Before and After: Condo emerges, cheerfully, from the Middle Ages
Check out the before and after of a remodeled condo in Century City.
The medieval knight statue near the foyer was the first sign that Cynthia Yetnikoff’s newly purchased condo was in need of a modern overhaul.
The two-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom Century City property she bought a little more than a year ago also came with elaborate ceiling frescoes and vines stenciled onto the walls. A guest bathroom didn’t have a door.
“It needed work,” said Yetnikoff, a former real estate agent and record industry executive. “But I saw the potential.”
She enlisted Los Angeles decorator Karen Todman and told her to go with a “California casual” aesthetic, envisioning a rustic farm table and comfy oversized sofas.
Todman had other ideas for her client.
“Cynthia didn’t seem to me like a California-casual girl,” she said. “When we started shopping around, I noticed that she gravitated towards more glamorous pieces.”
First, however, came the structural changes. The condo was ripped down, allowing Todman to elevate the ceilings and add soundproofing. What had been a second bedroom was converted into a salon.
Then Todman made the space an ode to Hollywood Regency glamour, with a color palette that is primarily muted silver, gold and white.
Lavish touches are interspersed throughout: gilded furniture accented with faux croc leather; customized bedding; and chandeliers hanging in the master suite and in the pearly white kitchen.
All told, the makeover took six months and $600,000.
Todman and Yetnikoff were particularly inspired by pieces that had a chinoiserie sensibility.
An antique Chinese chest was repainted and converted into a bathroom sink. Doors were given bronzed bamboo accents. Conventional dining chairs were painted pale gold and reupholstered; they are now used around a mah-jongg table in the “Shanghai salon” off the living space.
“We didn’t just buy something and put it in,” Todman said. “Everything was transformed in some way.”
The duo spent days visiting consignment and antique stores, choosing items and then asking those on the designer’s list of upholsterers or woodworkers to customize them.
When Todman had trouble locating the perfect-sized shelving for towels in one of the bathrooms, she found a vintage rack and asked a craftsman specializing in chinoiserie-inspired work to modify it to nestle right into the space.
Outside, Todman spruced up the terrace by painting a pair of old metal gates she found at an antique store and mounting them to an exterior wall.
Although the home is distinctly luxe, Todman said she mixed in staples from Z Gallerie and Bed Bath & Beyond alongside the one-off antique-store finds.
“Whether it was $50 or $5,000,” she said, “if it was right for the spot, that’s what we went for.”
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