Dover Shores, Finished: Inside Our Whole-Home Renovation on Newport's Back Bay

Some projects teach you about design. This one taught us about patience, and why the homes worth waiting for are the ones built to be lived in for decades, not staged for a season.

Our Dover Shores whole-home renovation is finished. After more than two years in design, the house on Upper Newport Bay is complete: rift-cut white oak plank ceilings, black casement windows framing the water, glazed zellige baths, a kids' bunk room built to be grown into, and outdoor rooms, courtyard, pool house, and pass-through bar, designed with the same care as the interiors. This is the full story: the neighborhood, the brief, the rooms inside and out, and honest answers to the questions we're asked most about renovating in Newport Beach.

Where the Back Bay begins

Dover Shores sits on the western bluffs of Upper Newport Bay, the Back Bay, where Newport Beach stops performing and starts living. Residents walk the trails that ring the Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve, launch paddleboards from the community's private bay beaches, and watch the light change over one of the last great coastal estuaries in Southern California. Castaways Park is minutes south; the shops and cafés of Westcliff and 17th Street are minutes west.

The neighborhood was laid out in the 1960s along the water, and the best homes here have always shared a sensibility: unpretentious from the street, generous toward the bay. That sensibility became our compass. A home on the Back Bay shouldn't compete with the view. It should earn it, room by room.

The brief: a forever home

Our clients came to us with a house that had good bones and the wrong priorities: rooms that turned away from the water, finishes chosen by a previous decade. The brief was simple to say and demanding to execute: make it warm, make it honest, make it last. A whole-home renovation, designed down to the last drawer pull, for a family that intends to stay.

That brief is why the project spent over two years in design. Every sightline was modeled in 3D before a wall moved. Every material was chosen for how it ages, not just how it photographs. When you renovate at this scale in Newport Beach, with its approvals, engineering, and coastal conditions, patience isn't a virtue, it's the method.

The great room: a ceiling worth looking up at

The heart of the house is one continuous room for kitchen, dining, and living, under a rift-cut white oak plank ceiling with exposed beams. It's the move everyone remembers, and it does more than decorate: the ceiling draws the eye through the room and out the black casement sliders to the courtyard, stitching indoors and outdoors into one space. On the bay, where the weather invites the doors open most of the year, that connection is the whole point.

Below it, the palette stays quiet in warm plaster, natural linen, and wide oak floors, so the wood above and the light outside do the talking.

A kitchen built for salt air and Sunday mornings

The kitchen carries the ceiling through and grounds it with full-height white oak cabinetry, honed stone counters, and a black casement window over the sink that frames the garden like a painting. Glass-front uppers keep the everyday dishes in reach and on display; a working pantry hides the rest, so the room stays calm without pretending nobody cooks here.

Every material in this room was chosen to take use gracefully: wood that gains character, stone that softens, unlacquered fittings that patina. In a bayfront home, finishes that fear fingerprints lose. Finishes that absorb life win.

Millwork built for generations

Flanking the fireplace, custom white oak built-ins do the quiet structural work of making a large room feel inhabited. Shelving proportioned to real objects (books, ceramics, framed photographs), not gallery styling. Cabinets below that swallow the family's actual life. This is the craftsmanship layer of a whole-home renovation that no photograph fully captures and every visitor feels immediately.

Bedrooms and baths: the quiet rooms

The bedrooms lower the volume: layered linen, warm lamplight, windows placed for morning light off the bay. The baths carry the project's most tactile material: glazed zellige, handmade and intentionally imperfect, laid so the light off the water moves across it all day. It's the detail guests touch before they compliment.

The kids' rooms: built to be grown into

Designing for a family of four means the kids' rooms get the same rigor as the great room. In the bunk room, a built-in loft rides above a full bed, with a ladder made for years of traffic and drawers tucked into every base. Blush grasscloth softens the walls, a homework desk sits in its own niche, and a window seat with storage below catches the afternoon light and whatever needs a home this year.

Down the hall, floral wallpaper meets board-and-batten wainscoting under a scalloped pendant, with a striped roman shade filtering the garden light. Both rooms are unmistakably for children without being childish: the wallpaper and the millwork will still make sense at sixteen, and the built-in storage means the floor stands a fighting chance of staying visible.

Indoor-outdoor living, the Back Bay way

The move the whole neighborhood will want to copy is over the kitchen sink: an awning window that cranks fully open and turns the counter into a pass-through bar serving the pool deck. Lemonade, sandwiches, and sunscreen go out; wet kids stay out. It's one pane of glass doing the work of an entire outdoor kitchen.

On the outside, woven counter stools pull up under the awning so the bar works from both directions. Between this window, the black casement sliders off the great room, and the courtyard beyond them, the line between inside and outside is wherever you left your towel.

Outside: designed to the property line

The exterior carried the same drawing set as the interiors: white-painted brick and cedar shingle siding, black casement windows under metal awnings, and a white oak Dutch door flanked by citrus trees in oversized white planters. A carved stone trough fountain softens the entry garden. None of it is decoration; it's the architecture finishing its sentence.

The outdoor rooms were designed with the same rigor as the interior ones. A cobblestone courtyard with fire-pit seating extends the great room, and the dining terrace opens to the pool. On the Back Bay, outdoor space isn't landscaping; it's living space.

Across the pool, a cedar-shingled pool house holds a full outdoor living room: deep sofas, a ceiling fan, a media wall, and open shelving for towels and games. It's the second family room for the long stretch of the year when the marine layer burns off by ten and nobody wants to be indoors.

What it takes to do this well

A whole-home renovation succeeds or fails long before installation day. Ours followed the same seven-phase process every Joey Snow Design Co. project runs on: design intake, 3D modeling and preliminary design, procurement, complete construction documentation, and steady site presence, on site weekly or every other week through active construction, working shoulder to shoulder with the build team.

That process is why the finished house matches the renderings the clients approved two years earlier, and it's the standard behind the studio's recognition: featured on The Haven List, with a 5.0 rating and four awards on Houzz. We take on a deliberately limited number of projects at a time so every home gets Joey and her team firsthand.

Want to see how it looked mid-build? The construction story is on the journal, scaffolding, framing, and all.

Bring the palette home

The last layer of every room in this house, the pillows, throws, baskets, and books, speaks the same language as our shoppe. A few pieces we'd style into a home like this one:

• Laguna Stripe Pillow: the washed-denim stripe that belongs on an outdoor sofa
• Pebble Stripe Pillow: quiet texture for the pool house or the window seat
• Green Tonal Check Pillow: the soft check we reach for in kids' rooms that need to grow up gracefully
• Natural Linen Throw: for the courtyard once the fog rolls back in
• Hand Woven Baskets: how the built-ins keep real life looking intentional
• Art of Outdoor Living: the book for anyone planning their own courtyard
• California Coastal: this house, in book form

Questions we're asked about renovating in Dover Shores

How long does a whole-home renovation in Dover Shores take?

Longer than most first-time renovators expect, and for good reason. Our Dover Shores project spent more than two years in design before the reveal. Planning, engineering, city approvals, and construction all take real time in Newport Beach, and rushing any of them shows in the finished home. You receive a defined timeline during design intake, before creative work begins, and we keep it updated at every milestone.

Do you handle the City of Newport Beach approval process?

We produce the complete construction documentation (detailed drawings, elevations, and a full specification book) that your architect and contractor need for permitting, and we stay involved through plan check and revisions. Coastal-adjacent properties can carry extra review, which is one more reason the design phase deserves patience.

How do you design for a home on the Back Bay?

Light and sightlines come first. Rooms are planned around how the sun moves over Upper Newport Bay, windows are placed to frame the water rather than just admit light, and materials are chosen to stand up to salt air and real coastal living. It is a different brief than an inland home, and it rewards a designer who has actually built on the bay.

Do I need my own contractor and architect?

Either way works. In Dover Shores we collaborated closely week to week with the build team, and we do the same with any established contractor or architect. If you are starting from zero, we can recommend trusted partners we have worked with before.

Can we live in the house during a whole-home renovation?

For a renovation of this scope, no. The house is opened to the studs in phases, and living around that is neither safe nor sane. Most of our Newport Beach clients relocate for the construction period, and we plan the schedule so that move happens once, not repeatedly.

What does a whole-home renovation cost in Newport Beach?

Every project is scoped individually, so pricing is tailored rather than fixed. Scope, structural work, and finish level move the number more than square footage does. Out of respect for our clients' privacy we never publish project budgets. An engagement begins with a complimentary discovery call, followed by a detailed proposal covering cost, timeline, and budget for your specific home.

Which materials hold up best in a bayfront home?

The ones that age instead of wear: rift-cut white oak, honest stone, glazed handmade tile, unlacquered metals that patina. In Dover Shores the plank ceilings, oak millwork, and zellige baths will look better in ten years than they do today. That is the test we hold every material to.

Do you design the outdoor spaces as well?

In Dover Shores, yes, down to the last paver. The cobblestone courtyard, the fire pit, the outdoor bar off the kitchen, and the pool house living room were drawn, specified, and furnished alongside the interior rooms, so the property reads as one continuous home rather than a house with a yard. On the Back Bay, where so much of the year happens outside, the exterior rooms are part of the architecture, not an afterthought.

Do you take on other projects in Newport Beach and Orange County?

Yes. Dover Shores anchors a growing Orange County portfolio that includes Coto de Caza, San Juan Capistrano, and Costa Mesa. Our studio is in Carlsbad, under an hour down the 5, and we are on site weekly or every other week through active construction.

See the full tour

The complete finished gallery, every room from corner to corner, is in the portfolio: take the Dover Shores tour. For more of our Orange County work, see Coto de Caza, and San Juan Spanish.

Dreaming about a renovation on the bay, or anywhere on the coast? Inquire with our team. It begins with a conversation, not a contract.