I first encountered designer Linda Applewhite’s work at the Cottages of Napa Valley, when new owners had renovated the World War II era housing into vacation rentals.

What was appealing about the renovation was that even though it had definitely updated the old project, the cottages retained a rustic sense of place: The luxury was subtle, the comfort whimsical — suspended pitchforks served as hangers for bathrobes; the sinks were elegant, state of the art and made of concrete.

Singing Applewhite’s praises was Marilyn Smith, who, along with her husband, Bob, are partners in the project that created a new vacation retreat from the old cottages. Applewhite, Smith explained, was also helping the Smiths create their dream retirement home in Glen Ellen. So, when the invitation arrived to visit the Smith project with Applewhite, I was eager to head over the hill into Sonoma.

The Smiths’ home is also one of the projects featured in Applewhite’s new book, “Architectural Interiors, Transforming Your Home with Decorative Structural Elements.”

Marilyn Smith explained that when she and her husband found the 26 acre hillside site, they had to look beyond a dilapidated house and a collection of rusting old cars to see its potential beauty. Enjoying the convenience of having one son a contractor and another an architect, they worked with Applewhite to rebuild a charming two-bedroom villa that was inspired by their travels in Italy.

The house is a refreshing gem, built on a human scale.

Applewhite’s focus in designing the house was on the structural elements that added distinction and character to the design: Columns in the dining room, cement cast frames for doorways, decorative beams in a high-ceiling living room and imaginative hand stamped cabinets in the open kitchen.

“One of my favorite design mantras has always been, ‘It’s not just the way a home looks, it’s the way it feels,’” she explained.

Applewhite, a native of Texas, has worked in exterior, interior and architectural design for more than 20 years. Her work has been featured in magazines in the U.S. and Europe and on HGTV. After moving to the Bay Area, she said she concluded the climate here is “something like paradise,” leading to another of her goals as an artist, “to connect the indoors and outdoors” in her designs. She used one of her favorite elements, arches, to frame the spectacular views both from the indoors and from the adjacent patio. “Repeating an element is also a good idea,” she said. “I always say, when in doubt, repeat.”

Applewhite said she also kept the outdoors in mind when choosing colors. The warm colors reflected not only colors she found outdoors in the autumn, but she said also fit with the owner’s personalities. “They are warm and lively people,” she said, and above all, she wants her creations to be a place where the owners feel at home.

Applewhite goes into detail about these elements in her lavishly illustrated book, her first. She also adds an usual element for a designer’s book — a look at her own house. “I had always dreamed of buying an old, unloved house with lots of character and turning it into a beautiful, treasured home,” she wrote.

She was looking for a house with “good bones,” “By ‘bones” I mean architectural details such as beams, arches, niches, pitched ceilings, interesting windows and doors, beautiful moldings, distinctive fireplaces, columns or cabinetry. ‘Bones’ are the architectural character that is incorporated into the structure of a home and that distinguishes it from others.”

Although her work is to create dream houses for others, the high real estate prices in the Bay Area made it difficult to achieve this for herself, she said, and she’d nearly given up her search for a house when she and her husband found a 1950s tract house that was non-descript on the surface, but possessing the potential that stands out to a trained eye. With before and after photos she shows how she set about putting her theories into practice to transform her find into a distinctive cottage — with “bones.”