You’d never guess that Sarah Sherman Samuel’s reaction to the Palm Springs-area A-frame she now owns was horror. Horror directed at, of all things, the bathroom. “It was a windowless black hole made even darker with black tile, black-and-gold foil wallpaper, a black toilet, and exposed stone that made it seem like you were walking into a cave. And the lights weren’t working,” recalls the designer and blogger. “I literally felt scared to walk in.”
The rest of the 1,100-square-foot house was no great beauty either. Tinted film on the lofty triangular windows conspired to hide the Sonoran Desert views, and the whole place was very, very brown, from the walls to the carpet to the painted wooden beams. Still, Sarah and her husband, Rupert, an advertising production executive, fell head over heels for the home’s iconic architectural style. And they saw promise in one ingenious little trait: skylights along the very tip of the “A.” “Natural light is one of the main things I look for in a home,” says Sarah. “I knew that if we brightened the place up with white paint, the light coming in from all the windows would bring it to life.” This was the only property the Venice Beach–based couple saw while house hunting in their favorite vacation town—and a major fixer-upper to boot—but they snapped it up.