Coastal Living: September 2015
Sunny Dining Nook
Written by Ellen McGauley | Photography by Lisa Romerein
The Manhattan-based couple bought the 1,400-square-foot home to serve as their landing pad for her frequent business trips to the West Coast, and hired L.A.–based interior designer Peter Dunham and architect Tim Barber to modernize the interior. "The standout feature here was always this drop-dead view," says Dunham, "so we set out to better connect the indoors with the tremendous vista, to make them work better together."
Envisioning a contemporary interpretation of an old California surf cottage, Dunham and Barber used white wood paneling to unite a central living area, and installed oak flooring to blend with the color of the sand. A sunny dining nook with cozy built-in banquette seating occupies a corner just inside the ocean-facing glass doors, which stretch nearly floor to ceiling and replace a smaller, standard set of sliding doors, and a former porch.
Board-and-batten-style wood paneling (painted Decorators White by Benjamin Moore) adds beach house architectural detail to formerly generic dry wall. In this dining nook, the lighting pendants are custom, and the chairs are from Hollywood at Home. The flip-flop ink drawing is by Konstantin Kakanias.
The expansive wall of windows lining this light-filled Hermosa Beach condo establishes a delightful illusion. "You feel like you're on the beach even though you're not actually standing on it," says the owner, noting that when she and her husband sit in front of their glass sliding doors, all they see is sand and sea.
The spirited stretch of shoreline is the same one that her husband, an avid body surfer, has frequented since his 20s. "There is an amazing parade of life here," says the wife, a network television executive. "Between the ocean and the interesting people, the scene is always changing."
Sliding glass doors replace the condo's ocean-facing wall, flooding the newly revamped space with natural light and revealing expansive views of Hermosa Beach. The rug is a Mongolian flatweave from Jamal's Rug Collection, and the surfboards are vintage.
