Restoring The House
Before she listed it for sale, though, she found historic photos of the home and “became obsessed by restoring it, and studying Choy’s architecture,” she says. “When I really became enamored with it, I decided, ‘OK, It’s time to do a restoration.’”
First, she removed the bar. (“Much to my friends’ chagrin,” she notes.)
Then she took on the house’s exterior. Based on the pictures she discovered (the house appeared in the Los Angeles Times’s Home magazine in 1961, photographed by Julius Shulman), Martin updated the paint (“My parents painted it darker, and it was meant to be really light and bright”), got rid of the Mediterranean tiling around the edge of the pool, and, in the process, redid the pool’s plaster.
There was also a winding concrete path embedded with stones, “a kind of flowing line that led from the back doors of the house back to the tennis court,” she says, that her parents had covered up with stucco. After removing it, “we revealed the original concrete and had it sanded over and shined up.”
Indoor Updates
The work inside was more straightforward.
The house was designed with an indoor/outdoor concept: There’s a water feature in the entryway, which is articulated by a concrete screen, and much of the house is sheathed in floor-to-ceiling glass. “The original house had this beautiful terrazzo flooring in the entryway that extended into the house,” Martin says. That floor was restored and polished so that it “has a mirror-like quality,” she says. The kitchen was updated, as was the lighting.
In somewhat of a rare turn for houses of this style and age, though, many original design elements and fixtures had endured. Of four bathrooms, “two were completely intact,” she says, and three had their original fixtures and sinks. “There are still little chrome toothbrush holders that flip out from the wall,” Martin says.
The original component that didn’t make the restoration? “The rest of the house was white shag carpeting,” Martin says. “It was very hip in the late 1950s and early 1960s.” It was also, Martin noted, not very practical—particularly in the dining room. “So now we have wood floors.”
The restoration took about 8 months. Martin, whose kids are going to college, is looking to downsize now. Along with the house’s four bedrooms and four baths, there’s a detached studio and a four-car garage. “Some people might want to put a second story on the house,” she says. “But I think it’s perfect.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.