The Dream Was a House on the Russian River (on a Budget)

There are so many reasons to want a little house on the Russian River.

For Mark Jensen and Johanna Grawunder, the draw was partly sentimental: Mr. Jensen had spent part of his childhood in the area around Healdsburg, Calif. Also, his San Francisco-based architecture firm, Jensen Architects, had built projects there. And it was an easy hour-and-a-half drive north from the couple’s loft in the city.

“Maybe most important is just that it’s super beautiful,” said Mr. Jensen, 62.

In 2012, the couple, who had a limited budget, looked at unloved properties in the Fitch Mountain neighborhood of Healdsburg. Eventually, they found a vertiginous riverside lot with a house that was in far worse shape than the typical fixer-upper: a condemned, structurally unsound building that had been illegally converted into apartments, with outdoor spaces overgrown by weeds.

“When Mark drove past this one, I was screaming, ‘No, no, no — don’t stop, don’t stop,’” said Ms. Grawunder, 63, who has a degree in architecture and designs exhibitions and light installations. “But after beating through this whole disaster of the ruin that it was, we got out onto this little rickety deck, probably risking our lives, and it was like, ‘Oh, my God.’”

The view, it turned out, was breathtaking.

Demolishing the building, clearing the site, building a new house and resolving the laundry list of violations attached to the property wouldn’t be easy. “But being either clever architects — or naïve and foolish — we thought we could make it work,” Mr. Jensen said.