Nicole Heininger had long dreamed of
designing a house in
Manhattan Beach, California, where she could raise a
family. So in 2017, when she and her husband, Taylor Heininger, began having
children, they started hunting for a teardown close to the ocean.
اضافة اعلان
“We were looking for a property where I could do
something ground-up, both as a showcase for my design work as well as a space
we could call our own, 100 percent,” said Nancy Heininger, 40, founder of Est.
Collective, an interior design firm.
She and Taylor Heininger, also 40, who works in
finance, had remodeled a handful of homes in the area, but they felt they could
create something better by starting from scratch. The real estate market was so
competitive, though, that it took them a year to find a 0.036-hectare lot with
a two-bedroom bungalow on it, which they bought for $2.2 million in October
2018.
For the first year, they rented out the bungalow as
Nancy Heininger began designing its replacement in collaboration with Anthony
Laney, an architect and founding partner of Laney LA. But if any of Heininger’s
acquaintances expected her to use the opportunity to run wild with decorative
flourishes — or to borrow some of the more expressive details used by her former
employers, including Roman and Williams and
Kelly Wearstler — they were bound
to be disappointed. Heininger remains a steadfast minimalist.
Her focus on simple, clutter-free living stems not
only from her appreciation of the calming, refreshing atmosphere of such
spaces, but also from grieving for her father.
“Almost 10 years ago, my father passed away, very
tragically, from a mental health issue,” Heininger said. “I had to go to his
house and clear out all of his belongings, which was a moment to reflect on
things. He had worked so hard to acquire and accumulate all these belongings.
And in a moment, they were essentially worthless.”
Since then, she has been wary of amassing an excess
of anything — including clothing and furniture — and is focused on making sure
that every item that comes into her home is necessary. But even in the absence
of stuff, she hoped the house would exude character.
“I was trying to create something that had a bit of
nostalgia, a bit of modernism and minimalism infused with Old World charm,”
said Heininger, who cited older Spanish colonial homes in Los Angeles and spare
Belgian interiors as influences.
When she shared this vision with Laney, he was
immediately excited. “We do a lot of custom homes, and it’s pretty common that
our clients will have a desire for individual expression that is a bit louder,”
he said. “But her aesthetic is just so calm and tranquil.”
Together, they created a 371sq.m.. two-story home
formed by a series of connected boxes with a courtyard at the center. They
minimized exterior ornamentation by coating these volumes in off-white stucco,
but added a simple cornice and arched windows with divided lights along the
second floor, in “a nod to a more classic approach to designing a house”, Laney
said.
Inside, Heininger mixed large-scale, timeworn
antiques and modern furniture with unfussy materials. The living room, which
has a concrete floor, is centered on a weighty, 19th-century French limestone
fireplace mantel that sits above a void: There is no fireplace, because
building regulations would not allow for a wood-burning one and Heininger
thought a gas fireplace would look out of place.
The kitchen has cabinets with slender, painted doors
that stretch to the ceiling and open with hidden finger pulls instead of knobs.
A large island topped by thick Arabescato Vagli marble separates the cooking
area from the family room, where built-in cabinets conceal clutter. Both the
family and dining rooms have sliding-glass walls that open to the courtyard,
which was designed by Jones Landscapes.
A ribbon-shaped staircase curls up to the second
level, where oak flooring offers a warmer feel underfoot in the home’s five
bedrooms. In the primary bedroom, Heininger installed a low upholstered bed
from Rove Concepts and used chunks of weathered timber cut from reclaimed
pilings as nightstands.
Because there is no trim to hide messy workmanship,
all of the architectural details, including the reveals that separate the flush
baseboards from drywall and the drapery tracks integrated into the ceilings,
had to be perfect — which took time, patience, contractors, and deep pockets.
In total, the house, which was built by Denton Developments, cost about $3.2
million and was completed in April 2021 after about 18 months of construction.
And what about the challenge of keeping such a
spartan interior spotless with two young children — Grey, 5, and Elle, 3 —
routinely tearing through it? The extensive hidden storage makes things
relatively easy, Heininger said: “Everything gets put away at night. We have
built-in storage everywhere and places to hide things in all rooms.”
During the week, when all the toys are tucked away,
“you would never know a child lives here”, she added.
But on the weekends, when the contents of the
cabinets get dumped on the floor, it’s a different story: “You would absolutely
think a bomb went off”.
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