The Arbolada Remodel

In the summer of 2020, I went looking for a particular kind of property, one that might hold two lives at once, a home for my client and an income stream steady enough to carry the mortgage. After months of searching, and the usual trawl through the MLS that is equal parts discipline and luck, I found a 1930 Spanish triplex in Los Feliz. It was worn, certainly, and there was no disguising the work ahead, but the bones were magnificent.

The negotiation was bruising, one of those transactions that sheds any fantasy of elegance and becomes instead a test of nerve, timing, and stamina. It was not pretty. Still, she got the house. And with it, something rare, a place to live, and rents from the two additional units that fully cover the mortgage, which still feels, even now, like a small urban miracle.

We began the renovation of the owner’s unit almost immediately after closing. There was deferred maintenance throughout, but also a clear underlying order waiting to be brought forward. The intention was never to erase its age, only to make the apartment work better for the life being lived inside it, to open the plan where it felt pinched, to bring ease and proportion back into the rooms.

The original steel windows were restored. The oak floors were refinished. We installed HVAC, soundproofed the rooms, rewired the unit in full, and added a washer and dryer, practical interventions folded into the fabric of the place. The kitchen and bathroom were taken down and rebuilt entirely, with an eye toward utility, yes, but also rhythm, light, and the daily pleasure of use.

I designed both spaces in SketchUp, drawing and redrawing to study circulation, sightlines, and the quieter decisions that make a room feel resolved. What follows is a selection from the renovation, a record of the work in progress, of materials and dust, of decisions made slowly, and of a home returning, room by room, to itself.