For Ana Dierkhising, a Realtor with Hill & Co. and an active board member of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, home truly is where the heart is.

The importance of family is evident throughout the robin’s-egg blue Lake district house Dierkhising and her husband, Adam, share with their two children, 11-year-old Ben and 9-year-old Elsa, and two dogs, Ali, a Jack Russell terrier, and Lorenzo, a wirehaired fox terrier.

The Dierkhisings extensively renovated the house 5½ years ago, creating a light-filled, three-bedroom home.

“We wanted a home that had great family space, as well as grown-up space that was still kid-friendly,” she says. “We really use every inch of this house.”

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Heirlooms are showcased throughout the classic home, which has been updated with many of Dierkhising’s own touches.

“I’m really lucky to have antiques from my mother and grandmother,” she says. “I try to infuse those pieces with the more modern ones.”

Dierkhising’s eye for color and close attention to detail show in custom-made furniture throughout the house, for which she selected all of the rich, patterned fabric coverings (she worked with friend and local designer Wynne Taylor Ford of Sacramento Street's Wynne Taylor on many of the pieces).

The dining room, her favorite in the home, possibly best showcases Dierkhising’s talent for combining the old with the new: Her mother’s blue-cushioned car seat — which her mother sat in until she grew out of it, as did Dierkhising and her daughter, Elsa — is placed on a side chair, and her grandmother’s glass hurricane lamps adorn a sideboard. A striking red painting, sun-shaped gold mirror and chairs complete an elegant, but not prim, arrangement.

Past and present combine seamlessly in the Dierkhising’s home for a look that’s rich in tradition, but not at all uninspired. “It’s important to me to put things in the same place as my grandmother had them in her home,” she says. “It makes me happy to walk past something that was hers.”

A bright idea: A family thread runs through even the most subtle of touches of Dierkhising’s home. Her mother is an artist, and her work — including portraits of Ben and Elsa sketched a few years ago — hangs throughout the home. Even knickknacks, such as a collection of glass bunnies on an upstairs table, have meaning: “My mother used to call me ‘Bunny’ growing up,” Dierkhising says with a smile.