Caitlin Villarreal felt vertiginous the first time he entered the rent of Whitley Heights, a 1926 Mediterranean style attic in 1926 with high ceilings, wooden beams carved by hand and a pair of arched shelves along with a large chimney.
“He had good energy,” Villarreal said about the 1,500 square feet apartment that rents for $ 5,300 per month in a historical neighborhood where Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin and Bette Davis lived. “He is simply standing year after year. He has 'Old Hollywood' windows from floor to ceiling that open unexpectedly as in movies. He doesn't feel like a rent. He feels like a home forever.”
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Even after three days in cleaning ashes and soot after the devastating fires of Los Angeles in January, Villarreal said he was the happiest he had been in years. “That is the magic of this house,” he said when his 2 -year -old British Shortorta cat, Zuse, snuggled elegantly in a velvet chair that he bought at the sale of Liquidation of Gramercly Park Hotel.
“I want my home to be a sanctuary,” said Caitlin Villarreal, with Zuse, from his Whitley Heights Penthouse with Hollywood views.
Villarreal, co -founder of Lola & Veranda, a luxury organic bedding subscription service, works in his house at home illuminated by a glass spider lamp that he bought in the invaluable application.
After 20 years in New York and five in Weston, Connecticut, Villarreal, who grew up in Granada Hills and attended the crossroads School in Santa Monica, is delighted to be at home in what she calls her divorced oasis. “The last three tenants, including myself, were going through a divorce,” he said.
And despite going through difficult changes in his personal life, he feels an effervescent joy to find the perfect place to land. “This neighborhood is all that I didn't know it could be,” he said about Whitley Heights, which is in the National Registry of Historical Places. “Walkable, warm, social, moving like a crow that tolerates crows, decadent and surprisingly green and delicious.” It is also at a short distance from one of the most emblematic reference points of Los Angeles. “I just bought seasonal tickets for the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl,” he said with emotion.
Everything in the living room is “prelocated”, including zuse the cat.
The majestic 42 -year -old attic is the 42 -year -old entrepreneur home, but is also the seat for his fourth startup, Lola & Veranda, a luxury organic bedding subscription service that co -founded.
Fooded by a new mantra: “I want to live,” the apartment with reused goods, sales of goods, flea markets and the invaluable application of online auctions has remodeled. “I don't buy new,” he said about the habit he developed in Connecticut during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I will never look back.”
His new apartment, he said, could not be more different from his six -bedroom house in Connecticut, than she and then husband bought during the pandemic. “My Weston house was a modern and minimalist box in the forest,” he said.
The 1926 Penthouse galley kitchen retains its era charm.
His Los Angeles house still feels modern but with a touch of eclecticism. Colorful textured carpets in the purple, blue, orange, pink and red mixture with handmade ceramics, art and elegant glass coffee tables. The fluff carpets are placed in bathtubs and in phantil chairs of Philippe Starck Plexiglas, and in the dining room, Villarreal has combined a emerald green marble dining table that found in the decojois based in Los Angeles with vintage black leather chairs and a lid of cowburous cebas of the bullshit market of the bullies of the bulls of the mongers.
In Connecticut, Villarreal's kitchen was equipped completely in matte black “as a MoTnokine notebook.” His modest galley kitchen in Los Angeles retains his lovely seasonal tiles and high -handed cabinets that reach the 14 -foot roof. A simple white and birch cabinet of Ikea serves as its island. There are no dishwasher, washing machine and dryer. “I couldn't matter,” Villarreal said. “I don't cook.”
Villarreal's bedroom presents more art, modern furniture by Carl Springer from the middle of the century that he inherited from a friend and bedding Lola & Veranda (of course).
With a talented eye for lighting, Villarreal has installed declaration pieces throughout the apartment that add warmth and drama, including a brilliant 40 -inch disco ball that illuminates the living room as a disco. A delicate green glass pendant in his room that he found in invaluable reminds Morocco, creating a feeling of intimacy and connection with his space. A coral crystal spider lamp in its office hangs, attracting more attention to a room that could otherwise be ignored. He has also discovered the beauty of cheap and elegant lighting. “You can transform any room and make a gallery look for less than $ 20,” he said. Significantly improving the appearance of the interiors, Villarreal installed wireless LED spotlights in his art work and his rechargeable battery movement sensor lights under the kitchen cabinets that are lit when he enters. The key to adding heat, he said, is the addition of dark orange gel filters Selens. “It is what photographers use.”
There is no television, but if you want to watch a movie or watch a series, you can eliminate its projector of portable nebula Mars movies of the copper pan, where it is stored at home and view: the living room is transformed into a projection room.
Villarreal does not cook, but she can ask for pizza.
Shortly after returning to Los Angeles, Villarreal became a regular in Mickey Hargitay plants a few miles away and has filled the apartment with huge trees in ceramic pots, giving the rooms a bohemian sensation. This mood is especially pronounced in the living room, where a ficus tree in the center of the room gives a low Roche Bobois Missoni Mah Jong Sectional, pillows and Ottomans. “It's about resting,” he said. “This space will only get softer over time.”
The exuberant reason is taken outdoors to the kitchen deck, where the palm trees of the hillside, the bougainvillea and the citrusions provide shadow for the table and the dining chairs.
Regarding art, Villarreal said that “it drops pieces without rhyme or reason on the floor and finally hangs them. Art should not fight their space to be seen or shout to the frame next to peace and tranquility,” he said. “When it works, I am not a collector; I am an addict of the sale of goods, which makes it much less serious.”
The fireplace is flanked by arched shelves.
The Villarreal flea market finds.
The most surprising thing about Villarreal's apartment is that you would never know that he moved recently. The carpets, lighting and interior plants can be new, but the attic feels lived and familiar, as comforting as his beloved Zuse, who made the walk back to Los Angeles with her. “I had a lot of help from Taskrabbit,” he said laughing.
In addition to being a refuge for divorced, the apartment has celebrity credit: “There is a fair opportunity that Stevie Nicks lived here in the '71,” Villarreal said about the glamorous history of the apartment. (He also appeared in the New York Times house and garden section in 2011.) The last tenant, an artist, lived in the apartment for six years. “People tend to stay here,” he said. She plans to do the same. “They will have to take me out of here.”
The original bath mosaic has been preserved.
The 1926 bath is frozen in time.
How made his historic Hollywood rent felt like his home forever
- “Install its large anchor and furniture plants in second place.”
- “Do not be afraid of high bright paint; it is a change of play in small and shocking spaces such as stairs and bath ceilings.”
- “Buy art that loves, then strain respectfully.”
- “Save Target for 'small things' to fill a space and go to flea, or spend an invaluable hour.”
- “Shit and bath rental cuisine? Get a great hardware that is unexpected, and voilà! An impulse of two weeks after Botox.”
- “Textures: The more, the better.”
- “Trays and coasters: more texture, more forms and less coincidence. It is becoming chaotic here, but it works.”
- “Pre -elevated: this whole house is prelvated with findings for the sale of goods, gifts and auction findings.”
- “Lower to the floor: the lower, the better. The roofs of the cathedral double as art, and the huge dead center occupies a lot of space.”
Zuse capitalizes a photograph in Villarreal's room.
Hollywood views at dusk.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
