How do you turn a plain plywood box into your dream home? Just add money, lots of it, and vision.

For Mary Pat Power and Hollis Greenwood, the plain box — complete with shag carpet, aluminum slider windows, discount store plumbing fixtures and vinyl siding — was a 1960 split-level ranch home at 442 Holly St. in Ashland. They picked up the house a dozen years ago for $136,000.

The couple spent $220,000 to put in new joists (opening the ceiling) oak floors (slate in the kitchen), modern kitchen and bathrooms, decks and an eye-popping front treatment that blends the "strong horizontal lines and good sense of proportion of Craftsman, Japanese and Frank Lloyd Wright styles," says its Ashland designer, Don Sever.

"The house was very plain, a blank palate, so it was anything goes," says Sever. The process, he notes, started with a model and blueprints, but those mostly went out the window as he and builder Jeff Hamlett of Ashland kept reshaping the concept as they went.

"We could have micromanaged, but we didn’t," says Greenwood, 59, a retired union worker from San Francisco. "We did get sticker shock, because we all kept coming up with such great new ideas. It was the right way to go, when you’re working with artists of this caliber."

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The results are simple yet elegant.

A vaulted ceiling opens over a merged kitchen-living room, the two rooms divided only by a granite pass-through counter and a partial wall. The old brick fireplace is plastered white and adorned with floral tiles joined by art deco lines. The former tiny windows are replaced with larger ones — or with stylish sliding-glass doors that open onto three decks.

Rooms are visually held together with high, two-tiered sage and olive trim that hides strings of recessed, dimmer-controlled lights. This contrasts with subtle off-white walls. A large, saucer-like light — again reminiscent of Craftsman or lodge style — hangs over the dining table.

Power, 54, got inspiration from "The Not So Big House" by Sarah Susanka.

While the couple at first had designs on a much larger, higher-up house, Susanka’s vision opened them to the pluses of a smaller space, making better use of every corner and cubby, building bookshelves into walls, carving an office out of a garage corner and loading every room with esthetic presence.

Side walls were pushed out a few feet to enlarge bedrooms and to create a living room alcove. Enough space was left over in the 1,400-square-foot home that Greenwood and Power were able to create an income-producing accessory unit on the lower level next to the garage.

Bathrooms have big tubs and sleek sinks, with storage and clutter away from the used space. Unable to find a sink small enough for one bathroom’s tiny corner, Sever built one out of scraps from floor tiles, fashioning a swooping wave and moon in the design.

"Everything was built by craftsmen for this house — nothing off-the-shelf," says Greenwood. Even maple window sills are extra wide to allow sleeping spots for the couple’s four cats. Doors are solid maple — "much quieter than hollow core," she adds.

Power and Greenwood are avid birders, often going on bird-watching jaunts to places like the Klamath National Wildlife Refuge or Mexico. Their aviary passions are reflected in their home with scads of bird baths, bird feeders and bird-themed wall art. An octagonal entranceway window features a duck by local glass artist Debbie Early.

Exterior walls are clean and simple — lightly stained plywood with closely spaced vertical bats. The lower level is olive-painted stucco featuring several sturdy, squarish columns, eye-catchingly notched at the top.

The front façade — a mix of pillars, seemingly cantilevered beams and a stained-glass porch skylight — invites study and wonder, especially when set beside "before" pictures, showing the most humble possible entry: aluminum door, concrete steps, white vinyl siding.

The simple yard is enriched with waterfalls and a koi pond. A hot tub is nestled peacefully under a double-trunked redwood and surrounded by slate walkway. A Buddha statue overlooks it all.

"We spent everything we had," says Greenwood, "so the furniture is secondhand. If someone spills something, it’s not the end of the world and we’re not going to have apoplexy.

"In our many years of coming here to visit (from their home in San Francisco), we always referred to Ashland as our spiritual home — and this house embodies that."

John Darling is a freelance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.