Doing Their Home Work

For Julie Moran, it was love at first sight when she came upon a 4,100-square-foot Irving Gill house five years ago.

“We had moved from New York, and I had seen 40 or 50 houses already,” says Moran, a co-anchor on “Entertainment Tonight.” “The minute I walked inside the entry hall, I just knew it was the place for us. I grew up in Georgia and have always loved very gracious older homes. That’s just my thing.”

The Santa Monica house, with its plain curved archways, high ceilings, copious windows and simple moldings, was designed by San Diego architect Gill and built in 1924. Mae West once owned the house.

Moran and her husband, actor Rob Moran (in the upcoming “Me, Myself and Irene”) bought the four-bedroom, ocean-view house when they moved to Los Angeles in 1995.

Since then the Morans have done most of the decorating themselves. Julie doggedly combed antiques stores, furniture stores and flea markets to get just the right mix of antiques, reproductions and ethnic pieces to give the house its eclectic, romantic feel.

“I just made it my hobby for a long time,” Julie says.

“Julie would do the reconnaissance work,” Rob says, “and I’d look at the piece and we’d talk about it. It’s amazing how her mind can lay out a room.”

Gill’s architecture--an unornamented framework for livable, comfortable interiors--didn’t speak to minimalist contemporary style or over-the-top ornate decor. The couple have tried to stay true to that sensibility.

Tampering with the structure wasn’t even considered.

“The bones of the house said gracious living, comfort, but nothing too flashy--something understated, but with style,” Julie says.

Last year, with two-thirds of the house done, Julie found herself in a quandary. She was six months pregnant, working full time and desperate to finish the house before the baby arrived.

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She decided she needed help to pull together the rest of the house. A friend suggested Ferret, a furniture store and interior design studio in Studio City. Julie immediately clicked with store owner and interior designer Pam Galloway and her design associate Kathy Hartz. (They’ve done homes for actresses Jane Leeves and Peri Gilpin, both of “Frasier.”)

“I wanted someone I considered being almost like a friend,” Julie says. “I think I just needed an objective eye, someone who wasn’t here every day. I’d say to Pam, ‘I want a new couch, but I want it to look old, and I want it to look like it came out of a villa in Italy.”

Galloway suggested a custom-made wood frame couch in moss-colored stria velvet with fringe-trimmed cushions that looked “antique but not shabby.” New living room chairs were refinished and reupholstered in rich brocades.

Julie says her design sense was inherited from her mother, whom she describes as having great--albeit traditional--taste.

“She’s into a very British style, with Oriental rugs and very fine antiques. I love her sense of style, but mine evolved into something else. I like to mix it up and have it feel just a little more casual, more bohemian. She probably wouldn’t throw in that box from India with the stones on it. But I don’t mind mixing things at all--French, Italian, Indonesian, whatever. If I feel like it works, I’ll throw it all in. I don’t feel like I need to stay true to one style.”

The master bedroom was where Julie needed the most help from the designers.

“Rob is very masculine,” she says, “and he didn’t want this room to look like some frilly bedroom. He kept asking me, ‘How many pillows are going to be on the bed?’ ”

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The designers’ solution was to bring in large, heavy pieces in dark woods and balance them with light-colored linens: “We decided to give the room a British Colonial feel,” Galloway says. “The dark furniture grounds the room and gives it depth and importance and the masculinity that it needs.”

“I’ve always noticed that sometimes you walk into a bedroom and it looks like a woman’s room, not a couple’s room,” Rob adds. “This is really our room.”

A dark wood poster bed from Thomasville’s Ernest Hemingway Collection (which Julie found in a magazine) dominates the room without overpowering it. Other pieces include an antique marble-top mahogany chest. Atop it sits two antique gilded candlestick lamps with shades made from old monogrammed linens.

A large dresser with carved scroll details was reproduced by Ferret from a magazine photo, and a smaller bamboo chest is a reproduction of a French antique. Floral tapestry pillows and an upholstered side chair add muted colors of mauve and sage, but the effect isn’t overwhelmingly feminine.

Rob indulged his guyness in his upstairs office, a small space with three walls of windows, off of the media room.

“He said he wanted to feel like Ernest Hemingway up here,” Moran jokes, pointing out the exposed wood ceiling beams, rattan chair and ottoman, and reed wall treatment.

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A small upstairs room was used as a gym before it was needed for a nursery for daughter Maiya, born last September. A crib and changing table replaced a treadmill and StairMaster. Julie added an upholstered window seat.

If there is any modern touch in the home, it’s the kitchen, with its newly tiled walls and granite-topped island where the family usually eats.

But it’s the living room that gets the most use. An arched window with leaded glass looks onto the sloping front yard, lush with palm trees, tall sycamores, ferns and flowers, plus a multilevel koi pond.

“This is my favorite room,” Julie says. “I love looking out on such a vista. We just trimmed the trees, but when it grows back I can’t see the other houses at all. I love the privacy and the light.”

The family sometimes uses the room for dinners in front of the TV, housed in an antique French cherry armoire. Maiya naps in a reproduction Victorian wrought-iron crib, a gift from a friend. Walls are sponged a warm yellow. Rugs are layered--an antique Oriental over a larger sisal.

“With one rug it looked too bare,” Julie explains.

Dinner parties are often held in the dining room, painted a deep coral red--a shade that took Julie months to find.

“I didn’t want to do Chinese red, and I didn’t want terra cotta. One day I saw this pomegranate and thought--that’s the color! It’s red, but it’s got some brightness to it. Everybody loves being photographed in that room at night. It’s very flattering.”

The backyard posed something of a problem for the homeowners. Its steep slope wasn’t conducive to adding a sizable patio or deck, and the only habitable space was a little grass-covered hut at the top of the hill. Moran describes it as “a disaster area when we moved in. Rob had to terrace the hill--he put in five retaining walls.”

They wanted to add a Jacuzzi, so one terrace was leveled and landscaped with a tiled seating area, the Jacuzzi, and some grass. A shaft had to be constructed to carry dirt down to the street, and plumbing was lowered in from a crane from the street behind the house.

Julie says the effort was worth it: “It’s like an oasis.”

Jeannine Stein can be reached at socalliving@latimes.com.