We find it irresistible when the designers we’ve featured on our website examine in with us to report an replace to their residence, a brand new venture, a brand new enterprise, a relocation. Like a highschool instructor visited by former college students, we’re desirous to see the adjustments which have occurred since we had been final in touch.
So we had been delighted to open an e-mail from Remodelista alum Kathleen Whitaker, an LA jewellery designer whose works are unusually elegant and clever. In 2014, we shared her first rework of her Echo Park residence, and some years later the replace to the replace. The summer season earlier than final, she wrote to inform us, she briefly moved right into a rental in Montecito, a sleepy-chic group subsequent to Santa Barbara, to flee the stress of residing within the metropolis throughout a pandemic.
“The cottage dates again to the Twenties. It’s a single-story one-bedroom—at 675 sq. ft, precisely what you want (and nothing extra) for a getaway spot,” she says. “It’s considered one of 4 cottages, all initially a part of the prepare depot, so each is exclusive and really charming. I used to be instructed this particular cottage was possible the ticket workplace and baggage room. So even in its preliminary carnation, it was a spot simply to move by way of, briefly.”
The place got here unfurnished—an inconvenience that, for a lot of, would result in a visit to Ikea. However Kathleen noticed it as an intriguing design problem: to create the peaceable retreat she sought utilizing principally furnishings, decor, and artwork that she already had in her LA residence. “It was slightly confining however enjoyable to work with large limitations,” she says. However even with the constraints—no portray, no everlasting adjustments—she was in a position to sneak in a small, nail-free, simply detachable DIY venture. (Scroll right down to see the intelligent nook desk she constructed.)
Right here’s the way it all got here collectively.
Images by Ye Rin Mok and Logan White.
