Janna LEVENSTEIN tells first-time visitors that they can't miss her L.A. home. It's the only modern one on the street: a bright, sleek, indoor-outdoor living space, a tree-cloistered mini-greenbelt where every room opens onto nature.
"My house was the ugliest, I think -- a maze of small, dark, ugly rooms," she says of the original 1950s design. The transformation is impressive, particularly when one learns how she achieved it.
A voice-over actor, Levenstein hired a draftsman for about $60 an hour to draw the old house, which she purchased two years ago. Then she used tracing paper over that illustration to figure out how she wanted to reconfigure the house. She faxed that sketch back to the draftsman, who entered it into his computer-aided design program.
Next, she hired a UCLA architecture student to tutor her in Google's free SketchUp software, which lets users play with their house plans in 3-D. Levenstein spent hours at the computer, imagining umpteen variations on how to reshape not just the rooms, but also the exterior walls and windows.
The result is a house divided: two units instead of one. That was the goal -- a flexible, urban plan that takes advantage of the way the property is zoned. She uses the two-bedroom, 2 1/2 -bath unit at the back of the property as her home. The one-bedroom front unit serves as a guest house and office.
"I was single. I didn't need 2,200 square feet of space," says Levenstein, who calls on a structural engineer to make sure her plans are sound. "It seemed smart to create two apartments, one to live in and one I could rent out or use for work."
The second unit has been there for a stream of visiting family and friends, as well as for parties, she says. "Food is prepared in front, and guests can leave their jackets there."
Levenstein, 37, was an arts major who had just graduated from Bennington College in Vermont when she arrived in L.A. 13 years ago. Her first stint at remodeling was a house in Laurel Canyon, where she lived for six years while pursuing her voice-over career.
"I was so happy working on that house," she says, "and I sold it for a profit when I was ready to move out."
She then lived in a bachelor apartment on Doheny Drive, "content to rejoice in my first-ever healthy bank account," she says. But she soon bought another house, fixed it up and sold it. Flipping became a passion. One remodel above Sunset Plaza in Los Angeles turned out so well, the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects included the house in its spring tour -- an honor for someone with no formal training in design.
