Silver Lake House

The Silver Lake House is a remodel of an existing two story 1903 residence into a three story house, with a separate lower level 1200 sf rental unit. Due to its prominent location on top of a hill the redesign is taking advantage of potential existing views by creating three outside spaces: an upper level  kitchen patio facing the street, an upper level deck toward the garden, and a roof deck.  The kitchen patio serves as an extended outside room with the framed openings toward downtown Los Angeles, the garden deck with access from the master bed room and the living room overviews Griffith Park, Hollywood, Century City and the entire Wilshire corridor, the roof deck provides 360º views toward downtown, the Pacific Ocean and the Los Angeles adjacent mountain ranges. The light stucco colors in the kitchen patio and entrance proch enhance the theme of outside rooms versus the dark charcoal stucco of all other outside walls. A main design element is the staircase, which leads from the entry porch to the upper level kitchen and dining room to the roof deck, and it serves as a chimney to provide natural vertical ventilation. The subfloors and most wall studs of the original 1903 residence got reused and reclaimed, and the old brick footing  was used for landscaping and walkways. With construction cost of $116/sf, this 3,400 sf house got completed in August 2009.