It Was an Abandoned, Barely Built Mansion. They Made It a Real Home

When Deborah Oropallo and Michael Goldin began plotting a move from Berkeley, California, to a more bucolic setting in the late aughts, they envisioned open land, a place for Deborah’s art studio and Michael’s design and fabrication shop, and an opportunity to grow and raise their own food. Veterans of two repurposed mixed-used city spaces—a machine shop and a brass foundry—the couple and their two kids were itching for country life.

In 2010, after prices proved prohibitive on other properties in rural Northern California, Deborah and Michael got wind of a 14-acre site closer to home, in unincorporated Novato in Marin County, that had languished on the market, and they hastened to check it out. Hopping the fence for a closer look, the two were greeted by what appeared to be a scene from a fairy tale in which time stands still. An overgrown thicket surrounded a concrete building that was open to the elements, and the landscape was dotted with tools dropped six years prior when construction came to an abrupt halt.