Janette Mallory's Interior Design, Inc. Blog: Sneak Peak: Makeover Madness in the Hollywood Hills

For the past year and a half, I have been working on a house in the Hollywood Hills. The first phase of the project was a complete interior remodel which took about 6 months to complete. Check out some of the before and after photos I shared on my blog last year. Now I’m just about done with Phase II which was to completely furnish the residence.

While interior design is my passion, I also love hardscape and softscape design. My father was a general contractor so I grew up joining him on his construction jobsites. As a result, I’m very familiar with landscape design and construction; what is involved and what is required to complete such projects. My client approached me about six months ago to redo the exterior front yard and backyard which is a completely different kind of project from the interior remodel & design. Enter Phase III. The first thing I did was hire a fabulous landscape architect, Bill Mellett, and a landscape designer, Amy Blakemore. Both are from Carpinteria and worked on my Padaro Lane project three years ago.

After the interior remodel was completed, my client and I realized that the inside of the house did not match the exterior of the home. The interior was decorated with a rustic contemporary aesthetic in which repurposed materials and furniture were used. The current front exterior façade is red brick with a paver stone driveway; a complete disconnect from the transformed interior and not the look we wanted.

My client loves stone so I was lucky enough to find some beautiful, blue Cherokee at Santa Barbara Stone. It has all of the color tones that are included in our project’s color scheme. Luckily, I was able to find a good stucco contractor that was able to stucco over all of the brick and apply a weld crete coating with a smooth trowel finish. The driveway, which will be poured by the end of the month, will be a colored concrete with expansion joints.

My client enjoys entertaining. The current backyard is not only outdated, but it's also not conducive to hosting large parties. The property has a 360 degree view of the Hollywood sign, Downtown LA, Beverly Hills/Century City and the ocean. Therefore, we decided to lay out the backyard so one could see the view from all areas of the yard – the deck off the master bedroom has the Hollywood sign view; the new fire pit area will give you the best view of Downtown LA; the Gazebo, which we tore down and rebuilt out of Ironwood, will have the best view of Beverly Hills/Century City; and the new barbecue area will give you the best views of the ocean.

The exterior off the living room had a small brick patio area which was not functional so Bill came up with the brilliant idea of pushing that area out into the yard to create a larger seating area with a fire pit and stone seat bench. As you can see in the rendering below, my client loves it!!