Homeowners purchased the home (see below) in December of 2010 for $839K. The home was a marketed as a teardown, a fixer in desperate need of TLC.
So the homeowners, a couple moving from the Los Verdes area of Rancho Palos Verdes, hired local architect Doug Leach to design for them a new home in the Spanish vernacular. The plans were approved in May 2011 and several months later, work began.
As you can see from the photo above, the house was going to either be Spanish or Italian in style and it had a reverse C-shape layout, with a central courtyard. In my earlier post, I had written that I hoped it would maintain some architectural integrity to either style. If Spanish, that it would be white, with appropriate trim details. If Italian, that it wouldn't go overboard with stonework and too much ornamentation. Well folks, the home is nearly complete! And it doesn't look terrible!
You can see from the photo that the house has what some have called the 'Santa Barbara' style, mixing the white plaster-y stucco with the teal blue window trim and wrought iron accents. It is still a few weeks from completion, so I'll reserve final judgment until then. But so far, looks promising. I do think the windows in the room above the garage are too narrow/large for the space - they should be shorter. But again, let's see how this all shakes out in the end.
Notice that the front entry leads to a courtyard which is open to the west (see arrows below).
Given the size of the lot, I suspect the courtyard comes at the expense of the backyard. Oddly enough, if you look at the aerial photograph at the beginning of the post, the 1952 2,233sf ranch home that this Leach design replaces also had a small western-facing courtyard and a very small rear yard.
Stay tuned for more on this later.