“I wanted to deliver a home that was move-in ready for a family, just bring your luggage!” explained the owner and creative vision behind the transformation of 834 South Tremaine in Brookside.
The owner is a local resident and an accomplished animation designer/producer who’d also renovated and sold eight homes over the years. About five or six years ago, he relocated to Brookside from Toronto where he’d been living and commuting to LA for work for years. The leafy neighborhood reminded him of his childhood neighborhood outside of London. An old house fan, he told the Buzz he took on the project when he saw it come on the market in 2020, excited by the opportunity to restore the house.
“In 1923, this house would have looked substantially different,” he told us. “It’s been substantially changed over the years. My goal was to reinvent the house in a way that felt honorable to its 1920s past, but bring it into this century for the way we live today.”
The owner turned to another Brookside resident, Greg Roth, a senior interior designer, also trained as an architect, with Home Front Build, a design and construction firm, to realize his plans for the house. Home Front Build, has extensive experience doing historic restorations.
“We are very good at being able to work in the style but bring it up to the standards of how we live today with more openness, light and greater functionality,” Roth told the Buzz. “We do projects all over the city including nearby in Larchmont and Hancock Park.”
“The owner was very focused on details and creating unexpected moments in the house,” said Roth. “We were excited to work with him to flush those ideas out and bring them to fruition.”
A small closet, or cloak room, is an example of such a moment. Formerly a tiny powder room, it was converted to a more functional closet, just right for stashing backpacks, bags, shoes, etc.
According to Roth, a lot of engineering when into the project to achieve the owner’s objectives of creating a large great room with kitchen and family room and a master retreat for the adults upstairs with a master bedroom and bathroom suite and balcony.
Much of the back of house was completely rebuilt with steel beams and new footings, though the originally footprint didn’t change, explained Roth.
“The reaction from the neighbors has been completely overwhelming which I am not the least bit surprised by,” Loren Dunsworth, a Brookside neighbor who is representing the house and invited us for a preview last week told us this morning. “As you know I live right across the street and I have watched this labor of love come to life over the last 18 months. I have seen most of the houses in Brookside and I think this is by far the loveliest house in this area. The attention to detail is bar none. As a Brookside resident I could not be more thrilled that they have maintained the 1920s charm of the home, even to a great degree enhancing many of those details.”
