Los Altos City Council members voted 4-1 to deny the appeal of neighbors who did not want a two-story house built in their neighborhood of one-story ranch homes.
But the council did send the two-story plans back to the city's architectural and site control committee for review of material choice, design simplicity, landscaping and design issues.
"Some inconsistency is good," said councilwoman Kris Casto, citing ways residents personalize their homes. "But this house missed the mark."
Plans called for a tile roof on the new two-story home on Jay Street, a neighborhood where the other 1950s-era ranch houses have wood shake.
Plans also showed several roof lines to accommodate the multiple hips - more than a dozen - in the first and second stories. Other homes on the street have traditional ranch roofs with fewer planes and angles in their single-story roofs.
With "mitigation," there are "ways this house can fit in and not be an abrupt departure" from the others on the street, Casto said.
Councilman John Moss, who voted no, disagreed. He did not feel any two-story house belonged on Jay Street. "A very nice large house could be built as a single story," he said.
The neighbors who appealed the design - 20 of the 23 on Jay Street - agreed.
The 16,000- to 20,000-square-foot lots can accommodate 4,000- to 5,000-square-foot homes, on one level, with still more than a quarter of an acre left for yard.
"None of us went up when we remodeled," Jay Street spokesman Jim Lodestro told the council, "because we didn't have to."
In addition to the appeal, the Jay Street neighbors presented the council with a petition requesting a one-story zoning overlay for their street.
Lodestro called roll of the Jay Street residents, most of whom were present at the meeting to show their support of the appeal, and asked them to stand as he called their name.
Then he called for those present from other neighborhoods, who opposed two-story homes on their streets, to rise. Soon dozens were standing throughout the council chambers.
The roll call of her neighbors was "devastating," said applicant Karen Barrett. "Even if the house is approved, how could we ever live on that street - how would our home ever be accepted and the people living in the house be accepted? Those were faces," she said, the faces of the people who would be her neighbors.
"That was the most humiliating piece of work," she said.
Barrett, a school principal in the Cupertino Union School District, and her husband, Bill, bought the Jay Street house a year ago for the big lot, she said.
They planned to raze the house and build a new two-story home.
Bill Barrett, a midwesterner who grew up with two-story houses, told the council he held "a strong belief in individual property rights."
Now the Barretts aren't sure what they will do about the house.
"Our feeling now is we'll probably sell it and look elsewhere in Los Altos," Bill said Thursday.
The Barretts were not asking for any variances and thought they were following the city's residential design guidelines, "thinking we were doing everything we were asked to do," Karen said. So they were "taken aback" by the neighbor's reaction.