Montecito Heights House
This renovation project is for a 1926 house in the up and coming neighborhood of Montecito Heights near northeast Los Angeles. The nearly forgotten structure had several cover-up renovations over the years that left the exterior to style-less disarray; and pushed to the background of an otherwise nice, quiet hillside neighborhood. The driving ambition of the design was to produce a new identity through material and textural overlays that would emphasize the existing silhouette and organizational layout. A neutral palette of black and white contrasts internally against itself and also externally among colorful red and green narrow wood siding houses. A small icon among larger houses, the projects mimics contextually through familiar gabled roof pitches and landscaping of colorful variation. An exterior garden at the front (much less steep) portion of the site provides an outdoor retreat for small, intimate gatherings among lush vegetation. The building’s scope of work includes a completely redesigned exterior, new kitchen, walls, floors, windows, doors, trim, fixtures, appliances, storage, landscaping, siding, roofing, lighting, mep and a fireplace. Essentially a new house visually, the reverse hillside slip rock below, concrete foundations, and old growth wood framing were more than adequate structurally to remain intact. Project completion Summer 2019.
Garet Ammerman