Houzz Tour: Color Brings Endless Summer to a Santa Monica Home
http://www.decor-ideas.org 01/07/2015 06:13 Decor Ideas
Interior designer Alison Kandler is so smitten with color, pattern and texture that she named her daughter Paisley. So when she and her husband, Brian, purchased a rather vanilla home in Santa Monica, California, for their family, it was completely in character for her to focus on these design elements to make something remarkable.
Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: Alison and Brian Kandler and daughter and Paisley(age 10)
Location: Santa Monica, California
Size: About 3,100 square feet (288 square meters); 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms
BEFORE: The rooms were simple and white.
“We had a larger house before, and I found that I didn’t use all the space,” she says. “When designing this house, I was determined that all the rooms would be used a lot. The living room isn’t used every day, so it’s a bit smaller. In a lot of old houses, the living room is large, and it seems to take over all the square footage.”
AFTER: The rooms are still white, but with the addition of Alison’s signature beach style and vintage elements, they are alive with color. Case in point: the cozy living room.
Alison notes that almost all of the elements are items she found at flea markets. “I love using vintage items and architectural pieces in rooms to give them a cottage feel,” she says, referring to elements such as the old exterior shutters that lean against the wall on either side of the fireplace. “They also blur the lines between indoors and outdoors.”
Rug: Dash & Albert; sofa: Donghia
Looking at the room, it seems a stretch to call it white. “I always start with color and fabrics,” Alison says. “This home has a lot of Indian prints and Pucci fabrics.” Weathered flea-market pieces give the space a layered, antique feel.
BEFORE: If the existing version of this circa-1900 house were a dog, it would be a mutt. Before the remodel it was a mishmash of styles — a little Spanish Mediterranean, a dash of Craftsman, a bit of beach cottage.
The front exterior is clearly Spanish, and it remains much the same as the day the Kandlers purchased it. The rear of the house was of an uncertain, and rather uninteresting, pedigree, however.
Photos by David Tsay
AFTER: Alison reimagined the rear of the house, putting on a 1,000-square-foot addition that increased the overall square footage and gave her a new kitchen. In the back the home now has graceful lines and an outdoor dining area. “We eat here quite a bit in the summertime. It’s a lovely spot,” she says.
BEFORE: The former kitchen was too small and too white for Alison’s taste.
AFTER: The new room still has white cabinets, but a vibrant blue and green floor, pale-purple-tiled backsplash and coral-colored island make it anything but a standard white kitchen.
“I painted the floors throughout the home,” the designer says. “I get so tired of brown floors. The painted floors make me feel like I’m always at the beach.”
The challenge in designing the new kitchen was to give the new space a cottage vibe. “I find the charm of the old kitchens appealing, so I try to use those elements in a fresh new way in a modern scale,” Alison says. In this kitchen, in addition to the painted floors, there’s an oversize scallop on the range hood, curvy corbels at the base of the upper cabinets and furniture-like feet on the lower cabinets.
Range: Lacanche; cabinet hardware: Ceramic Melon Handle, Anthropologie
The breakfast area is at the back of the room, and the window seat also serves as a banquette. The pomegranate-print pillows were the inspiration for the color scheme.
Pomegranate-print fabric: Raoul Textiles
The wallpaper-backed shelves on either side of the kitchen table display Alison’s collections. “The paper gives the shelves a graphic and traditional feel,” she says.
Wallpaper: Galbraith & Paul
BEFORE: A dark, common staircase.
AFTER: A purple painted runner and the elimination of a wall have made for a light-filled and uncommon run of stairs. “I love runners, but they get dirty,” says Alison. “This one is easy to clean — and it’s easy to change the color if I get tired of the purple.”
The stairway is a gallery for the flea market paintings she has collected over the years. “Art is expensive. I found that I could get art inexpensively at the flea market,” she says. “These pieces fill the walls with so much personality and color. I focus on portraits and florals.”
In the dining room, Alison replaced standard windows with glass doors to give a direct connection to the garden.
The long, green farmhouse table was something the designer had owned (and loved) for a while.
Wallpaper: Suzani, Idarika Gazzoni
The grassy-hued table has met its happy match in a wall covering that has a green pattern surrounding rosy flowers.
The global prints continue upstairs in the master bedroom with blue and white bedding.
The chairs at the end of the bed face a television, making the master a small media room. “I bought one of the wing chairs at a flea market for $200,” Alison says. “I’ve had it re-covered seven times to fit different rooms. Finally I had another made to match it so I could have a pair.” Today the chairs are not only spots where the couple can relax; the family dog uses them to access the bed.
Bedding: John Robshaw
Fabric by Idarika Gazzoni covers the windows in the master bathroom, where a coral-colored tub is the star. “I love claw-foot tubs,” Alison says. “Nothing says cottage like a claw-foot.”
Tub: Cheviot Products
BEFORE: Perhaps the most dramatic transformation happened in the smallest room. Before the remodel, the room had a strictly utilitarian style.
AFTER: “I think that laundry rooms should be charming,” says Alison, referring to the laundry sink and storage that joined the washer and dryer. To break up the row of cabinets and add a punch of pattern, she installed a skirt under the sink. “I take any opportunity to use fabric and color,” she says. “In the other cabinets, I put in mesh fronts, just like a grandmother’s house would have.”
It’s those grandmother-with-a-mod-twist details that give this home personality. Looking at it, you might assume the designer grew up in a charming country cottage. You would be wrong. For this interior designer, nostalgia started later in life.
“I was an Air Force brat, and I grew up all over the place,” she says. “Only as an adult did I get to live in an old building. My first California apartments were older and had great charm, and as my style developed, I adopted that. I love the cottage look because it gives an instant warmth. In my new house, I feel like it is summer all the time.”
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