This sprawling historic Craftsman in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Harvard Heights retains many of its original refined details— like exquisite woodwork, coffered ceilings, stained-glass windows, and a butler staircase. But by the time the homeowners acquired it, this once-stately residence had been divided into five separate apartments and later additions to the back of the house were made. Our goal was to restore the integrity of the house, simplify its layout, and outfit it with a very personalized vibe.

Background:

This house was built in 1907, renovated in 1949. Located in the Harvard Heights Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ) a couple of blocks away from the last remaining example of Greene & Greene's work in the City of Los Angeles - the Lucy Wheeler House. The house had been split into multiple mini-apartments and the electrical on the house hadn't been updated since the house was built.

Design Brief:
The homeowners sought a balance: a monochromatic palette for the living room and primary bedroom, yet a playful, graphic sensibility for other social areas. The design is an interplay of the realistic and the abstract, the exuberant and the restrained, the curvilinear and the geometric. The intention was to honor the Craftsman’s inherent warm "cavey-ness" while creating an expansive aesthetic experience.

“We wanted to respect and highlight the linear nature of the Craftsman features of the house, but then by incorporating movement via materials, shapes and lighting, we create an inherent flow through the otherwise rigid spaces, and simultaneously infuse a soft coziness in rooms that would otherwise feel formal and hard-edged.”

The kitchen in this house was a very fun puzzling challenge. It was previously a very small galley kitchen that we had to convert into a functional, optimized, chef’s kitchen. One of the homeowners loves to cook and entertain regularly so we had to create a space that could both accommodate the needs of an accomplished home chef, and still be a worthy center of the party when they entertain.

To make this happen, we first fully planned out the cabinetry to accommodate the clients' workflow in the kitchen, what they used the most, what they used the least, where the items needed to be to be easy to access, how they needed to be put away, etc. We then space planned every drawer and cabinet to accommodate the challenging shapes of the pans and tools. We managed to design a kitchen that not only fit all the cooking implements the client needed but it made the practice of cooking easier, where everything has a place and it is easy to put things away.  After we figured that out, we created a nice built in beverage / coffee bar that can be covered up with nesting cabinet doors. We also added an adjustable built-in pan storage that can be concealed but fully accessible in a moment's notice.

We believe good design is led by function first, so the utility and usage of the room is first and foremost for us, especially in a high-traffic space like the kitchen of social hosts. But after we tackled the functional challenges of the room, we got into the fun stuff!

The house is naturally shaded, and the kitchen was dark. The clients wanted a light and bright kitchen, but we don’t really believe in "light and white" spaces so our mission was to create that feel of lightness and expansiveness without resorting to layering whites. We were very limited by the size of the kitchen, the low ceilings and darkness of the room so we had to address that in our design.

There is access to the backyard here and the room is heavily trafficked from the outside, so we chose a dark glazed brick with a contrasting grout to create a graphic base to the room. We then created custom cabinetry in a warm greige tone that had to work with existing hard elements in the room. We created an appliance garage and an island accented with a wood wrap that is both beautiful and functional. The countertop has been leathered, and finished out the room with a flat colored large scale tile that emulates the texture of unfolded paper. The monochromatic kitchen became a light airy space, letting the magnificent foliage outside shine.