In Fun News for 2025: We Bought a New (Well, Old-ish) House!

If you enjoyed seeing what we did in our last house, then you’ll L-U-V this time around!

After selling our “Big House” (an hour outside of Los Angeles) three years ago, we rented a house at a near-ish beach for a year.

That beach rental was old and ugly and you won’t find pictures of that here on the blog because it was just a rental. We quickly determined we were never going to buy it. Therefore we did nothing with it!😊

BUT it was huge in confirming the direction we were moving, which was more coastal and less inland. (Really, so much is all going back to where we started in life…)

Then we got the chance to LEAVE that beach area to live & work abroad for a couple years, so we went and did that (read “How We Accidentally Circumnavigated the Globe As a Family” for the summary!)…

Long story short: towards the end of our time abroad, we knew an agent back in southern California and through word of mouth discovered our “ideal” house came up. Thus, we spent some unexpected hours coordinating calls to LA while we were in Sri Lanka and boarding a plane in Bangkok…

PS: Trying to share the phone with your spouse to talk/listen in order to make final offers and negotiations for buying a house with your agent in the U.S. while you’re literally boarding a plane with your children in Asia, holding one ear to try to talk on phone while they’re making loud announcements in Thai…that was a new one!

While there were several offers in on it (ours was NOT the highest, we came to find out later)…we still got the house!

For better or for worse, we got the house.😂

(Like the near-incredible story of how we actually bought our last house, things like that = “meant to be” for Jess and lessen any panic.😅 I always have a temptation to panic when buying a house because it feels so permanent [and you know Jess doesn’t like to feel tied down]…then I just remember how you can always sell a house again, as we’ve done over and over…then I’m cool again.😅)

It’s all about location, location, location…as you shall see… 😉

We’ll be sharing more as time goes on but it’s one of our FAVORITE areas of southern California, outside Santa Barbara where Jess has Spanish family history going back to the 1700s, which is fun and a little funny to think about — after all this time — ending up around here…

As a little girl living with my grandma for periods of time, she’d often take me with her for long visits to my great-aunt’s house in the Montecito hills overlooking the ocean and surrounded by the timeless architecture + landscape design that, were you to open up my DNA, you’d find the sights, feels and even smells of embedded in there…

Anyone remember all the olive trees, agave, and citrus I added (without thinking about why) in our last house? Yep, there’s a tiny peek at my subconscious…

But now, as an adult with my own 40+ years of experience in design around the world blended with these things, will I (Jess) be blending my own style of California Beach + Spanish style?

YOU BET YO’ BRITCHES I WILL BE!💃🕺

And when my design clients have wanted this kind of style, here are just four peeks at what we’ve done in the past (the few we actually had time to write about!):

1. Small Modern Mediterranean Backyard: New Client Project!
2. 21+ Smart Spanish-style Wall Art Ideas (to Add Depth & Character to Your Room)!
3. Sneak Peek: Modern Spanish-Style Client Backyard!
4. The 12+ Simplest Plaster Fireplace Surround Ideas to Ease Your Eyes!

If you’ve been to Santa Barbara even once, chances are you understand why there are so many good photos of it to set the mood of this area of California for everyone. 😉

So much Spanish architecture…yet we’re clearly in Southern California…

With this much inspiration everywhere, I am FULL of design ideas…

…and Matt and I have already been busy drawing up architectural drawings of future changes from even before we made offers on the house, to make sure our changes would be worth it! THIS IS WHAT WE DO FOR CLIENTS, and now we’re doing it for ourselves again…😅

THE NEW BEACH HOUSE PLAN

“What Changes Will You Be Making To the House?”

First, right out of the gate, are things like…

1. An AWFUL fireplace situation I’ve told Matt we’ll need to rectify immediately before moving in as I’m pretty sure my brain will actually cease to function if I have to cohabitate with it there.😂 Everything else I can live with. (And no, we will definitely not be painting it! It’s beyond that kind of help!)
2. The floors…what will we do about the floors…big decisions!
3. Many of the rooms are so dark…photos don’t do it justice because those’ve been lightened for sale pics…so what will we do?! (It will be different than what we did with white!)
4. Let’s not get Jess started on the bathrooms but I HAVE THINGS TO SAY. 😉
5. Kitchen is probably the best area (contrary to the last house’s kitchen which was the first thing we did) but…eh…you’ll see…

Next…

…see our game plan for The Beach Casita!

Or you can check out “Our (Original) Modern Beach House Ideas!” from three years ago while we were in our other beach house rental closer to LA, further south…

…although I’ve developed and matured those ideas after the past three years of even more design experience with clients and projects, so…no matter which direction(s) we go in and new solutions we’re coming up with, we hope you’ll have as much fun watching what we do with this house as we’re already having fun planning it! 🙂

PS: If you’re not already on our Insider’s List (it’s free and you get our Design Guide Free there as well), you’ll want to sign up there and not miss a step of what we do! Our ideas are even more thoughtful and upgraded from what we did in The Big House a decade ago — so while those were awesome, we’ve learned even more since then!😍