Pro Portfolio: Raising the roof in Mar Vista remodel
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Every Monday, we post a recently built, remodeled or redecorated home with commentary from the designer. This week, we focus on a home in Mar Vista that is actually two houses joined together.
Project: kitchen remodel, second phase of multiroom and patio remodel.
Location: Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Designer and contractor: John Gibson, John Gibson Design & Build, Venice. (213) 445-2611.
Goal: to create an airy, modern kitchen that matched earlier remodel work and furthered the effort to make the home lighter and more architecturally coherent.
Builder’s description: This house consists of two 1920s houses awkwardly joined together in the mid-1960s. When current work first began, it was a mess. Except for the living room, which has period details including a curved ceiling and a bank of leaded-glass windows, the neglected interior was stuffy and dark, with a low ceiling. A generously sized courtyard between the front and rear sections of the home was surrounded by trees, including a towering Aleppo pine, but the outdoor space was split into four levels and cut off from the interior by ugly doors.
Because of budget constraints, remodeling had to be done in phases. The first phase included raising the ceiling in the dining room and installing two skylights and a large dormer window that would frame the courtyard tree. It sounded straightforward, but when we opened the roof to put in the skylight, we found a jumble of angles and roof lines. I tried to take what I found and turn it into an asset rather than a liability. I incorporated the angles into the design, and the ceiling became far more interesting as a result.
The second phase was modernizing and enlarging a funky old kitchen, above right, as well as a service porch and tiny guest bath. The service porch and bath had blocked access to the yard. I combined them and moved them forward, to an area overlooking the driveway. A pocket door closes off this area, creating a hallway between kitchen and living room. I lined it with floor-to-ceiling cabinets, badly needed for storage.
The kitchen now opens to the courtyard, now just two levels. We tripled the deck in size, making a barbecue and eating area just off the kitchen. The house now has five sets of matching doors, all opening onto the courtyard and unifying the two houses into a single home.
To see more, keep reading ...
During the first phase of the recent remodel, the dining room ceiling was raised. The angles surrounding the skylight may seem like an architectural flourish but actually were necessary to accommodate varying roof lines. A fir shelf on top of the original built-in cabinets ties in with new doors elsewhere in the room.
At the far end of the dining room, a new door and windows frame the courtyard pine tree and bring in soft light.
To make enough space for an island, the kitchen walls were pushed out 3 feet. We raised the ceiling and added a skylight and the high window; because the view was basically of a neighbor’s fence in the side yard, the bank of lower windows was raised to just over 5 feet. The height made room for a narrow shelf made of the same black Minas soapstone used for the counters. So the new construction matched the old, we widened the doorway between dining room and kitchen to almost 5 feet and made the roof angle consistent with the dining room. The two rooms now blend better.
The skylight illuminates the island, and a small porthole window pulls in more light. A window doesn’t have to be huge to be effective.
Because the windows took up a great deal of space, we did plywood mockups of the cabinet placement before ordering to make sure the design worked for the owners. The cabinets are by All Star Custom Cabinets. The island’s wood top was reclaimed from the owners’ old dining room table. Small windows set under the ceiling line open for cross-ventilation.
Because the kitchen faced north, not west, and was shaded by trees, I could use wood windows with the confidence that they wouldn’t look weather-beaten in a few years.
The kitchen and service porch remodeling created a hallway in which we built storage cabinets. We modified leaded-glass windows in the living room so they could be opened, which provided air flow from the front of the house to the rear of the kitchen.
The kitchen now opens onto the deck, for easy entertaining. We installed the same wood doors and transom windows that had been used in the rest of the house in earlier remodeling.
Matching doors give some cohesion to the home. Doors are by Five Star French Doors and Windows.
A small Trex deck had been part of the original remodel. Now, a larger deck and easier access from the house allow the owners to take advantage of this spot, which feels like an escape from the city.
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-- Lisa Boone
Pro Portfolio appears here every Monday. Submit projects to home@latimes.com.
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