How They Pulled It Off: Two Salvaged Wood Sculptures Custom-Made For a 116-Year Old House

Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.

It was a request for a custom staircase runner that eventually led to the two wooden sculptures in a 1909 carpenter-style house in Berkeley: one, a threshold portal, and the other forming a reimagined fireplace mantel. The result is as singular as the request.

The project began when the owners, a pair of recent empty nesters, began to rethink their longtime family home—it’s where they raised their children and where they planned to live the rest of their lives. Originally built in 1909, the residence had already been called "home" by several families. How could it evolve alongside this one?

When they first approached Elena Dendiberia and Homan Raja, cofounders of the San Francisco-based design firm Studio AHEAD, the couple weren't seeking out a custom mantel-slash-portal. Rather, they were in search of a a runner that incorporated a number of antique rugs collected throughout years of traveling. But in the backyard, as the four spoke over ceramic plates of local tomatoes and the project grew.