A mod beach house for sis
PARDON OUR DUST
Sleek and customized, a $600,000 ground-up remodel transforms a tiny ocean-view lot.
When architect Robert Nebolon started sketching out ideas for his sister's tear-down and rebuild in south Hermosa Beach, he felt pretty confident that his design would meet the needs of her family -- despite the challenging 30-by-50-foot lot they had to work with.
But he was also a little anxious about doing a good job because he knew their four siblings and other relatives and friends would be watching.
"I didn't want to screw up in front of the whole family," said Nebolon, 48.
But Barbara Gunning, 42, never doubted her big brother could create a house right for her, her husband, Joe, 42, and their two daughters.
Even though Nebolon lives in Berkeley, he had spent enough time with his sister and her family to have a sense of their Southern California lifestyle -- fun, social, vigorous, beachy yet sophisticated.
"I trusted Robert," said Barbara, who moved her family into the airy house with ocean views a year ago. "He knew."
When the Gunnings bought the original house in 1994, it had two bedrooms in less than 1,000 square feet. The 1948 home sat on a legal half-lot on an alley one block from the beach and cost $249,000 at the bottom of the market. After Barbara became pregnant with their second child, the couple realized they had to move out of the increasingly worn-out house or rebuild.
"You want a nicer home for your family than a beach house," Barbara said.
Joe, who is a sales manager for Novartis Pharmaceuticals, agreed: "We were done with the headaches of an old house."
But in 2004, at the top of the market, the couple discovered that every house they could afford still would require $300,000 worth of work, so they decided to tear the old house down and start anew.
To give her brother an idea of the contemporary look she liked, Barbara showed him photos from books and magazines. Her main request was that the front door not be right on the alley but set back. For his part, Joe wanted a home office that was separated from the home's living areas and that had room for a couch and a large-screen TV. In other words, he said, a "man cave."
Nebolon had his own visions for the three-story, 2,000-square-foot house. He wanted to situate the living room and kitchen on the top floor, the bedrooms below that, and the entrance, garage and man cave on the ground. He called it "an upside-down house," a configuration Barbara said is common in the beach town to afford residents better ocean views.
