Taking a page from our sister site Racked LA, we're asking you to look at this home and vote on whether you like or dislike it—your choices are 'That's Rather Lovely!,' 'So close,' 'I feel strangely ambivalent about it,' or 'That's Rather Hideous!'
This home in Venice is currently on the market for $1.1 million. Located on a quiet walk street, the home has undergone extensive remodeling "with today's amenities." We were immediately drawn to the home's kitchen, which is very unusual. We're wavering between hate and love. We need your peer pressure to help us decide.
Ah yes, a lovely little post & beam in Mt. Washington. It's got beautiful canyon views, high ceilings, and skylights. So why is it hideous? We admit, it's not all-caps HIDEOUS, but it is hideous by virtue of the fact the owners have taken a cute little two-bedroom, 1.5-bath mid-century home and painted it mustard yellow. Not just mustard yellow but a sponge faux finish mustard yellow. Extra points deducted for the striped bathroom. No one wants to brush their teeth inside a circus tent. Asking price: $479,000.
· 746 Quail Dr Los Angeles, CA 90065 [Redfin]
That's Rather Hideous examines questionable decisions in interior design as revealed in listing photos. Nominees, please, to la@curbed.com.
What is it about Silver Lake that inspires home owners to bust out the primary colors and go ape wild with the paint brush? After featuring a Skittlelicious gem in Silver Lake (still on the market!), here's a reader-submitted Day-glo bright home. We love color, we truly do. So what happened here? Where did it all go so horribly awry? Was the owner unable to resist a massive liquidation sale on unused paint from a local kindergarten? From the listing: "Step back to the grand 1950’s with this lively one story home decked out in friendly, bright colors. Flower filled yard, just waiting for a possible pool or expansion.... Have breakfast in the kitchen, snooze in the oversized den." Good god, who could possibly SLEEP in that room? Cost to live out your lime green fantasy: $699,000.
· 2860 Herkimer St Los Angeles CA 90039 [MLS]
Normally we reserve this space for the truly eye-injuring lapses in Angelenos' taste, so we wouldn't really bat an eyelash at this modest and somewhat banal house in Culver City. But a reader pointed out a truly horrifying feature in the BEDROOM -- a hot tub. "Here's a house that's 'Culver City-Adjacent' (and 'Projects-adjacent') with what appears to be a whirlpool in the corner of a carpeted bedroom. I don't know if it's for physical ailments, or pre/post-coital uses. Either way -- eew." There may be a couple of "producers" in the Valley who could put it to good use. Still, eww. Cost for soaking in all that pleasure: $599,000.
· 4265 Campbell Dr Los Angeles, CA 90066 [Redfin]
New to the neighborhood (and Redfin) is this custom built beauty. Custom built for whom, we're not sure. A hip hop mogul? A paranoid Scientologist? A Persian prince? It takes a lot of work to make something so expensive look so cheap. Just ask Donatella Versace. This "French Norman styles" in the Hollywood Hill features "professionally equipped Home theater with high end speakers, projector, PANIC ROOM (Wine cellar), surround sound system throughout and many other upgraded features." So when the end of the world is finally nigh, at least you'll have your hooch with you. Listing price: $3.45 million. · 6446 Weidlake Dr Hollywood Hills, CA 90068 [Redfin]
Anyone who reads Domino, Elle Decor and Metropolitan Home religiously knows the experts proclaimed that wallpaper is back. Apparently this homeowner took that endorsement a bit too enthusiastically because this home at 1230 Winston Ave in San Marino swings for the fences, and yet, fouls out. It's the kitchen that kills us. The Laura Ashley-esque, flowered wallpaper may not be our particular cup of tea, but going beyond plastering the walls with it and covering the ceiling - the ceiling! - is just gilding the incredibly ugly lily. Asking price for this four-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath: $1.95 million.
· 1230 Winston Ave San Marino, CA [Redfin]
unBeige and Fishbowl LA are reporting that Bravo's Top Design 2 has begun filming in downtown Los Angeles at the Santa Fe Lofts, the site of last season's finale episode. Casting for the new season started in January. But more importantly, the status of Kelly Wearstler -- Top Design, Season 1 judge and kooky Los Angeles interior designer extraordinaire -- remains unclear. Santa Fe Loft residents, please report! [unBeige]
Day two of the CA Boom show, and day two of the house tours. Today, the tour bus hit West LA (Mar Vista and Palms). Stop number 4 was the Neil M. Denari designed Alan-Voo House. The muchbloggedabout home took a modest one-story tract home and added a modern two-level rear addition, providing a new master bedroom and downstairs family space. The addition is sparsely furnished--a shared trait among all the homes on today's tour. Sad! We were looking forward to the odd wall art and tacky furniture that makes a home feel alive. Instead, most of the homes felt a little barren and cold. The integration of the addition to the original home appeared fairly seamless and the kitchen was a highlight. The counters, cabinets and appliances blended seamlessly and everything was very, very clean. Small skylights punched through the roof in the kitchen, and large clerestory windows-- located where the addition met the original home--provided amazingly bright light that lit up most of the house. The home was definitely the highlight of the tour.
· CA Boom House Tours: Felderman Keatinge Residence in Pacific Palisades [Curbed LA]
· Alan-Voo House: From Pastel Madness to Tamed Reality [Curbed LA]
Everyone knows LAX is sort of a dump (although sometimes a charming one), for a major airport in a global city. So it's good to know the powers-that-be are investing a little in aesthetics for the Tom Bradley Terminal. Via our inbox comes news that weary (first and business class) travelers are now be treated to lots of walnut wood partitions and mid-century-ish leather chairs:
The 10 travelers lounges in the [Tom Bradley International] terminal have been consolidated into four new lounges. Gensler designed the oneworld lounge for oneworld Alliance, which includes Qantas, Cathay Pacific and British Airways. Other oneworld members can use the lounge, but they didn't contribute to its design and construction, so they have to pay for each traveler who enters. The lounge cost around $4 million.
Allegedly, the old lounges were pretty tiny and pretty rundown. The consolidation and renovation is part of an overall makeover - planned and designed by Leo Daly, I believe - to help LAX deal with the fact that many international carriers were skipping LA in favor of SFO because Tom Bradley, which was crappy when it opened and has only had modest and ineffective upgrades over the years.
An even-worse tale of a couch stuck in a doorway--this sucker got wedged in the lobby doorway. "It was my friend's North Hollywood apartment, about a year ago," writes a reader. "It was a 1970s hide-a-bed, and was unbelievably heavy. It took us a couple of days to finally get it out. The neighbors still hate him. It was wedged in there so severely, we thought we might have to break the couch apart. Ultimately, pure force prevailed-- I think the door frame may have expanded a bit from all our jostling, giving us the tiny little leeway we needed to finally force it through. The sound (of door frame expanding and couch contracting) was horrifying."
A final update, photos, and some good news from the Hollywood bachelor with a couch wedged in his doorway: "My friend from Santa Monica stopped over last night. We had to remove the door from the hinges but it was rusted. So we went to Home Depot and bought Liquid Wrench. I highly recommend it. We sprayed the door with it and after some hard hammering the pins came and we could take the door off. The couch easily slid through. The couch and door sustained some damage in the previous efforts, though." Glad to hear it. Hope this man doesn't now accidentally stick a fork in the toaster.
· Ask Curbed: My Couch Is Stuck In A Doorway [Curbed LA]
· Regarding that Couch: It's Still Stuck [Curbed LA]
A close Curbed associate, a bachelor who lives in Hollywood, sends in the above pic of his couch, which he was moving into his guest bedroom this weekend.
"The door hinges are painted shut and I can't figure out how to take it off. The couch is too wide for the door any way I turn it. Now it's wedged against my wall unit air conditioner and I'm afraid the air conditioner will pop out if I push too hard. What do I do??"
And so we go into Day 2 of CouchWatch. Maybe he should grease that thing up with Pam cooking spray and start pushing, and possibly sacrifice the air conditioner? Seriously, the calamities one faces by living alone.
Bureaucracy is sometimes the bane of our existence and it doesn't get much worse than the City of LA. A Curbed reader is stuck in permitting hell with the Building & Safety crew - we've been there - and is looking for some help, some advice, someone to care. Well friend, we care. Sort of.
Dear Curbed,
Have any of your other readers written in with complaints about the permit processes downtown? I live in the Textile Bldg (Santee Court), and have been fighting through the permit process for almost a year now. For some reason, I decided it was a good idea to swap my kitchen for one of my bathrooms, and I have half the mind to bail out of the idea all together.
Wouldn't it make sense that the new Loft market make every effort to streamline the remodel/permit process, or do they really think that every person that buys a loft wants it exactly the way they bought it?
My most recent absurdity: my planner, [Joe Blow], is now on indefinite jury duty (without prior warning, of course) and nobody can fill his shoes in the meantime. Fun.
Can someone from Building & Safety or a politician please help this poor chap out? He just wants to eat where he currently showers. Is that so wrong?
The W chain needs some star power to keep up in the boutique hotel rat race so they've turned to Thom Filicia, one of the Fab Five from "Queer Eye" (hurts to hear it, right?), who'll renovate a handful of the chain's hotels, starting with the W Los Angeles-Westwood. The poolside area and restaurant are both being redesigned; he's also doing a sample "suite" that'll be unveiled later this summer. We hear Filicia is a genuinely nice guy. Nice sweater.
· W Hotels Teams up with Thom Filicia [ID]
The LA Weekly's People 2007 has a plethora of worthwhile linkage about important Angelenos doing interesting things. We're happy to see that our friends at the architecture/design firm Lettuce have a nice featurette. Via the Weekly:
“Our dream project is a post office, a school or a civic building where everyone has to go — a grand space that addresses the community,” says Kara Bartelt, one half of the team that started Lettuce, among the freshest architecture-and-design firms to come around in a while.
Iconic photographer Julius Shulman is also featured. Mr. Shulman, who has witnessed and photographed some of the country's most impressive modern architecture, still gets around at age 96 and is still actively working. We saw him at the Dwell on Design conference in Palm Springs last year when we weren't passed out drunk. He seemed like a nice guy. Yay architecture! Somebody cue the 3-2-1 Contact rap.
· Kara Bartelt and Michael Chung (Lettuce) [LA Weekly]
· Julius Shulman [LA Weekly]
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From the studio lots to the downtown lofts. From the beachfront bungalows to the canyon views. From the south bay to the valley, from the westside to the eastside—Curbed LA covers our sense of place, and the neighborhoods we call home. Read more about Curbed LA...
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