A Recipe for Change

Twelve years ago, Los Angeles chefs Nancy Silverton and Mark Peel were living in a loft apartment above Campanile, their La Brea Avenue restaurant. “We were directly over the main dining room,” Peel says. “After 6 o’clock the kids had to wear socks so the customers wouldn’t be annoyed by the pitter-patter of little feet.”

They grew out of the space, Silverton says, when she became pregnant with their third child, Oliver. Wanting to stay close to the restaurant, the couple began looking in nearby Hancock Park and fell in love with a 3,200-square-foot 1916 prairie-style Craftsman with a spacious layout, four upstairs bedrooms and beautiful mahogany woodwork, “not to mention the four-minute commute to the restaurant,” Silverton says.

Furthermore, the house didn’t need major work. “There were things we wanted to change, but it was completely livable,” Silverton says. They began to slowly renovate, removing the upstairs wall-to-wall carpeting and refinishing the quartersawn oak floors downstairs. They stripped the mahogany wood trim and wainscot as well as the Batchelder tile fireplace, which had all been painted over.

After several years of nesting, the couple decided to renovate further and called in a friend, Brentwood interior designer Lori Erenberg. “They wanted to retile the kitchen,” Erenberg recalls. “It had this large multicolored floral paper on the walls and small white tiles on the splash and counter from an earlier, not-so-good 1970s renovation. It just didn’t fit with the house.”

Celadon-hued tiles now cover the counters; a new coat of butter-colored paint brightens the walls. A pine table from Silverton’s college days stands next to a recent local purchase, forming a central island to add work space. Instead of installing commercial appliances, the couple opted for a Dacor stove top and KitchenAid oven and refrigerator. “I have this theory that the more expensive the kitchen is, the less people cook,” Peel says. “I’ve seen some pretty fancy kitchens--when you look in the refrigerator there’s nothing but frozen pizza and Snapple. I’ve never felt inconvenienced by not having a commercial stove at home.”

The rest of the house was freshened up with simple decorative changes such as paint, wallpaper, tile and fabric. The couple’s collection of colorful Clarice Cliff English pottery from the ‘30s inspired the new color palette of wheat, olive and burnt orange that runs throughout the house. A woven wallpaper in the family room and simple matchstick blinds on the windows add texture and warmth.

Instead of period Craftsman furnishings, Erenberg took her cue from the Danish-style modern dining room table and chairs that Silverton had grown up with. Danish modern pieces fill the adjacent family room where their three children like to hang out with friends, the family and, occasionally, pet snake Knuckles. “Craftsman furniture is so massive and somber, with all the dark woodwork I felt it would weigh down the house,” Erenberg says. “I wanted to make the house airier and a bit more hip.”

Outside, the couple transformed their narrow patio into a large outdoor room for entertaining. Los Angeles landscape designer Barry Sattels altered the rear patio, enlarging it by 15 feet. A trellis planted with hanging wisteria shades the outdoor room, casting dappled shadows onto the new acid color-washed concrete floor. Sattels scored the concrete and selected five hues--from wheat and amber to verdigris--a muted version of the home’s interior palette. “The acid wash reacts with the concrete and becomes a part of it as opposed to something sitting on the surface,” the landscape designer explains. “It creates a mottled look and gives this wonderful patina, as if the patio were the same age as the house.”

The focal point of the room is undoubtedly the new hand-troweled concrete fireplace with its mahogany mantle and ledge for sitting. A custom-designed rotisserie and grill inside the hearth were inspired by a set-up the couple discovered in a quaint trattoria in Tuscany. “There’s an iron grate in back that holds the wood and gives off radiant heat for the rotisserie. As the logs burn and coals fall you can rake them forward for the grill,” Peel says. “We cooked our turkey there last Thanksgiving. It didn’t take as long as in a conventional oven.”

When Peel and Silverton entertain friends at home, they stick to simple things such as steaks or sausages on the grill. “Nothing with a long prep time,” Peel says. “I hate to clean up.”

*

Resource Guide

Lori Erenberg Interior Design-Decoration, Brentwood, (310) 826-5744; Barry Sattels, Sattels, Los Angeles, (323) 962-5565; Page 28: McIntyre celadon field tile, $21.75 per square foot, and Motawi Tiles Works wheat motif tiles, $55 each, both at Walker Zanger, West Hollywood, (310) 659-1234; page 30: powder-coated metal-and-stone table and bench set, $6,200, at Patio, Los Angeles, (323) 934-8411.