Four adults, three kids, and lots of guests?in just 900 square feet By most measures, the weekend retreat architect Karen Curtiss and her family share with friends in Stinson Beach, California, is what you would expect of a sensitively renovated home. Except that the neighbors have wings.
?The butterflies get the ocean view,? jokes Curtiss, who goes on to explain that groups of monarchs use a stand of cypress trees behind the house as a pit stop along their migratory path every fall. Beyond this sylvan rest stop lies the Pacific.
Curtiss, her husband, and their two kids, aged 13 and 10, enjoy other perks of proximity to nature in Stinson, which lies some 25 miles north of San Francisco: Easy access to the beach and local hiking trails sold Curtiss and her husband on Stinson when they visited on their honeymoon some years ago. Dreams of a place of their own in the small town (population: 632) soon followed.
Architect Karen Curtiss outside the 900-square-foot kit house she shares with her husband, two children (ages 13 and 10), and their friends, another family with a 13 year old, with whom they purchased the property.

What the couple found was a 1958 kit home known to locals as the ?shaky house,? so named for the thin stilts that support the back of the house as the ground beneath it slopes toward the beach. ?My husband found it,? says Curtiss of their home, ?and it was the cheapest house in Stinson. He said ?there must be something wrong with it....