Artist Aaron Kramer’s handcrafted Santa Monica home

Wall-mounted “boats” have been pieced together from sections of wooden salad bowls and mounted on a staircase wall.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

Another view of the boats. The artist, the subject of a show at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles (more information at the end of this gallery), has sold work to musician Carlos Santana, actress Rene Russo and the Sofitel hotel in Los Angeles, which has a sculpture made of woven street-sweeper bristles.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

Kramer and wife Joan pushed the recessed front door forward and replaced a bay window surrounded by clapboard with sliding doors, unifying the façade into one sleek plane. As part of our “Interior Monologue” series of home profiles, we’ve paired photos with an edited commentary by Kramer, in his own words …  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

In Kramer’s own words:

The stairs have this funny crooked landing and turn away from the front door. It took awhile to get used to it, but now it’s the heart of the house. It’s where we sit and talk when we first get home. The hanging light in the center of the room was a Mother’s Day gift to my wife. It looks like the kind of work I do, and I knew that every time someone walks in the house, I was going to be asked if I did it. But I love it, and I couldn’t make it for less.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

Living room: That’s one of my spheres [at left] that are made from reclaimed metal bristles used on street-sweeping machines. It sits between two tall ladder-back chairs that were display fixtures at Carson Pirie Scott in Chicago. The surveyor’s lamp came from the Wisteria catalog, the couches were custom made at the Sofa Co. on Lincoln in Santa Monica but still under $1,000 each, and my wife doggedly found the reclaimed wood coffee table on the Internet. She’s quite a good shopper.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

The staircase has cutouts so that you can see the living room as you ascend. On the wall in front, I put three kinetic sculptures that I made in the 1990s. The center one is made from an archery bow, and the other two are made from vintage crutches. The one on the left is a motorized cuckoo clock.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

The cuckoo clock is made from a lot of different materials, including an old ruler and a piece of vintage molding from the Oriental Theatre in Chicago. I shingled the roof with plastic bread bag closures.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

In 2002, I went to a design camp in South Carolina where we intended to save the world by reclaiming trash and making it into art. The idea was to have the locals, former textile workers, making stuff out of reclaimed materials that we designed. We got several NEA grants and did prototypes for product we could do with tin cans, including this light fixture.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

For this prototype, I welded a wire frame and then made this lampshade that slipped on top of it. It was made from different tin can lids, including one that said “quality pet food,” slightly bent and connected with pop rivets. The beads were punched-out circles from a metal sign that I attached with little wire “S” hooks that I made by hand.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

Powder room: I made the wainscoting out of molding and trim pieces that were pulled out of old homes in Chicago. I like the way the old paint on each piece complements the mirror by the artist Kathryn Arnett. The four Chinese panels above the tub came from a restaurant where my wife and I used to go when we started dating. My brother found the wash basin at Out of the Closet for $15, and I added a Home Depot faucet and set it on a painted Indian chest.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

I was designing the interior of a store in Connecticut and bought a bunch of balustrades and banisters from Jan’s Antiques in Chicago. Jan decided to clear out her second floor, which was filled with molding pieces, and she called me up to come get them. I’ve been moving that lumber around from studio to studio for 15 years because it was too cool to throw out, and on a whim I decided to turn it into wainscoting. It took two days to glue and nail together.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

My mom was an interior designer at a store that sold Scandinavian furniture in Chicago, and this is her old wooden table. We had two vintage Thonet chairs with cut-out handles and got two contemporary Thonet chairs to go with them. I made the lamp above from recycled coffee stirrers. They cost $395 at the Craft and Folk Art Museum, but I show people how to do it at a workshop at the Urban Crafts Center in Santa Monica. The counter is another bang-for-your-buck idea. We got a slab of Calcutta Gold marble only ¾-inch thick but put a 2-inch-thick lip around the edge, which gives you a massive feel done cheaply.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

The sculpture on the right is called “Q.” I made it from a toy typewriter and a letter Q from an old sign connected by a wire frame that I fabricated.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

My wife designed the kitchen, and all the cabinetry that you can only see when you are in the kitchen is painted white. On the other side, we used walnut doors, so you can see the expensive stuff from the living room and dining room. The colored bottles on the top shelf above the cookbooks and microwave look like they are illuminated by a window, but that’s a trick. It’s just fluorescent lighting.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

The master bedroom.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

Guest room: A long time ago I observed that broom handles were always sticking out of trash cans because they didn’t fit. I was particularly attracted to the wooden ones that showed evidence of hand, so I started collecting them and cutting off the bristles. It took five years of collecting to get enough of them -- 62 screwed together on a frame -- to do the headboard reflected in a mirrored dresser.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

The headboard took up the whole wall, so I built a little niche above it where an alarm clock could go.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

The mirror is by Kathryn Arnett, and you can see the broomstick headboard I made in it. The mirrored chest from Z Gallerie and mercury glass candle holders make the small room feel larger. In the hall outside: one of the banners from my collection of Independent Order of Odd Fellows memorabilia and metal lightning rods that just have a great sculptural look.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

Daughters’ room: My wife said Emma, left, and Ana could pink out the paint color. My wife said, “Oh, my God, I can’t paint the whole room fuchsia,” so she created a stripe pattern: 15 inches, 5 inches, 3 inches, 5 inches, repeat. I didn’t think it was going to work at all with the sloped ceilings, but it really does. The floor lamp in the corner of the room by the vintage kids rocking chair is by artist Neil Benson, founder of Dumpster Divers of Philadelphia. He scours thrift stores and buys old toys and turns them into these stacked lamps.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

Also in the girls’ room.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

I got this old marquee in college. It came from an Egyptian Revival Art Deco movie theater in DeKalb, Ill., and some frat boys had rescued it from the junkman and left it on the back porch of a friend. On the last day of school, they said they were moving the next day, and I said I’ll have a truck there in an hour. I’ve had it ever since and finally found the perfect place for it, as a backdrop to our outdoor dining table.   (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

That used to be our coffee table, and my wife wanted to get rid of it. I said I loved it too much, so I rolled it outside. It’s an old livery cart with iron wheels and wooden frame for moving goods around a factory. Catalogs are selling them for $900, and I got this one off a loading dock in Chicago for free.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

My workshop: I’ve been trash picking and Dumpster diving since I was a kid skateboarding around Chicago. Now trash has a way of finding me. I keep it organized and use it though. It’s not like I’m a candidate for “Hoarders.”  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

More finds.  (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)