IT WAS Victoria Gilbert's first call to the architects' office, so she spelled out the situation as plainly as she could: "I've bought this house and started tearing down walls, and now I realize I haven't a clue what I'm doing. Please save me from myself."
The recently retired advertising executive had purchased the 2,500-square-foot home in fall 2006. The 1930s bungalow near UCLA satisfied many of Gilbert's requirements. It had a sizable yard for Jasper, her standard poodle, and offered better street-level access than her previous home nearby, which was reached by climbing 24 steps.
"I love this neighborhood," she says. "But I wanted more simplicity with everything on one level, and nice, wide-open spaces."
Gilbert forgave the house's board-and-batten and scalloped-trim storybook exterior. She looked beyond the shag carpeting and peach-colored interiors, figuring that a few cosmetic changes could give the house a more contemporary feel and flow.
She and a decorator embarked on what they assumed to be the easy task of removing a few interior walls. But that project quickly overwhelmed them.
Gilbert made that desperate call for more help while sitting in a bookstore, reading a magazine article about Apurva Pande and Chinmaya Misra, principals of CHA:COL, a Los Angeles design firm. She liked the young couple's redesign of their own 1948 Culver City bungalow, which infused modern flavor into a decades-old residence.
"What they did with their own house was exactly what I wanted," Gilbert says. "I felt like we had the same taste level."
PANDE AND Misra likened Gilbert's bungalow to a maze.
"We knew Vickie's house had a lot of potential, and we could see that there were bones here to work with. But there was little visual connection between the rooms," says Pande, a UCLA architecture graduate who worked with Frank Gehry before starting CHA:COL.
Rather than tear down the house in favor of all-new construction, the architects saw value in working within the existing parameters of the property.
"We think modern architecture really involves re-imagining the problem and considering the appropriate response, rather than beginning with a fixed solution in mind," Pande says.
Cozy in its original proportions, the bungalow had suffered from too many do-it-yourself additions. It had a mishmash of roof angles and gables, described by the architects as a "California roof." Inside, the vaulted spaces were hidden behind dropped ceilings, making the small rooms feel claustrophobic.
