Interiors : Light Years Away

A LITTLE COSMETIC surgery, a lot of design expertise and wisely practical planning have brought this 1960s split-level San Fernando Valley house up to 1980s standards for light and space.

The owners called on Santa Monica architect Robert H. Taylor to modernize and enlarge their 2,000-square-foot, three-bedroom home. The new features include high ceilings (14 feet in the living room), walls with glass block accents, light-infusing clerestory windows, skylights in the remodeled kitchen and bathrooms, and a more open floor plan (which includes the addition of a 550-square-foot living room). The original home, says Taylor, was a “dark, split-level house with a flat, split-level roof.” By connecting the split roof with clerestory windows that run diagonally across the split, he created a volume of light inside the house that has transformed the living spaces.

The new floor plan is attractive and admirably functional. The former living room is now the family room; the old dining room has been incorporated into a breakfast area in the expanded, remodeled kitchen. A new dining room is divided from the adjacent family room by a glass-block wall in a zigzag design.