A 1920’s estate project that is equal parts renovation and restoration
For the past several months, I’ve been working around an army of tradesmen who are busy installing marble floors, sanding and painting, installing a new pool, replacing an old elevator with a new one, and more in Hancock Park.
The home built in the early 1920’s is a jewel situated in the heart of Los Angeles in the affluent Hancock Park area. If you’re not familiar with the area, the homes in this area surround the Wilshire Country Club located below Hollywood, west of downtown. The homes in the area are custom and all have a grandeur that make working on them both challenging and rewarding at the same time.
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This home, like others in the area, are impressive in both scale and architecture, but due to the enormous expense and effort it takes to renew often show their age. Fortunately for this estate, the task of restoration has been undertaken by a couple with fabulous taste and the will to do things the right way. When it came to the trimwork, others may have resorted to using commonly available moulding profiles, but they would have stuck out like a bright red sore thumb.
My work in this project began with gathering moulding samples of the casings, window stool and other details and having these items reproduced by a custom millworks company in solid wood.
In the end, all the work I installed, from door casings, to window casings and stools, as well as other architectural details restored many damaged, cut and missing details.
Once painted, the new work is not discernable.
One example of such work is in a room with an amazing vaulted ceiling reminiscent of church ceilings in Europe. Instead of removing the ceiling and replacing it with a contemporary ceiling, I carefully removed the damage and installed a custom made solid wood moulding with the matching profile.
The project is not completed yet, but it is well beyond the half way mark. I add pictures from the jobsite frequently on Instagram.