Houses

PALM SPRINGS was Hollywood's backyard in the 1930s when this home was built, but it wasn't until the late '50s that a screen star was connected with the estate. Elizabeth Taylor came onto the desert scene then and rented the home for several months from the widow of Leo Spitz, its original owner and co-founder of Universal International Studios. At the end of Taylor's stay, in 1957, she said "yes" to Mike Todd, producer of the movie "Around the World in 80 Days," and they wed in Acapulco.

A room without books, says Los Angeles interior designer Peter Dunham, is "a tragedy. It feels unfinished, like there is no intellectual presence." In a city derided for its cerebral shortcomings, the home library -- once merely a quaint signature of old money -- is asserting itself as a showcase for personal taste, designers say.

NEW YORK -- Real estate may have cooled considerably as an investment, but not real estate television. House-flipping and home-renovation programs are still big hits on cable. While "for-sale" signs sprout on lawns across the country, TV programmers are like developers who plow ahead with new housing projects anyway. A new season of the A&E Network's "Flip This House" -- one of a troika, with TLC's "Flip That House" and Bravo's "Flipping Out" -- premieres Saturday night.

BEFORE construction had wrapped on Vanessa Choy and Andrew Wong's house in Studio City, the rumors had started swirling. The couple were building a halfway house for addicts, passersby speculated. The home was some sort of mean joke on the neighborhood, others feared. One woman screamed from the middle of the street: "You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" The consternation didn't seem rooted in the size or scale of the house, but by its style.

YOU can count the pieces of furniture on your fingers. In the living room, one bench and two tiny tables. In the dining room, another bench. And in one bedroom, nothing. In an era defined by consumerism, collecting and clutter, the Culver City home of Fette and Matthew Green is an ode to simple living, a place where minimalism isn't a look. It's a living. "It may sound weird to others, but this is how we define comfort," said Matthew, a mild-mannered graphic artist.

AS a gardener, Katrina Rivers dreamed of a home where she could see green from every window. As a mother, she wanted a place where her children could ride safely on their bikes. And as a writer and self-described healer, she yearned for a house with "magic." Anyone who wonders if Rivers could conjure such enchantment need only approach her bit of bohemia on Mount Washington, where twin griffin-like creatures greet visitors from high atop a Balinese door.

The painter, prepping to apply a couple of coats of linen white, didn't know who was about to move in. A neighbor had no clue either. Even the seller didn't realize who had bought his South Baltimore row house.

Some folks celebrate their last home mortgage payment by setting fire to their loan agreement. Lately, some people behind on their mortgages are simply setting fire to their homes. In what appears to be the latest symptom of the nation's mortgage meltdown and credit crisis, insurers, law enforcement officials and state agencies nationwide report a jump in home and automobile fires in the last year believed to have been set by owners unable to pay their debts.

Imagine a glass house with mid-20th century lines and mountain views in a country setting, with hawks soaring overhead and an orchard overflowing with fruit. Sound like Eden? That's what owner Doug Chapin dubbed this Beverly Hills-area estate, which he bought and remodeled in 2003. The main house was designed in 1959 by Hal Levitt, the Modernist architect.

"I DIDN'T have a contractor," film producer Lyndall Hobbs says, cruising through a front succulent garden that reminds her of her native Australia. "I did it all myself because I figured I knew better -- even though I had never done anything of this scale before." The result? Workers toiling for months while Hobbs and her 12-year-old son retreated to various parts of the house as renovations moved from one space to the next.