Growing Up in Venice

Fifteen years ago, the Venice home that Raphael Menendez and Kay Virbila bought had a lot of positives and a few negatives.

High on the upside was its location in the eclectic, colorful seaside community, which satisfied the couple’s international tastes.

He is a Cuban-born architect-general contractor who believes the area’s arty, creative atmosphere inspires his work. She, a process engineer at Hughes in El Segundo, is of Lithuanian descent, decorates with Moroccan pillows, listens to Far Eastern music and studies Brazilian dancing.

Another plus: the home’s setting on one of Venice’s delightful “walk streets,” as designed by Venice pioneer Abbott Kinney, where a sidewalk runs past the frontyards and cars access properties and garages only through back alleys.

On the downside, the lot was small, at 40 feet by 120 feet, and the house was minuscule, at 650 square feet. That situation became even more untenable as the family grew to include two children.

Also, the house was cheaply built, as a beach bungalow in the 1920s, and looked it. The most dated element was a small, dark porch--its windows shaded by a metal awning--that separated the living room from the frontyard. In fact, the gloomy porch acted as a kind of barrier to the yard, which was all but abandoned to weeds.

After the marriage broke up and Menendez moved nearby six years ago, Virbila gradually ended up using the small living room for her bedroom, giving her daughter Maddy, now 13, the 9-by-10-foot front bedroom and using the back bedroom as storage. Son Gabe, now 16, stayed in a converted bedroom in the garage. All told, it was not a good situation.

“It felt claustrophobic,” Virbila recalled. “It was really dark in here. I felt like I was living in a slum.”

But she could see no workable solution to her small old house. “You just try to live with it,” she figured, “or you tear it down and build a new one,” as others in the neighborhood had done.

However, two years ago, Menendez came up with a better solution: “I told Kay the house needed a face lift, a new facade,” he recalled. “And Maddy needed a little more space. She needed a computer room.”

And so with Virbila writing the checks (which eventually totaled $10,000) and with Menendez creating the design and doing most of the work (“I’m a hands-on kind of guy”), the front of the house was radically transformed over three months in the fall of 1996.

Besides removing the offensive awning, the goals were:

1. To enlarge the living room into the space taken by the porch, adding 75 feet of usable space.

2. Add a wall of French doors leading to the frontyard.

3. Add 55 square feet of space onto the front of Maddy’s room.

4. Build a rooftop deck and arbor over Maddy’s room as hangout for her and her friends.

5. Tie the front of the house together with a wide wooden deck.

To preserve a sense of the home’s original facade, Menendez’s design retained the porch’s pitched roof. Beneath it, the new, larger living room, which Virbila has filled with a wooden dining room table and four metal chairs, opens to the deck and frontyard through two sets of single-light French doors.

Inside, the ceiling of the new space is covered with bead board, a ribbed wood that matches the era of the house.

The question of window coverings was not easily answered because Virbila likes drapes, which don’t work well with French doors. She found a compromise by running a rod and white cotton curtains several feet inside the room, along the beam that separates the original living room from the new space.

Once the remodel was finished, Virbila moved into the back bedroom and started decorating the living room. “This feels so much better,” she said. “Once the front was opened up, I was motivated.”

Menendez helped in the living room, as well, by building a wide seat into an existing bay window, eliminating the need for a couch in the narrow room. Virbila added upholstery to the window seat and custom-made pillows covered with Moroccan fabrics. Maddy and a neighbor livened up the worn wood floor with sponged-on layers of turquoise, yellow and purple paint.

The opening up of the living room also inspired Virbila to revamp her front garden, planting it mostly with herbs and California natives.

In Maddy’s room, the new space is used for a computer and desk, while new shelves built into the bedroom hold her extensive collections of stuffed animals and platform shoes.

The deck, equipped with a phone jack, is reached from her room by a ladder against the wall. Maddy and her friends find the rooftop deck is especially fun on hot summer days, when one of them stands in the yard and sprays the hose up there.

Of course, all remodels are challenging, even those involving an intact marriage, and this one was no different.

“He wanted one thing and I wanted another,” Virbila said, recalling a clock located high on the front wall of the house that she would have been happy without. But, she added, “he had a lot of good ideas.”

All in all, the completed remodel seems to have pleased everyone, even walk-street passersby who pause occasionally to call out their admiration of the house. Nobody seems to mind that while the old part of the house is covered with siding, the face lift is covered with white stucco. Indeed, that is part of the charm.

“I like mixing things up. I like quirky things,” said Virbila. “This is Venice. You can do anything you want.” And Menendez feels good about creating a lighter, more spacious home for his children and former wife. “It was a labor of love,” he said.

*

The Project: Revamp and add 130 square feet of space onto front of 1920s Venice cottage.

Architect/Builder: Raphael Menendez, (310) 392-4355.

Duration of job: Three months.

Cost: $10,000.