Only One Modern Farmhouse Detail Remains in This Los Angeles Home Post-Renovation
It was nothing a little sandblasting couldn’t fix.
Published May 4, 2024 1:10 AM
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In between picking fabrics and testing stains for a pair of first-time homeowners, Lauren Piscione, the designer behind LP Creative and cofounder of Galerie Was, would chat all things wedding related with the L.A.-based couple. Both Piscione and her clients were newly engaged at the time and in the thralls of planning. “Together, we’d toil over where to have our prospective weddings,” recalls Piscione, “and at first, they were kind of all over the map.” As time went on and Piscione’s work for the duo wrapped up, they told her they had finally landed on a venue: their home.
“We knew we wanted to do something super-intimate and low-key with our closest friends and family there to celebrate, and it just felt right to do it in our most favorite place,” says one of the homeowners, who works as an energy healer, while her soon-to-be husband is a musician.
The backyard is prime for a large party. The property is nestled on the border of Malibu and the Palisades, and if you look into the distance, you can see Catalina Island. After bouncing between different bungalows in the Venice neighborhood for nearly five years, their dream was to be closer to nature and a little further from the action, and also to have a yard with room for their pup to run. “We like to joke that we moved for our dog,” she shares.
It only took one Instagram Story photo to sell the couple on the four-bedroom house. Their broker had posted the listing with a shot of the accordion glass doors opening up to the outdoor space. But the interior’s beachy farmhouse features (sliding barn doors, shiplap, and the like) were ultimately the reason they reached out to Piscione. “There was even a cowbell in the kitchen,” recalls the designer with a cringe. Her warm and earthy style was much more their speed. Piscione’s challenge was to completely transform the house without embarking on a gut renovation that would force them back into a temporary rental.
The designer got to work on stripping the shiplap boards, opting instead to coat the walls in her go-to plaster treatment, which usually starts out with Benjamin Moore’s Fossil color. From there, she and her team will tediously tweak the mix as needed, perhaps making it 20 percent cooler or 10 percent warmer, until it suits the space. “People don’t realize that if your home is really green and lush outside, the paint on the inside of your house could actually skew a little green,” Piscione shares. “Or if it’s overlooking the ocean and you get a lot of sky, it could be a little blue or cooler.”
While they were at it, they also tore out a bulky cabinet in the corner of the living room that was blocking the light from the window. The designer shifted the TV to the adjacent wall (keeping it out of sight with flush doors) and situated a low oak-wood bench in the nook. “We really wanted this bench to have an organic edge because everything felt really angular,” she shares. On that same note, Piscione plopped a tree sourced from The Haus Plant into the bench. “It adds the perfect wabi-sabi touch,” says the homeowner.
To top off the corner, Piscione helped the couple source a work by Austyn Weiner, an artist they’d long admired. It just so happened that Piscione is friends with Weiner and scored them another painting for their hallway, too.
The only lingering remnants of the home’s farmhouse past are the tongue-and-groove paneled ceilings. But after a quick sandblasting that removed the white paint and revealed the natural pine boards, the detailing looked right at home in the new space. “Now the warmth that radiates from it is felt throughout the home,” says the client. While the kitchen layout remained the same, the designer swapped out the stark white cabinets for sandy-colored ones inspired by Malibu’s beaches and replaced the black marble counters with durable Taj Mahal quartzite.
Piscione tapped her side business, Galerie Was, when sourcing the furniture for the house. The cozy Clam chair and Brutalist French stool in the living room, as well as the Guillerme et Chambron chairs and Swedish case piece in the dining area, were just a few of the vintage gems she tracked down.
Throughout the project, the designer’s clients joked that her palette is 50 shades of brown (even though they were totally on board with the color scheme). Piscione doesn’t deny it, but to her, it’s the slight nuances in each shade that make a room feel dynamic. The built-in headboard in the primary bedroom, for instance, is clad in a cinnamon-hued Rose Uniacke fabric, while the burl-wood nightstands skew more caramel. “It’s a lot of different layers of materials, but all in the brown family,” Piscione says.
Two out of the four bedrooms now serve as his-and-her offices. For the energy healer, Piscione placed an antique Japanese tea table in the heart of the space, leaving plenty of room around it for her meditation sessions. Meanwhile, the designer had a custom desk and low bookcases crafted for the musician, freeing up the walls so he can hang artwork and instruments.
“We really feel we have a place that is a physical manifestation of who we are and how we feel,” shares the homeowner. And they’re excited to let guests in on the experience later this summer, too. They plan on keeping everything the way that it is for the wedding day, aside from a few tweaks to the backyard for logistics. “It truly is perfect the way it is,” she says.
