Best of 2009: L.A. at Home’s most popular photo galleries

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In 2009 we published scores of photo galleries featuring places to shop, inspiring gardens, striking home design, amazing architecture, previews of cool books and more. And you, dear reader, clicked like crazy. (Who could blame you, so many of those houses were so pretty).

Your favorites were galleries that were either really kooky (the family that lives in a cave, elaborate aquariums that look like underwater forests), really small (a family of three in a stylish Echo Park studio or a family of four in a transformed barn), or just eye candy (Shulamit Nazarian’s A. Quincy Jones home).

As an end-of-the-year treat, we’re trotting the 10 most popular galleries back out for one more day in the sun.

1. Cave Sleepers: Mom, dad and three kids in a 17,000-square-foot surprise
2. Underwater gardens: Award-winning plant aquariums
3. In Venice, the house ‘Sex and the City’ built
4. Tiny Houses: New book features homes that are 1,000 square feet or smaller
5. Mom, Dad, baby live happily in 380 square feet
6. 1906 Venice cottage gets a modern update
7. ‘New Treehouses of the World’: Pete Nelson’s fifth book
   
8. Assemblege’s modern house opens up to treetops all around
   
9. Shulamit Nazarian brings a modern touch to a 1973 A. Quincy Jones home
10. A family of four, a 700-square-foot barn and a table made from a bowling lane

-- Deborah Netburn

Photos, clockwise from top left: A 30-by-80 foot lot in Venice. Credit: Kirk McCoy / Los Angeles Times; Award-winning plant aquarium ‘Rhythm of Nature’ by Harry Kwong, Ma Tau Wai Estate, Hong Kong. Credit: showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org; A 380-square-foot home in Echo Park. Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times; The Nomad Home, a tiny home designed by Gerold Peham.