Our latest home profile: Forget the HGTV talk of "splashing" those walls with "pops" of color. For fashion designer David Meister and talent manager Alan Siegel, pure bliss is nine shades of gray: five on the walls, two on the ceiling, two more on the trim. The ode to earthtones creates a serene escape and allows the emphasis to stay on views, art and the colorful personalities inside (and yes, that is the toiletries drawer in the bathroom, below). Check out the full article or the 18-image photo gallery.

And keep reading for their interior designer's advice for picking the right shade of gray ...

 
Every Monday, we post a new home whose design is presented in the designer's or the builder's own words. This week:

Designer: Curated, Santa Monica, (310) 828-6417. Principal designer: Delta Wright. General contractor: Stephen Apelian, (323) 804-3400.

Location: Beverly Hills Post Office area, Los Angeles

Designer's description: In the renovation of this Beverly Hills-area home, we transformed a dated and awkward structure into a func­tional, modern home for a young family with two children. By eradicating kitschy ele­ments from the existing '60s building and '80s addition, and by revising the facade and demolishing and editing the interior architecture, we created a home that exudes modern warmth and style. 

We use color for strategic effect, exploring spatial progressions with complex neutrals. In this case, we used warm whites and cool grays to subtly underscore these shifts. A large-scale canvas adds vivid color to gallery-like spaces in the dining area. Wood finishes throughout received a palette of rich stain from espresso to ebony. We expressed the walls of the kitchen in shades of gray and black to separate it from the adjacent living room.

In the photo at top, a cream-colored chair from Nickey Kehoe complements the bentwood and leather coffee table from Thomas Hayes Gallery. It was important to temper the new concrete floors with wool and silk rugs. We selected this one from the Rug Company for softness and sheen.

To see more of the house, keep reading ...

Shopping for a kitchen from Viola Park, the lower-priced offshoot of custom cabinetmaker Henrybuilt, used to require using a "configuration tool" on the Seattle manufacturer's website.

Not any longer.

Now, customers can shop for cabinets, countertop, backsplash and island at the company's first showroom in the L.A. area. Conceived as a middle ground between Ikea and high-end designers, Viola Park has modular units that can be used in a range of configurations. A typical kitchen order costs $15,000 to$20,000, excluding backsplash and counter.

8650 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood (across from the Pacific Design Center); no phone yet

-- Lisa Boone

Photo credit: Viola Park

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Our latest home tour: A former doctor's office gets a much-needed face-lift. Though the building is gutted and remodeled into a modern residential retreat, the couple who call it home bring back vestiges of the building's former life. The result: an L.A. look with a shot of eccentricity.

Read the article, and see the 15-image photo gallery.

Photo credit: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times

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This Flying Carpet from Spanish designer Nanimarquina isn't so much a rug. It's an environment.

It's also part of a Plushpod sale running through Wednesday. All Nanimarqina rugs are 25 % off. The wedge and rug pictured above, regularly $1,635 to $3,070 depending on size, are reduced to $1,226.25 to $2,302.50.

All MAT the Basics rugs are 30% off. The fun and affordable line of handmade shag and hand-tufted wool carpets are regularly $250 to $4,600.

Plushpod is at 8406 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, but sale prices are available to online shoppers as well.  The discount may not initially show, but the store says the lower price will apply at checkout. Questions? Call (323) 951-0748.

-- Lisa Boone

Photo credit: Nanimarquina

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Join us on Facebook, where we have pages dedicated to home design in the West and gardening. Yup, Twitter too.

Every Monday we post a new home whose design is presented in the builder's or designer's own words. This week:

Architects:William Beauter and Jess Mullen-Carey, Make Architecture, Los Angeles. Project manager: Kathleen Dahlberg. Project team: Sachie Fujimori. General contractor: Gallegos Construction. Structural engineer: John Labib & Associates, Los Angeles

Project: 1,200-square-foot remodel and 600-square-foot addition

Location: Manhattan Beach

Architect's description: Often the easy road seems to be to demolish the existing structure and start from scratch. This approach, however, is typically very wasteful since many of the existing materials will not be possible to reuse or recycle.  With a little clever thinking and understanding of how buildings are built, remodeling (when well considered) can be much more efficient in attaining a client's goals, respecting the budget and being environmentally responsible.

Working with the client, we assessed her needs and set in place three criteria: Work with what exists, retain elements that still work and reuse elements where possible. Kitchen and dining areas were undersized for the client's lifestyle and were a major component driving the project. Now kitchen, dining and living spaces are stacked at the front of the house, by sliding doors that open to the crisp ocean air and views.

Before and after photos are shown above; to see more details of the remodel, keep reading ...

Not enough in your budget for decorating?

Interior designer Summer Baltzer is not buying that.

"It doesn't have to be about money," says the host of HGTV's series "Design on a Dime." "People aspire to emulate magazines and automatically assume they have to spend a lot of money. It's not about that. It's about designing a space that feels like you."

How does that translate, exactly? On Saturday, Baltzer presents "Design Trends for the New Year on a Budget" at Jerome's Furniture in Corona.

Baltzer will discuss bold colors for 2011. ("I can tell you that purple and a very saturated pink are not going to work for everyone," she says.) She will talk about designing with perhaps a musical genre or nature in mind, not a big budget.

"Add new artwork or inexpensive paint," she says. "Take a piece of clothing and make a pillow. Reconcile yourself to the fact that you're going to get creative, follow your heart and don't worry about it." 

OK.

Baltzer is appearing as part of Jerome's J Club, a free program that brings designer resources to customers via events, e-mailed tips and in-person consultations. Jerome's will give away a $250 gift card and a one-on-one design consultation with Baltzer after her presentation Saturday.

Baltzer encourages customers to bring photos of problem spaces to the event.

"I always invite people to bring pictures in," she says. "I am more than happy to help with any design questions on the spot."

Check-in begins at 12:30 p.m., and Baltzer's presentation is at 1:30 p.m. The store is at 3615 Grand Oaks, Suite C-1, Corona. Customers are asked to reserve a spot online. Questions? Call (866) 633-4094.

To see the kitchen shown above before Baltzer got her hands on it, keep reading ...

Every Monday, we will be posting a new home whose design is presented in the builder's or designer's own words. This week:

Architect: Anthony Poon, Poon Design

Project manager: Bryan Bethem, Poon Design

General contractor: Alex Cage, (818) 261-9305

Landscape architect: Jim Matsuo, (818) 352-4779

Location: Encino

Architect's description: Our clients are an energetic, world-traveling couple. Jacob Stein and Yunna Barats came to Los Angeles in the mid-1980s separately. Jacob, originally from Moscow, and Yunna, originally from Riga, Latvia, met in Los Angeles and married shortly after. 

Prior to their California move, they lived in their respective 200-square-foot apartments in Stalinist buildings. They sought a house that was economically designed, environmentally sensitive and strategically created to give a sense of space, purity, luxury and Southern California indoor-outdoor lifestyle.

The architectural inspiration came from their eclectic interests, combining artwork and collectibles from their travels with the Zen-like simplicity of Japanese design and the warm modernism of 1930s Scandinavian design.

Their long search for home resulted in a great find: a 3,300-square-foot midcentury home, neglected but with good bones. The property is set at the end of a long private driveway off a cul-de-sac. Because entertaining with family and friends was important to the clients, the open floor plan was opened up even further.  Most of the walls in the public areas of the house were removed, connecting the living room, dining room, family room, kitchen and entry. 

Keep reading to see more photos and details on the house ...

Web traffic does not lie. At year's end, the numbers reveal which home profiles best captured and kept online readers' attention. Could a drag queen's Highland Park hideaway really prove more engaging than the Frank Gehry house in Brentwood? Why, apparently so.

Because galleries posted in January have more months to collect hits than galleries posted in November, we have organized the results by season to level the playing field. Keep reading to see how the homes stacked up ...

Our latest home profile: A 1905 bungalow and 1912 rental on the same lot get remade into a single integrated design. In the new second-story master bedroom, above, the slatted ceiling echoes the pitch of the old front of the house, seen across a catwalk. And up high, under the skylight? A loft with ipe-wood-wrapped bathtub. We've got:

An 18-picture photo gallery.

Debra Prinzing's full article.

Keep reading for Prinzing's sidebar on the home's modern garden design ...

Los Angeles residents who are considering installing solar panels have an incentive to act quickly: On Tuesday, the city's Board of Water and Power Commissioners approved changes to the Solar Incentive Program that will reduce rebates starting Jan. 1.

The Department of Water and Power's present rebate is $3.24 for every watt installed. A 4-kilowatt system, for example, would receive a $12,960 rebate.

In 2011, that rate will decline to $2.20. That same 4-kilowatt system will see its rebate drop to $8,800 come Jan. 1.

Further reductions -- to $1.50 per watt and, ultimately, to 60 cents -- will roll out as time passes and the utility meets goals for home-generated electricity.

The DWP has been deluged with applications for residential solar rebates since 2009, when the U.S. Emergency Economic Stabilization Act kicked in, replacing a $2,000 federal tax credit cap with a dollar amount equal to 30% of the installation cost. The average residential solar system costs between $35,000 and $40,000.

L.A. homes generate 22 megawatts each year, far less than 1% of the 25,000 gigawatt-hours used in the city annually.

In 2007, California Senate Bill 1 set $318 million as the amount that the DWP should allocate to help homeowners pay for solar installation through 2016. The DWP budgeted $30 million annually to residential solar rebates, but this year's applications have pushed the rebate requests to as much as $70 million. The utility's decision to decrease the rebate rate beginning 2011 is an attempt to stretch the program's funds through 2016.

-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: A solar panel. Credit: Maurice Tsai / Bloomberg

The clock is ticking on Ikea's 40%-off countertop sale. The discount runs through Nov. 28 and applies to all in-stock and custom counters including granite, acrylic and quartz, when purchased with any kitchen order of at least $2,500. That applies to cabinets, cover panels, hardware, appliances, sinks, faucets or Rationell interior organizers.

Custom counters can be expensive, even at Ikea. Someone who wants Caesarstone quartz may find that it's the priciest single item in an Ikea kitchen remodel. Granite counters can range from $54 to $96 per square foot. 

Custom countertop selection varies by Ikea store.

-- Lisa Boone

Photo credit: Ikea