“I’ve spent so much time in this house all of my life,” Paige Peterson recalls fondly of her grandparents’ home on the lagoon in Belvedere, where she and her parents lived just down the street. “I was there every afternoon with my grandparents, and I’d stay over on weekends.”
Peterson’s grandfather bought the lagoon-front land in the early 1950s for just $5,000 and built the modest midcentury-style home for a mere $17,000. The house, and especially the lagoon, holds countless childhood memories for Peterson, from diving off the dock to boating and paddleboarding on the water. “My grandfather even made a paddleboard for me out of wood — he was ahead of his time,” Peterson says.
Peterson’s mother, Connie Wiley, lived in the Belvedere lagoon house up until the day she passed away in December of last year, at the age of 98. A beloved community member, Wiley enjoyed a successful career as an interior designer; was a member of the Tiburon Peninsula Chamber of Commerce board and the Tiburon Economic Development Committee; and served two terms as mayor, subsequently bestowed with title of the Citizen of the Year in 2005.
Peterson’s family home has remained nearly unaltered over the years, other than opening up the kitchen floorplan about a decade ago. Last year, however, the family replaced the glass and steel sunroom — exactly as it stood originally — and the foundation beneath it was rebuilt. Even the patio was restored, brick by brick using the original material, keeping family memories intact. “We built it in kind, with great intention,” Peterson says.
Realizing early on that many days on the Belvedere Lagoon were too windy to sit outside, Peterson’s grandfather had installed two sliding glass doors on the patio to block the gusts. About 10 years later, Peterson’s mother added an overhang. The simple sunroom enabled the family to enjoy the view while remaining protected from the elements for many years, but the structure and foundation were failing.
For Peterson, it was an easy decision to hire local builder Hadley General Contractors to complete the project — a company her family has been connected to for many years. In the 1950s, Peterson’s mother often worked closely on interior design projects with builder Bob Hadley, who eventually purchased the company from the original owners in the early 1970s, and Peterson herself is now the director of marketing for the company.
When the original structure was demolished, Peterson fleetingly considered not rebuilding it at all, entranced by the wide-open feeling of the patio looking out to the lagoon, but she soon changed her mind. “The problem is that 95% of the time you can’t sit there because the wind is ferocious, so we built it back up exactly as it was,” she says.
Still enamored with the building process after her many years working in interior design, Wiley enjoyed chatting with the workers every day while observing their progress, Peterson recalls, and she was lucky enough to see the project come to fruition before she passed away. “Every morning the crew would come in and say, “Good morning, Connie; good morning, Madam Mayor,” Peterson recalls. “It was like the greatest last year of her life that she could ever have had.”
When she’s not in New York City, Peterson now lives part of the year at the lagoon house, where she still loves living a life on the water. The family recently held a memorial gathering for Wiley at the home, attended by many friends and community members — and of course, the Hadleys. Just like days gone by, the kids splashed in the water while the adults gathered on the dock, deck and in new sunroom, enjoying the home as it was always meant to be enjoyed.
