little house of flowers - 001
In July 2020 we began work on Little House of Flowers in Highland Park. Originally designed as a California Bungalow in 1921, the cottage was a quaint time capsule: for the past sixty years, it had been inhabited by the same family.
With the house came photo albums, a vast archive that chronicled its life over the decades. The life of the house included many, many cats and and a floor-to-ceiling antique brown tile kitchen, replete with original “Harvest Gold” appliances. Our vision, we knew, required the same compassion and attention that the home’s previous stewards had bestowed upon it.
It began with subtraction. We had to simplify, preserving irreplaceable gems like the mid-century pink bathroom. We stripped wallpaper and layers of linoleum to reveal original white oak flooring in the living-dining room and warm douglas fir in the bedrooms. Inspired by a patch of 1955 lino unearthed in the kitchen, we sourced a contemporary equivalent in Forbo’s eco-friendly White Chocolate Marmoleum. Designing the kitchen, our priority was to accentuate the unbroken run of south-facing windows that flood the entire length of the house in sunshine. Subtle hue shifts in interior paint enhance the transition of light over the course of a day.
The gardens are another story. We transplanted 20-year old poinsettias and hibiscus from the front yard to the back, planting a drought tolerant mix of native specimens in their place. We created a side path on the south of the property that extends from the street to the guest house in rear and all the way to the very back garden, which will come to host beds of vegetables and native wildflowers. A fluffy wall of wispy, weeping bamboo in rear delineates the main house from the guest unit, maintaining an airy openness that unites more than it separates.
Completed: Oct 2020
This project is accompanied by an Al Larvick National Grant for the conservation and capture of archival film material.
For more information visit the Al Larvick website here.