The success of Don and Denise Hahn's remodel lies in how interior designer Jamie Bush and architect Georgie Kajer were able to update an old home for a modern family without losing its ranch-house spirit. Some of Bush's strategies:
Consistent finishes: Tea-green glazed subway tiles in the kitchen reappear in slightly different shades in the bathrooms. Grayish-brown composite quartz countertops repeat as well. Heywood-Wakefield-inspired red birch cabinetry appears in the kitchen, pantry and bathrooms. The continuity in materials lends a sense of cohesiveness to the house.
Open-weave drapes: What had been a sun porch was appropriated for the expanded living room, where three sets of double doors lead to the pool and lanai. Bush specified an unlined, open-weave amber linen for the ceiling-to-floor drapery. "They have a very casual but gossamer quality to diffuse light and still provide views to the garden," he says.
Paneling: Rather than rip out the living room's original 1940s bead board, Bush extended it around a breakfast banquette and the entry foyer. The paneling also was installed at three-quarter height down both sides of the main hallway, elevating the prosaic corridor to a viewing gallery for Don and Denise's collection of Western plein-air landscapes, some of which are their own works.
-- Debra Prinzing
Consistent finishes: Tea-green glazed subway tiles in the kitchen reappear in slightly different shades in the bathrooms. Grayish-brown composite quartz countertops repeat as well. Heywood-Wakefield-inspired red birch cabinetry appears in the kitchen, pantry and bathrooms. The continuity in materials lends a sense of cohesiveness to the house.
Open-weave drapes: What had been a sun porch was appropriated for the expanded living room, where three sets of double doors lead to the pool and lanai. Bush specified an unlined, open-weave amber linen for the ceiling-to-floor drapery. "They have a very casual but gossamer quality to diffuse light and still provide views to the garden," he says.
Paneling: Rather than rip out the living room's original 1940s bead board, Bush extended it around a breakfast banquette and the entry foyer. The paneling also was installed at three-quarter height down both sides of the main hallway, elevating the prosaic corridor to a viewing gallery for Don and Denise's collection of Western plein-air landscapes, some of which are their own works.
-- Debra Prinzing
L.A. for less than the price of sunblock. 
