The Ellis Residence, Windenburg: Back Terrace & Pool WIP. Midcentury-organic bones with a coastal soul. Featured:

① Twin open-air showers finished in aged brass.

② A pool terrace dressed in ticking stripe, a pair of timber chaises in navy-and-cream face the horizon, shaded by a single canvas umbrella.

③ A hand-thrown stone fire bowl paired with low teak armchairs, a chilled bottle within reach, backed by a staircase of stacked riverstone.

The Ellis Residence, Windenburg. Part II: The Working Rooms: Kitchen.

If the terrace is where the Ellis household entertains, the kitchen is where it actually lives. Terrazzo counters run the length of the room in a speckle of warm neutrals, met by walnut cabinetry and a bank of soft olive uppers that keep the wood from turning heavy. Overhead, a tiered Poul Henningsen pendant throws its glow downward in the layered way only that fixture manages, while a pair of oversized Enzo Mari fruit studies — La Mela (The Apple) and La Pera (The Pear) — supply the only real color in the room and all the personality it needs. A picture window frames the water; a laptop and a half-poured glass suggest the cook hasn’t fully clocked out.

Through the doorway, the working heart continues into a combined pantry and laundry. Open metal-framed shelving holds the honest inventory of a well-run house — folded linens, glass jars of grains and preserves, tinned staples in a row, a net sack of onions and wire baskets of fruit catching the last of the sunset through the window. Next door, a stacked washer and dryer sit beneath a framed equestrian scene and a buttery Danish table lamp, proof that even the utility corner here has been given something worth looking at.

The lesson, as ever with this house, is that nothing is purely practical and nothing is purely for show. The beautiful rooms work, and the working rooms are beautiful.

The Ellis Residence, Windenburg. Part IV: The Living Room.

The living room, where the Ellis residence holds court. This is the house at full volume: teak paneling wrapping every surface, a slatted wood ceiling overhead, and picture windows on two sides pulling the trees, the rock, and the water straight into the room.

A low modular sofa in oatmeal linen anchors the floor, paired against a Marcel Breuer Wassily chair whose tubular steel and taut leather straps supply the room's one note of hard geometry. Between them, a lacquered coffee table carries the honest clutter of a room actually being used — stacked magazines, a candle, a laptop. Flanking it all, a pair of Bowers & Wilkins towers stand like sculpture, their gilded cones catching the low sun.

The showpiece is the fireplace: a solid stone surround and a floating stone hearth that quotes the exterior's masonry piers word for word, carrying the architecture's rugged coastal language deep into the interior. Nearby, a Noguchi-style paper lamp throws a soft, diffuse glow, and a vintage alpine travel poster — all cobalt peaks and red toboggans — supplies the color and the wink at a house perched between mountain and sea.

The Ellis Residence, Windenburg. Part III: The Landing.