One Of A Kind

Used to Designing for a Fast Sale, a Real Estate Pro Ignores the Rules and Remakes a 1930 House to Fit His Family—and Reflect His Unique Personal Style

THEY SAY THE COBBLER’S CHILDREN have no shoes, but if that truism were always apt, Scott Kalmbach’s kids would be living in tents. Instead, Finn, 16, and his sister Remy, 13, roam around a rustic-modern two-story house filled with fun artifacts like animal bones and a reclaimed wasp’s nest. When they get bored, there’s the yard, which their dad, a real estate agent and serial house renovator, compares to a Costa Rican adventure park. Maybe it’s the zip line over the creek in back, which Remy uses to get to school.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Scott first spotted the stucco house, built in 1930 in a quiet neck of misty, redwood-forested Mill Valley, California, he and his family were ensconced in a sweet little bungalow nearby. So he sold his business partners on the idea of investing in the property for resale. “It had charm and character and a great vibe I thought we could build on,” he recalls.

That was two and a half years ago. Well into the partners’ fix-and-flip reno, Scott had a change of heart and decided this was no investment but rather the potential embodiment of his easy-living dreams—and a game of catch-and-release became a matter of catch-and-keep. After persuading his wife, Tjasa Owen, to endorse the adventure, Scott bought out his partners. Then he guided the reno away from the generic look the real estate market demands—all-white kitchen, lots of marble—and toward the family’s eclectic world-travelers’ taste.

“We had recently sold our vacation house, in So noma County, and were missing the wine-country outdoor lifestyle,” Scott says. “This house is in a neighborhood that has a rural feel, with larger lots, fewer houses, and more acreage and greenery than where we were.”

More important, he adds, “once I started spending time in it, I really fell in love with it.”