While Gretchen Zee bought her 1960s tract house in Santa Barbara for its lush one third-acre ocean-view lot overlooking an oak-covered hillside, she had to go outside the house to get any sense of nature. The house was, in fact, backed up to the views, oriented to offer visions of the driveway from the family…
Sleek and customized, a ground-up remodel transforms a tiny ocean-view lot. When architect Robert Nebolon started sketching out ideas for his sister’s tear-down and rebuild in south Hermosa Beach, he felt pretty confident that his design would meet the needs of her family — despite the challenging 30-by-50-foot lot they had to work with. But…
Question: I’d love to hire an architect to give me some ideas for my remodel. I’m not sure I want to hire the architect to oversee the whole project, or even draw up any specific plans. I just want the benefit of an architect’s creative ability to come up with visions for what my house…
Today’s query comes from Michael H. in the Beachwood Canyon area of Los Angeles: I’d like to enlist an architect to help me with some design work for a remodel, including load calculations (I need to take down some walls). My end goal is to have plans in hand that I can shop to contractors.…
When it comes to green building, some professions and industries get it, and some don’t (yet). Those who get it are architects and manufacturers. Those who are playing catch-up are suppliers and retailers, and most contractors and subcontractors. So if you can get those who get it — architects and manufacturers — into one room,…
This Pacific Palisades house, a rebuild designed by L.A. architect John Sofio, is pretty good-looking, don’t you think? I love the boxy shapes, banks of windows and the way he brought natural light into that stairwell. But, I wonder what the neighbors think. If you study the top photo, you can see that the house…
Why live in Venice if you’re not going to go eccentric with your remodel? You can move to Northridge if you want to be conventional, or Diamond Bar. It’s not that those areas don’t have their eccentricities, but when you live in Venice it’s kind of expected that you will push the limits of design.…
It might be soon to talk about recovery as the tragedy unfolds, but Southern Californians do rebuild after fires. I’m sure Claremont residents Vern and Deb Jahnke, who lost their house in the 2003 Grand Prix Fire, are thinking about and praying for (he’s a minister, after all) the victims of the current fires. After…
I’m sure few things excite architects and contractors so much as a full set of blueprints for a house or remodel. I also like those stacks of large paper sheets with thin lines and serious notations. But as for being able to visualize what these plans represent? I haven’t got what it takes. And maybe…
Ann Lippincott recalls the exact moment her kitchen remodel got off the ground. During a Halloween party at her Santa Barbara ocean-view condominium two years ago, Lippincott, who was dressed as a witch, was standing in the kitchen with a friend, Lena Savage, an artist and former architect who was dressed as a punk rocker.…