard to our neighbor’s yard. Then she would lower Norah onto his flawless thatch of green and start snapping photos. Why? My patchy brownish yard was a raw and savage terrain that was not fit for an infant.

This hurt my self esteem.

That was two months ago. How things have changed! Take a look at the photo below that I snapped over the weekend. The black Jeep in the distance is the driveway belongs to my neighbor, the young doctor who has unknowingly hosted photo shoots with Norah. Sure, you can see a minor shift of texture between the two yards, near the white planter box. But make no mistake, that big ocean of green that covers most of the photo is my own yard.

Greenalicious

I cannot take credit for nursing my yard back to health. I can only take credit for hiring Marcel & Associates to do the job for me. After nearly eight years of home ownership, I recognized that life has changed and I did not have the time to take care of my yard.

Now my yard is ready for a photo shoot with Norah. If any of my friends and family want to take some photos on a flawless yard, just give me a call and we’ll arrange a time.

So much has happened in the last couple of weeks. I want to write about it all, but it’s difficult to pull it all together into a tight narrative. So instead, I’ll just write a big list:

1. I just got back from a two-night trip to Dover, Delaware. Although I was painfully unprepared for the cold weather, it was a great trip. One of the priests I met, Fr. Gabage, is a serious art collector. He gave me an hour-and-a-half tour of his collection. I felt like I stepped into the final scene of National Treasure. The collection made most of the stuff I saw last week at the Phoenix Art Museum look like garbage. I could write forever about my concern over modern art, but I’ll try to keep this quick… It is a grave problem when the finest art from a generation doesn’t show any talent. When you strip away the intellectual bullsh!t that artists and their collectors say about the work, you are left with something that is entirely unimpressive.
2. My new favorite thing to eat at the airport is oatmeal. It’s simple, wholesome, and comforting. Starbucks and Cereality serve it up just right.
3. I don’t know how much more news I can handle about the “Financial Crisis.” I’m an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal, especially over the last six months when every day held a new story. But it’s getting me discouraged and I think it’s time to find something else to do with my time…
4. …like saving money. Candyce and I worked together to cut costs–including a different cell phone plan, car insurance, canceling subscriptions–and came up with $96 a month.  That’s adds up to more than $1160 in savings over twelve months.
5. It’s worth noting that when the economy is red hot, it’s cool to be seen living “the good life.” You know, vacations, car accessories, home upgrades, piling up investments. But when the economy is ice cold, everyone decides it’s cool to be seen saving money. Most of the people I know like to keep one foot in poverty and another in wealth. They lean in either direction when they need to, but in the end we’re all in pretty good shape, doing our best to responsibly manage our money as the years of our life pass by.
6. Rumor has it that one of my favorite restaurants is now a victim of a sluggish economy. What will downtown be without Palatte? I am grieving.
7. My six month old daughter has two bottom teeth now. This brings the grand total of teeth up to two. But make no mistake–when she bites you, you are in for some pain.
8. Trends are trends–if you ignore them, you’ll look like you’re just a leftover scrub from a decade past. I’m too old and sensible to wear the super-tight jeans like the trendy boys do, but my jeans are more snug now than they’ve ever been. I’ve been on a lot of business trips in 2009, and I’ve counted myself as one of the more stylish dudes in the airplane. But I’m also one of the least comfortable. I got a flicker of hope at 20,000 feet when I read the January issue of Esquire Magazine. Richard Dorment hinted that 2009 is ready for relaxed clothes:

For the past few years, a man could be forgiven for thinking that some fashion designers really had to be joking. The rib-crushing fit of certain suits, the tourniquetlike taper of so many skinny jeans, all those wacky school-boy proportions: While many in the fashion world were embracing these extreme views of silhouette and fit — the shorter and tighter, the better — those of us who wore their clothes were left sucking in our guts and praying to God that our pants didn’t split. Fashion being fashion, though, the collective mood seems to be shifting — think of it as a market correction — as designers from Bottega Veneta’s Tomas Maier and Burberry’s Christopher Bailey to the duo at Dolce & Gabbana are embracing more sensible, relaxed fits in their spring collections. Not baggy or saggy or overly loose-fitting. No: relaxed, with clothes maintaining a close, easy, and, above all, comfortable relationship to the body.

This morning Candyce and I drove past a beautiful Mid-Century Modern home on 44th Street north of Camelback Road in the Arcadia / Paradise Valley area.

I looked online to find some more information, and I was happy to find stunning photography of the home. What I like about the house is the freshened interior with thoughtful details that make the home both modern and livable. Don’t get me wrong, a glass and steel structure with minimal furniture looks great in a magazine, but it’s torture to live in. That’s why mod homes like this one are so desirable.

By the way, if you’re interested in buying the house, it can be yours for $849,000.