When Catherine O'neill's Contractor first proposed remodeling her Sonoma, California, fixer into a hyperefficient "passive" house, she had one directive: "I don't live in ugly." A retired hedge fund trader, O'Neill pored over a book on passive construction, trying to learn about the technical aspects of keeping a house at a constant comfortable temperature using only airtight construction, insulation, and mechanical ventilation.The ideas impressed her, but the illustrations made her cringe. "Passive houses are boxy and sterile," she says. "They look like a 1960s dorm." So architect Jarrod Denton and contractor Rick Milburn transformed O'Neill's dumpy 1960s ranch-style home into a modern farmhouse that evokes the "Steinbeck Country" of California's Central Coast, where she grew up.
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