Alain Pinel Official Site http://10691mora.com/

Realtor.com Site  

“Moraquita” – at 10691 Mora Drive, Los Altos Hills, CA is an extremely rare and desirable property for these reasons:

• Sophisticated, mid-century modern architecture, extensively remodeled in 2001 for the 21st century
• 5,000 square feet home plus additional 3-car garage and workshop on a landscaped acre.
• 5 bedrooms with in-suite baths plus a guest bath.
• Modern gourmet kitchen/family room with SubZero refridgerator and additional wine storage unit that holds up to 132 bottles, 48 inch six-burner convection oven Viking range, 2 Asko dishwashers, trash compactor and voluminous storage.
• Central media center in kitchen controls music inside and outside the house.
• Vast entertaining spaces, including a formal dining room.
• Separate library with limestone fireplace holds thousands of volumes plus a separate and large craft room for laundry and storage.
• Elegant living room with fabulous 8′ high sliding glass doors opening onto the 2,000 square foot deck overlooking Silicon Valley with hot tub. Additional play structure and huge yard with sculptural grass lawn.
• Fruit and olive trees plus 300 year-old magnificent California Live Oak.
• Gated estate with call box ensures total privacy, close-in to Los Altos Hills with no freeway noise.
• Stunning entryway with ultra-modern water feature. On-site parking for up to 20 automobiles or boat/RV.
• Dazzling city views and peaceful country views with no neighbors in sight, just trees and hills.
• Private access to:
• Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve: This 3800-acre park offers facilities for bicycling, hiking, model glider flying, and photography. Within the park is Deer Hollow Farm, a working farm for the enjoyment of visitors, especially children.
• Zoned for horses - up to 3 horses per acre. Adjacent open space preserve is ideal for equestrian use.
• Rancho San Antonio Map pdf: 3800 acres offers over 20 miles of hiking and equestrian trails.
• Private secular academic school (Pinewood), Waldorf school and top public schools — state ranked 10 out of 10 — in less than 3 miles.
• Massive wall space for art, with 15’ soaring ceilings and lighted bases for sculpture located on the property.
• Separate 3 car garage with workshop 10 feet by 32 feet — 320 square feet - with separate power panel.
• 400 amp power panel, Digital Cable and/or DSL broadband, 3 phone lines and separare entrance to one bedroom is ideal for office or au-pair unit.
• Utility room for easy access to water heaters, furnaces and booster pump. Landcaping on timed irrigation and lighting.

Call Heidi Kadison of Alain Pinel for more info: 408.913.7918

By Carolyn Snyder

“It’s a house made for Hollywood, but it’s in Los Altos atop a hill, with Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve as its backyard.”

http://www.losaltosonline.com/2007/09/26/hollywood-haven/

 Moraquita Remodel Featured on HGTV:

The remodel was also featured as an episode of HGTV’s Before & After show in 2001.

In case you missed the airing of the show (or you would like to see it again)…Click here to see the video:

Moraquita was given an Honorable Mention in Metropolitan Home Magazine.

And received a Remodeling Design Award.

Here’s a flyer for the open house the weekend of Dec 1st and 2nd.

 Please note that:

The correct square footage is 5,091.

The correct price is $4,698,000.

Welcome to Moraquita! A Los Altos Hills gated estate. After driving up the shrub-lined private driveway, you’ll be impressed by the unique front entrance. You’ll notice the water feature that flows parallel the walkway. Then as you step up onto the porch, water will be on both sides of you as you near dramatic front door. You can see through the house out to Silicon Valley views.

All these photos were taken from the office, upstairs in the home.

You can see the lights of Silicon Valley twinkling below. Captured in this photo, taken from the office window (the exact view I see as I peer over the top of my computer monitor), you can see the lights of Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara…and across the bay, Fremont, Hayward and Milpitas. 

Other views….

This photo was taken from the upstairs office on January 5, 2008. You can see that there is light dusting of snow on the Fremont hills across the valley. 

Moonrise over the valley at sunset.

View across the bay to Mount Diablo:

Approximate shape and location of the combined parcels upon which Moraquita sits. A “secret” back entrance to Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve is steps away.

While the one side of the property overlooks Silicon Valley, the other side of the property faces Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve. A “secret” back door to the preserve is steps away and provides access to the preserves’ extensive trail system, which is available for a either hiking, biking, or horseback riding. Trails can be combined to form loops of different lengths and difficulties including the 3-mile Wildcat Loop Trail and the 4-mile Black Mountain Trail, To get to the northern part of the preserve from the valley floor, take the 2.1-mile Chamise Trail, which ascends gradually to a tranquil, secluded meadow in the Duveneck Windmill Pasture Area. This was once the location of a picturesque windmill from former ranch days when cattle freely roamed the hillsides. Visitors can now picnic amid fields of grass in the shadow of Monte Bello Ridge and Black Mountain.

A highlight of the preserve is Deer Hollow Farm, a working farm with a cow, pigs, goats, sheep, chickens, other animals, and an organic garden as well as numerous turn-of-the-century ranch buildings. An additional attraction is the restored Grant Cabin, furnished to represent living conditions in the late 1800s.

This room is magnificent and 36 feet wide at it’s midpoint.  Wow!  14′ ceilings create space while the massive fireplace brings warmth. One wall of 9′ high massive sliding doors opens to the 20 square foot deck that overlooks Silicon Valley. This room has an Architectural Digest-feeling.

This kitchen has all the modern conveniences, massive amounts of storage and the set up allows you to cook while you entertain. Everyone always gravitates toward this area of the home. Pop a bottle, cook up some dinner and enjoy!

There are three fireplaces in the home. This is one in the living room is visually stunning. Both the mantle and the hearth appear to be floating and make help make the room a fascinating and appealing place to be. The plaster work is exquisite and the honed limestone is a warm golden color with fossilized sea creatures embedded in it.

The house is lit outside and glows from within. The fountain is also lit and sparkles as you approach the custom Mondrian-esque front door that rotates on a pivot-point.

This is a detail of a shelf in the front entry way. There is wall space for big art here as well as enough space to put up table rounds and hold a dinner party or overflow from the dining room.

This is one of the most exquisite rooms in the house and it’s the smallest! Anagre wood shelves, exotic marble, a Kohler “Crucible” sink and black toilet and the dark stained oak flooring give the impression of a Manhattan penthouse design.  Ultra-modern but warm and inviting. Your guests will love you.

The master bath has a “his” sink area and a “hers” sink area in addition to a private, adjacent massive closet area and a double shower. The flooring is limestone with sea animal fossils and the cabinets are Anagre wood from Africa.

The “hers” side of the master bath area has tons of storage for even the most ardent beauty product user, along with a big window for natural lighting right next to the vanity area. Even better, the window opens to let in fresh air when the blow drying gets to be too hot.

The Toto toilet is addicting - it’s both a bidet and toilet with a remote control!  You’ll never go back to a regular toilet once you’ve tried the Toto.

In 2001 we completed an extensive remodel project on Moraquita which included and an amazing team of very talented folks.

Architects:
Studio3 Design Architecture
House+House of San Francisco

Contractors:
Fulwiler James 

Landscape Architects:
Magrane Associates 
Jeffrey McLane and Associates

Water Feature by:
Both Sides of the Door

Roofing by:
Izmarian Roofing 

Dual Frameless Shower:
CB Showers

Custom Flooring:
FloorCraft

Ubatuba Granite slabs:
Integrated Resources Group 

Inca Gold stone slabs:
ASN Natural Stone

You might be wondering why we called our home “Moraquita”. After we purchased the home, we were excited to find a treasure trove of information about the house including orignial plans for the home (which was built by Bill Tyler, president of C&H Sugar at the time), surveys and maps. In the old county maps, the entire area was known as the “Jo Mora Ranch”, and of course that’s where the name of Mora Dr. originates. In these old maps there is a street called “Moraquita Dr.”, which was never built. It turns out that this is where our driveway is located! It still shows up on some internet maps, so it seemed like that would be a great name for the house.

Yes - Bring your horses! Moraquita would be an ideal equestrian property. Because it is zoned HS and is in unincorporated Santa Clara County, up to 3 horses are permitted by right per acre. Equestrian use of the 3,800 acre open space preserve in your “backyard” is permitted, and you’ll have immediate access to over 20 miles of trails, like the PG&E trail, Rogue Valley Trail, Chamise Trail. Some trails are wide, and others narrow, but it’s always a treat to be so close to such a beautiful place. The trails even link to other open space preserves in the area!

 Back to main Moraquita site

This photo only shows half of the 320 square foot workshop. It has a separate power panel for your power tools and plenty of room for an overflow refridgerator, potting benches, storage and all of your projects.

It has three separate entrances and two opening windows to let in plenty of light. You may spend a LOT of fun hours in here.

Having lived in California all my life, and seeing firsthand the destructive power of earthquakes, I knew that I wanted to buy a home on stable ground. That’s one of the reasons it took us three years of looking almost every weekend (from 1992 - to 1995) to find a home that (a) had a view of silicon valley and was in a natural setting where you could not neighbors’ homes from your home  (b) had some acreage, (c) was close to an open space preserve and far enough from the freeway so you can’t hear the freeway (d) was mostly flat - with plenty of parking, and (e) was on stable ground.

These days it is much easier to get the maps showing the seismic zones and predicted shaking. Back then I had to do a lot of reasearch to figure out what zones were off limits and it took some time to figure out where the safe areas were. After looking at many homes in Portola Valley and Woodside and discovering that such a large percentage either on a fault, in a liquefecation zone, or in a earthquake induced landslide zone, we essentially ruled those areas out. We kept coming back to Los Altos Hills as a consistently good place to be in an earthquake because significant areas are on bedrock. However, even within Los Altos Hills you have to do your homework to find a home on stable ground. The  State of California seismic maps are an excellent resource. Here’s a close up showing the Loyola Corners area of the Cupertino Quadrangle.

Key to Seismic Zones:
Green= areas subject to earthquake induced landslided
Blue = areas subject to liquefaction
White = Good!

In this map the blue areas are earthquake induced landslide zones and the green areas are liquefaction zones. Having lived through the 89 quake and seeing friends lose their homes  (even ones 50 to 100 miles from the Loma Prieta epicenter) due to landslide or liquefacation, I decided that finding a home on bedrock would be a key search criteria in the search. The dot shows the approximate location of Moraquita (near the water tank).

Here’s a link to the full map of the Cutpertino Quadrangle:
http://gmw.consrv.ca.gov/shmp/download/pdf/ozn_cup.pdf

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We recently had our windows cleaned. Boy what a difference it makes…the view is fabulous. Thanks Enlightened Views!