From her home overlooking Redondo Beach, Cindy Williams regularly sees couples taking their vows at oceanside wedding ceremonies, musicians strumming guitars with a California Dreaming pleasure and all types joining pick-up beach volleyball games. Dolphins and whales play in the water and cyclists and joggers enjoy the 27-mile shoreline strand that stretches north from Torrance Beach to Santa Monica.

Redondo Beach is less than a half-hour from Los Angeles and because of its proximity has become the go-to location for many films and TV shows requiring a beach and ocean backdrop. Throughout the ’90s, the Baywatch cast ran across its sand, then The O.C spent several seasons hanging out at its pier and, more recently, the Pirates of the Caribbean ship, the Black Pearl, was anchored in its waters. Redondo Beach was given one of it’s first shout-outs in The Beach Boys classic Surfin’ U.S.A. and the area’s image has been fueled by decades of surfers, who appreciate its fine-sand bottoms, glassy waters and variety of waves.

Born in New York, Cindy fell in love with the Hollywood Riviera back in the 1990s. Over the years she has come to see this town as a far quieter alternative to neighboring Hermosa and Manhattan beaches. “Hermosa is nice but it’s partyville, where people are up all night,” she says, and adds that Manhattan has been gentrified. “Redondo is family-oriented, quiet and is the only area with such a big strip of beach and no homes. You can chill out and relax.” It’s a place where neighbors know each other well, children have places to play and where 58 year-old Cindy who’s “been surfing for years” can just grab her board and catch a wave. The cliffs of Palos Verdes are nearby with miles of bike trails, and it’s also a short walk to Riviera Village, which has several upscale restaurants and that Cindy likens to a New England town.

Her home is located on the road that borders the beach. It’s remembered by some in the town as the meeting place for surfers. It was previously owned by a long-time surfer, and the proximity to the beach meant a bevy of locals would congregate there. “People in their forties, fifties and sixties remember it,” says Cindy, remembering that people would leave their boards in the hallway so they could drop by and make a quick getaway to the surf.

Now it’s a place for her visiting nieces and nephews to grab a board or swim in the ocean when she’s not renting it out. While there are homes on the bluffs closer to the beach, she says her location at ground level means warmer temperatures. And the quiet offers plenty of opportunities to appreciate some of the simple gifts the water and sky can offer, such as the beauty of a moon-painted white strip stretching along a calm ocean.

By day, her four-bedroom house is awash in the brightness of the area, with light pouring through skylights and two glass atriums. The white-oak floors and light color palette add to the bright feeling. The majority of the furnishings are also in light colors, with bold hues popping from art, pillows, blankets and statement furniture. The outdoors spills into the house through large sliding glass doors to create an open-air living space. Guests can move from the living room or dining room to exterior couches and coffee tables, to cozy spots with wood-walled borders, or sun-drenched areas with chaises longues and a view of the ocean. There is also a ground-floor lanai off the master bedroom. The house has a unique appearance, its wide angular structure possessing three entrances, its color a sun-bleached green and its windows of various shapes and sizes, from small portholes to large picture windows.

Cindy, the former CEO of a large tech firm, bought the home in 2010 after her divorce a year earlier, appreciating the move from nearby Manhattan to the quiet enclave of Riviera. After finding herself away from the house often for work she was pondering selling it in 2015 when she suffered a hernia. Her recovery took a difficult three months. It made her think about her house on the ocean and how she needed to hang onto this special part of her in an area that has meant so much over the years. “Did I really need to sell?” she says, ” or was there an alternative?”

A fine arts major with design experience, and a boyfriend who owns a gallery in the town and also has an eye for design, she decided to renovate and revitalize the home. Its beach-house identity had gotten a bit long in the tooth. “It was pretty beat up,” she said. “So we stripped it to the two-by-fours.”

Through some of her connections, she gathered up a group of artists and artisans. Most of them happened to be Czech, some living in Orange County and San Diego, and others who had flown in from the Czech Republic. They all stayed in her house for the four months of extensive work on the house. “It was like being in a commune,” she says. They worked together and played together, from the meticulous laying of the hardwood floors to the fun champagne drinking. “It was one of the greatest times in my life,” she says. And it got her back into the house she loved.

They finished the work in the summer of 2015 and this year Cindy, who also has homes in Lake Tahoe and Hawaii, began to share it with others through Luxury Retreats. The description she penned for the place is enticing: “A place were cool ocean breezes and the warm sun calls you to paddle out in the surf to catch a ride, go for a swim, or just build a sand castle a short walk from your villa retreat.”

You could understand how she would suddenly wax poetic. Here, on a quiet stretch of Pacific Ocean beach, its surfing identity established, is a house where surfers used to hang and was later revived by a crew of talented Czech artisans – a dream that lives on to be shared with others.

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