A dilapidated 1920s cottage in a San Diego beach town is returned to its former campy charm, with a lot of modern black-and-white motifs thrown in
Life-changing days often begin unassumingly. It was a typical Monday morning in 2015 that shook up the lives of Ross and Alexis Garrett. Ross, president of Surfline, was working from the couple’s home in Cardiff, California. Alexis, an interior designer (alexisgarrett.com), dropped her boys off at school, where she ran into a friend who had recently relocated to California from Australia. While her friend was recounting a weekend of house-hunting ventures, she revealed that a particular ramshackle 1920s Tudor made her think of Alexis. It was located just 10 minutes away in a surf town called Leucadia.
That was enough to prompt Alexis to ask for the address and punch it into her phone. “I’ve always loved old things,” she says, admitting she was immediately struck. “I got really crazy. I called my cousin Lanz, who’s an agent, and said, ‘find out everything you can about this house.’ ”
Over the course of the next few hours, Alexis found herself writing a letter to the sellers, asking her mother for a bridge loan, hiring a babysitter for Henry (now 10) and Conrad (now 7), and, with Ross and her cousin Lanz at her side, attending the final open house that was, coincidentally, scheduled for that afternoon.
“We get to the house and for whatever reason, Ross and Lanz are exploring the house by themselves and I’m exploring the house by myself,” says Alexis. “I walk into the house and I’m weepy. Four hours ago, this was not on my radar—what’s going on?”
When they met up in the dining room, Alexis composed herself enough to ask Ross his thoughts. “I was fully expecting him to say, ‘I’ve got to get home, I have a call in 10 minutes or what’s for dinner?’ ” Instead, he took her arm and said, “We have to do everything in our power to make this our home.”
Why the sudden leap? Ross and Alexis met nearby at the beach when they were in high school and started dating a few years after they finished college. Soon into the relationship, Ross decided to buy a simple 1950s tract home in Cardiff that, frankly, was a handful. “It was seriously disgusting, and I loved it so much,” says Alexis. Instead of movie and dinner dates, they worked on the house, grinding down old tile and sleeping in a tent in the backyard. “We did the whole thing ourselves.We painted it and everything,” she says. And when they married under the trees at Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve, they held the reception in their backyard. “We lived in that house for nine years. We had multiple additions and renovations. We loved it, we brought our two babies home to that house.”
But by 3 p.m. that Monday, Alexis, Ross, and Lanz were huddled inside their Prius, strategizing over their offer. They wrote the number down and then they waited.
After two sleepless nights, they received a call Wednesday morning: Their offer had been accepted with no contingencies, just a 30-day escrow. Later that day, Alexis called a real-estate agent friend and asked, “How quickly can you sell our house?” By the following Monday, they had a full-price offer with a 25-day escrow.
All the while, the state of their new 2,000-foot acquisition never made them flinch. “It wasn’t hard for me to see the potential, but we were given a two-inch binder from the inspector,” says Alexis. “I will never forget, as he handed over the binder, dust in his hair from the numerous crawl spaces, and sarcastically saying, ‘nice house.’ It was so gnarly,” she admits. “I must be risk-averse, because it didn’t scare me one bit.”
While the first phase of the house was dedicated to addressing safety issues, the next pressing issue was painting the house white, inside and out. Equally important was creating contrast, so they used a moody dark stain on the original pine wood planks.
Given there’s no insulation and the redwood walls are only about two inches thick, they need to layer on puffy jackets and UGG boots around the house in the morning. Fittingly, they dubbed their glorified tent “Camp Burgundy” and decided an adult summer-camp look—Pendleton blankets, vintage pennants, and hooks everywhere—would best capture the feel of the home.
The name also played into their poignant decision not to alter the house, despite hiring an architect to explore the possibilities. “Believe me, it was fun dreaming about the potential,” says Alexis. “But nothing felt quite right. Ross and I felt sick to our stomach about changing the scale or the charm of the home. We didn’t use any of the drawings and we started brainstorming. If I was able to build and design the home in the 1920s, what would it look like?”
The kitchen looks out into the sprawling yard through an original pair of diamond-paned windows that swing open. Although the couple resolved not to expand the kitchen, its poor state did compel a total demo. During its reincarnation, they pulled together classic details to capture its century-old spirit, from white bat and board walls to a generous farmhouse sink and a checkered floor. To breathe air into the space, they swapped upper cabinetry for open shelving, where Alexis stores bulk foods and new and vintage dishware. Paint in Chantilly Lace; benjaminmoore.com.
One day shortly after they purchased the house, Alexis’s aunt appeared at the front door carrying an old cardboard box. Inside was the floral toile chandelier that hung in the home that Alexis’s parents shared before they divorced. “Even though my parents didn’t stay married, I imagine there were sweet memories lit by the light of that chandelier,” she says. “And now, every night at 6:30, my family shares a meal under it.” Riviera Side Chair, $238; serenaandlily.com.
“Although painting the home white was a nonnegotiable for me, it took some serious convincing for my husband,” says Alexis. So she compromised, agreeing to keep brushes off the dark wood beams that stretch 20 feet across the living room and off the original faded-brick fireplace façades. She admits Ross was dead-on about the beams, but the bricks only lasted a year. “I was counting down the days,” she says. “I can’t resist white brick.” Plants; landmarkplantco.com.
Instead of setting up a television, the couple installed a retractable projector screen among the living-room ceiling’s beams for family movie nights. The high ceilings also permitted displaying two collectible longboards: A Pignar (a collaboration between Michel Junod and Thomas Campbell) and the wood board shaped by Ellsworth Booth circa 1930.
Alexis was second-guessing her pairing of marble counters with subway and hex tiles in the master bathroom as too trendy. Then she shrugged it off and ultimately went with her gut. “I wanted the finishes to be the backdrop, not the main event,” she says. “I love to layer rugs, artwork, and lighting. This is the ‘wow’ in a room and those things can always change when you are feeling tired of them.”
“My favorite treasure in Conrad’s room is a giant painting of a marlin by my aunt,” says Alexis, who comes from a long line of commercial fishermen. “She gave it to my parents as a wedding gift and it hung in our living room when I was a baby. Somehow, the painting found its way into my grandparents’ basement. It lived there for almost 40 years until I grabbed it and hung it on Conrad’s wall.” Pari Rattan Daybed, $998; anthropologie.com.
Alexis designed Henry’s space with a timeless black Jenny Lind bed and a stool as a bedside table. The bedding includes a simple blue-striped duvet that she purchased in multiples (preparing herself at any given moment—she says—for a Sharpie Pen incident). She sewed the pillows from her aunt’s hand-me-down bandanas and the curtains are made from vintage linens. She also added new built-ins for displaying books and miscellaneous treasures. Then she and Henry painted the art together. Nyponros duvet cover and pillow cases, from $30; ikea.com. Jenny Lind Twin Bed, $499; crateandbarrel.com.
Based on the space’s hot pink tile and granite countertop, Alexis speculates that the boys’ bathroom was remodeled sometime in the 1980s. The look was a nonstarter, so she gutted the room in an effort to restore it to its original era. That meant supplementing the existing wardrobes with built-in drawers, swapping the counters for a restored sink, and adding an antique mirror, white hexagon floor tile, classic light fixtures, and plenty of hooks. Satellite Sconce, $170 and Metal Bell Shade, $58; both schoolhouse.com.
Ross and Alexis share a philosophy that every object in their home should be useful and beautiful. An old chest outside the master bathroom—positioned under a collection of sun hats—was plucked from an estate sale. Ross lined it with cedar and now they use it to store the family’s sleeping bags.