American Craftsman meets Swiss chalet in Pasadena

A dentist named Francis K. Ledyard paid $10,000 to the Milwaukee Building Co. — the firm best known for Grauman's Chinese Theatre — for his two-story, four-bedroom house. Believed to be the only home like it in Pasadena, it sported furry, bark-on redwood logs, russet-stained redwood shake siding and a white limestone chimney — an American Craftsman with a touch of Swiss chalet.

That was 1909. By the time architect Douglas Ewing spotted the house in 2003, the defining log trim was gone, the house had been painted brown and the kitchen and bathrooms had undergone Midcentury Modern remodels.

PHOTO GALLERY: Log Craftsman in Pasadena

But Ewing, who grew up among Pasadena's Craftsman bungalows and worked for Case Study architect Whitney Smith, had by then designed several Adirondack-style projects, including a Colorado ski lodge for Ralph Lauren.

“I fell in love with log buildings,” Ewing said. So he and his wife, Maggie, decided to buy the house, warts and all.

Negotiations fell through, however, and the house wound up back on the market. Enter Faith Dymek and her husband, Mark, who were moving from Virginia. They brought with them daughter Ryanne; Faith's mother, Sharon McCabe; plus Arts and Crafts furniture that had never looked quite right in their old Colonial-style home.

The couple bought the “falling-down, ramshackle, termite-ridden house” in 2004, Faith said, figuring a little elbow grease was all they needed to fix it up. Then they met Ewing, who explained the difference between making the house livable and bringing it back to life as originally designed. The latter, he said, would require more time, more money and more expertise.

The Dymeks' decision?

“We decided we would restore versus renovate,” Faith said.

To economize, she served as general contractor, visiting the job site daily and gathering leads on local artisans.

Before and after: Old L.A. storybook house gets a sensitive makeover

When Christina Craemer's client bought what was listed as a "gentleman's hunting lodge," designed by architect Robert Byrd in 1950, the client inherited a rustic wood structure and a remodeling challenge. The house, with a steep-pitched roof and weathered redwood siding, was on a two-acre hillside just a few blocks above Hollywood Boulevard, but it reminded the owner, a producer and author, of childhood summers spent in the woods near a Minnesota lake. It was straight out of a storybook.

Craemer, owner of Arc54 Studio, an interior design and fine arts firm, wanted to respect the site and the lodge's original character while upgrading the home into a contemporary two-story residence.

"It was like a tree house among these amazing California oaks, redwood trees and sycamores," she said. "But since it was built close to the hillside, the interior was very dark. The challenge was to find a way to expand the structure, make it brighter -- and retain its character."

Craemer gained more daylight for the once-gloomy living room by replacing a picture window with a custom, three-sided glass box measuring 10 feet by 6 feet, with a 24-inch-deep pop-out. Inside, the ceiling volume was pushed up to accommodate taller windows without altering the original roof proportions. Her client no longer has to hunch over to look outside at the stately sycamore tree in the front yard.

Dream kitchen: William Hefner design clicks with Houzz readers

Who's got the fairest kitchen of all? Houzz.com offers one way of seeing the aspirational look of the moment -- the most envy-inducing arrangement of countertops, cabinets and bling. The Houzz website and app, which allow architects and interior designers to upload images of their work, operate like a dating site where homeowners can play the field a bit and see what strikes their design fancy before committing to a remodeling or building project. When readers see something they like, they can save images to a personal "ideabook" that lives on the site. It's the decorating equivalent of a "like" to that impossibly cute cat photo on Facebook.

More than 75,000 design professionals have uploaded almost half a million images to the site since it was founded three years ago. And the Hancock Park house pictured here, designed by Studio William Hefner, is winning the popularity contest for kitchens hands down. It has been added to more than 19,000 ideabooks.

Hefner, a Los Angeles architect, said the success of this kitchen -- which reads like a classic French country kitchen with a glam makeover -- has been nothing short of overwhelming.

'Atomic Ranch Midcentury Interiors': Modern living with 'Mad' looks

During a recent trip to San Diego, I drove by my childhood home in Point Loma. The low-lying 1956 ranch house still looked the same from the street. Were my hand prints still in the patio concrete? I also found myself wondering if the home’s period details inside remained. The lovely diamond pane windows with the stubborn hand cranks were gone. And surely the small kitchen with its funky brown appliances had been edited by now. But I hoped the wide brick and flagstone fireplace -- the one that could easily seat four and doubled as a stage for my sister and me -- was still there.

Retaining those classic ranch-house elements while adapting to modern living is precisely what Michelle Gringeri-Brown, editor of the quarterly Atomic Ranch magazine, tries to encourage through her new book, “Atomic Ranch Midcentury Interiors.”

“We try to point out the charm of original features,” Gringeri-Brown said in an interview. “We encourage homeowners to be cautious. Don't rush to gut the whole thing before you make interior design choices that can’t be undone. The period pieces often stand out as things to be appreciated.” 

Gringeri-Brown credits the popularity of “Mad Men” for fueling appreciation of ranch houses. A new generation is attracted to what she calls “retro cool.” Ranch houses also appeal to aging baby boomers who are wary of stairs. “Because ranches were built when property was cheaper, they tend to sprawl on one floor and have a larger yard,” the author said.

This is her second book on ranch houses with husband, photographer Jim Brown, and it highlights eight homes, from a tract house in Calistoga, Calif., to a split-level in Ohio. (That's a 1958 house in San Mateo, Calif., at the top of the post.) Homeowners share their remodeling stories, offer tips on projects such as windows and plumbing, and detail the design elements they have retained. In one case, homeowners found original metal kitchen cabinets in their garage. The book is filled with creative ideas as well as informative sidebars, floor plans, vintage photos and a list of nearly 200 resources.

Home office design: Separate space and a walk to work

It happened by accident. When Kurtis and Wanda Weller Sakai went to remodel their 1971 Ojai ranch house, the original plan was to add a fourth bedroom for Kurtis to use as an office. “We realized that if we went over 500 square feet, the add-on permits would get very expensive,” Kurtis said. A new master suite consumed much of that square footage, so architect Darwin McCredie shifted gears and added to the front of the house a compact 14-by-14-foot office — no bathroom, no walk-in closet, to stay under that magic number of 500.

The result is a work space that feels apart from the rest of the house, a quality enhanced by the fact that the office is accessible only by an exterior door at the end of a long covered porch.

“It feels a little funny going out there in my pajamas sometimes,” said Kurtis, a designer of athletic footwear for clients such as Ugg, Teva and Patagonia. But as someone who always had worked out of a spare bedroom, he now finds the separation that comes with the new office configuration to be a revelation.

“The detachment feels serious,” he said.

And that is the point: At a time when so many people are bringing the office home, there’s a growing desire for more separation, physical and psychological, between work and personal life. One of the most recent surveys on the subject, released last month by Wrike, which makes online project management software, found that among about 1,000 people who responded 83% said they worked from home at least part of the day.

Before and after: L.A. Spanish bungalow renovation

Designer Alexandra Becket talks through her update to a rundown Spanish bungalow in the Beverly Grove neighborhood of Los Angeles in the latest installment of Pro Portfolio, our feature that looks at recently built, remodeled or redecorated spaces with commentary from the designers. 

Designer: Alexandra Becket of ModOp Design.

Designer's statement: My husband, Greg Steinberg, and I renovate distressed bungalows in Los Angeles. Our latest project is a 1,480-square-foot Spanish-style home that had lots of original charm but was in dire need of restoration and modernization. We fell in love with the Douglas fir living room beams, beautiful mansard-shaped fireplace, arched picture window and breakfast room with corner built-ins.  

We modernized the house while preserving its details and style. The first owner lived there for more than 40 years and left the house to his caretaker, who lived there for an additional 40-plus years; original elements were preserved, but the house needed repairs.

Some of the original furniture was still in the house. I reupholstered a wingback chair with my own textile design, restored the wood furniture and used a mix of new and vintage, including vintage kilim rugs. Warm colors also helped to create a mod-California-Spanish feel.  

To see more, keep reading ...

Farrow & Ball color consultants: Paint regrets, begone

If you've ever felt like you've spent too much time and money testing wall colors -- or repainting rooms that just didn't look right -- you may be happy to know that Farrow & Ball is launching in-home color consultations here starting at $200. A Farrow & Ball color consultant begins with an analysis of the architectural detailing and lighting of up to four rooms, then reviews the client's favorite colors during a one-hour meeting. The consultant devises color schemes from the company's 132 shades with suggested paint finishes for exteriors and interiors, as well as options from the Farrow & Ball wallpaper collection. The room pictured in the lead photo is painted in Pointing Estate Emulsion with the cupboards in Teresa's Green Estate Eggshell.

 After the consultation, clients receive a color fan deck and written specifications including the quantities of paint required to complete each room. Sessions can be scheduled through Farrow & Ball showrooms or by calling (888) 511-1121. The program is being offered through showrooms in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Boston and Washington.

Farrow & Ball's Los Angeles color consultant Cindy Saenz gave us a sampling of the service by answering our email posing some common questions:

What colors are trending?

Colors that tend to be most popular in Los Angeles right now are cooler grays such as Cornforth White or Pavilion Gray and warmer grays such as Elephant's Breath or Hardwick White. Additionally, we find that most people like to introduce accent colors in the woodwork such as cabinets, bookshelves or furniture pieces using colors like Hague Blue, London Clay and Down Pipe.

[Pictured here, a room painted in a gray called Railings.]

What colors look best in small rooms or dark rooms?

Lighter cooler tones such as Strong White, Blackened or Cornforth White help to make a space feel open and airy. Darker, warmer tones such as Charleston Gray or London Clay make a space feel more intimate and cozy.

Before and after: Santa Monica ranch house remodel

Lewin Wertheimer shares how he gave the Santa Monica ranch house pictured here greater curb appeal in the latest installment of Pro Portfolio, our feature that looks at recently built, remodeled or redecorated spaces with commentary from the designers. 

Architect: Lewin Wertheimer. Landscape: Kenyon Landscapes, (818) 830-1943. Contractor: Ron Rosenblatt of Building Blox Development.

Architect's description: The primary goal was to make the home feel fresh and inviting with lots of curbside appeal. I wanted the overall aesthetic to be a clean, beach-like, ranch-style home.

Originally the house was a stucco structure with bold exterior colors. The house lacked visual appeal and charm. Although the exterior possessed some interesting volumes and the interior had a nice, natural flow, we needed to come up with a vocabulary of materials and design elements that allowed the structure to blend from exterior to interior cohesively.

Designer Isabel Griswold's colorful, computer-free home zone

Rooms, like people, have different chapters in their lives — some exciting and some, well, not so much. Such was the case of a small, unassuming room attached to the garage of a 1938 Spanish-style home in Beverly Hills. When interior designer Isabel Mata Griswold and her husband, developer Eduardo Thackeray, bought the property in 1999, the 14-by-20-foot room was empty. Griswold kept the existing beige shag carpet, added floor-to-ceiling mirrors along the back wall, and for the next four years she used it as a gym.

When son Alex returned home from college, she replaced the shag with wall-to-wall sisal and put in a queen bed. Voila! A studio apartment. When Alex moved out, Griswold said the room became “a catch-all warehouse for files, fabric samples and anything else we didn't want in the main house.”

At long last, she recently wrote a more exciting chapter in the life of the room. She transformed the plain-vanilla space into a Moroccan-flavored retreat for herself. “I wanted a place to come and dream, talk to close friends, watch a good movie,” Griswold said. “There are no phones or computers. This is purely a fun room. It has no other purpose.”

Griswold’s associate, Paul Olson, cut arches out of 0.75-inch medium density fiberboard, which was glued to the old mirrored wall, above. Artist Kaveri Singh then stenciled a stylized pomegranate. “The arches over the mirror reflect the garden and the fountain outside and make the room appear much larger than it is,” Griswold said.

She designed the sleek, L-shaped sectional sofa finished in brown linen with bronze nailheads on the upholstered legs. "The sofas are the same size as two twin beds, so when you remove the bolsters, two people can sleep here," she said. 

Here's a quick look at how the designer created a space that feels plucked from the pages of “The Arabian Nights” — fitting given that she is the great-grand-niece of explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton, known for his mid-19th century translation of the folk tales. Keep reading for more details ...

Before and After: Small 1940s condo remodel

A small, cramped apartment from the 1940s is now light and airy, courtesy of architect Deborah Teltscher, who took down a wall between the kitchen and dining room to create a sense of spaciousness. The project is the latest installment of Pro Portfolio, our Monday feature that looks at recently built, remodeled or redecorated spaces with commentary from the designers. 

Project: To update a 650-square-foot apartment turned into a condominium. 

Location: Santa Monica.

Architect: Deborah Teltscher. Contractors: Rob and Jan Vandermeer, Vandermeer General Contractors, (818) 708-2181.

Designer's statement: My client, a close friend, bought a condominium in Santa Monica that is part of a complex of small garden apartments built in the 1940s and recently turned into condominiums. The condos have large windows opening onto pleasant courtyards in the front and back, but my friend’s unit had barely been touched since the 1940s. The kitchen, photographed above before the remodel, was tiny and had a small stove squeezed into in an alcove, old-style 18-inch-deep counters and few cabinets. There was virtually no storage, and the lighting was poor. The biggest issue for the owner, a serious and gregarious cook, was the small opening between the kitchen and the dining room and the lack of connection between the kitchen and the living room. The bathroom was cramped as well.

 We removed the wall between the kitchen and dining room and raised the cabinets to create an opening between the kitchen and the living room, so my friend can talk to guests while cooking. The cabinets go all the way to the ceiling to create as much storage as possible. Energy-efficient LED lighting under the cabinets makes the kitchen glow at night. We added a tall pullout rack to the left of the refrigerator (see photo at top) to house a huge collection of spices. We replaced the kitchen's linoleum floor with oak to match the living room. Additional storage in the living room includes a new built-in desk, bookshelves and TV cabinet.

To see more of the remodel, including the transformation of the bathroom, keep reading ...