[music playing]
RAILI CLASEN: I have a family of surfers,
so we needed to create a space that encompasses that.
The Pacific Ocean is cold most times
of the year and this needed to be the sanctuary
where they came home.
This space had to work with sand, saltwater,
doors open, sunshine, all that.
I took everything I could and I poured
my heart and soul into it.
So this little enclave on this side of Costa Mesa
was built in about the '50s.
Where we are in Costa Mesa is such
an awesome spot because we can get down to the beach very,
very quickly.
And at the end, there's the infamous wedge where the waves
get 20, 25 feet and everybody goes down
there when the waves go off.
[music playing]
I've owned our cottage for probably over 20 years.
It was the first house we bought,
and it was just a very amazing cottage that had a lot of soul.
I remember way way way back when, you know,
we were pretty close out of college,
didn't have a ton to spend.
But when I walked in here, I mean,
we made an offer within 30 seconds.
Just walking in and that feeling, it was there.
This house is very different from what it was.
It was a kid family house.
We crammed a lot of people and dogs and us into it.
We have a family of five plus two dogs lived here.
It was 1,100 square foot house.
Then I became in the design world,
so we started flipping houses, and we'd move
in, fix them up, and move out.
So this is the one house I have not sold over these years.
I very, very much loved this house.
There's a great soul here.
I can't even describe what it is.
But it just feels so good.
So the reason we're back here is because we are empty nesters.
We just sent our last little 6 foot 5 baby to college
and it was time to circle back.
Now that the kids were gone, we could kind of
fit back in the small house and remodel it out a little bit
of square footage.
This was the very first home that we bought,
and when we came back to remodel it, we completely gutted it.
We now have kind of rethought how we live,
and I just love the idea of coming to a place
where there's things to do--
sit around a fire, play some games in the front yard,
the smaller house works great.
Again, going back to the whole coastal tie-in,
we created a pier-like or like kind of the boardwalk you
see on some beach communities.
We want it to feel like that's what we were
walking on up to the house.
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And once you open the door to this house,
it's so small that you automatically
see the living room, the dining room, the kitchen,
and out to the back.
It's that small.
The entryway is the house.
So right away you get this feeling that it's casual,
it's lived in, it's got some really cool little fun
design moments.
You get the sense of people that love the ocean and love to surf
and live here.
And so when we walk in I got these two vintage lights
to give you a sense of a hallway,
even though there's not a hallway.
And at this point, you are either
going to the kitchen, down the halls to the rooms,
or you have a living room.
So even though you see all the different areas,
this is kind of like our virtual hallway.
And then here is the first thing I bought for the house.
I didn't know where I was going to go.
I thought it was super random, but I just--
I loved it.
It reminded me of being in like the movies a long time ago,
and that was your exit sign.
And it's just a little playful.
I did not go out searching for a vintage light.
It came upon me when I saw it.
I like it and I don't know why I like it.
And I just get it and find a place for it later.
[music playing]
So the way that we use the space now that we're empty nesters
is we entertain a ton.
We constantly have people over, which
is why we turned one of the bedrooms
into a full-service bar.
Once I got everything installed in here,
I wanted this part of the bar with all the glassware
to come alive.
So this was a totally natural place for me to put that
like shocking pink in there.
This becomes a place for people to come,
meet here, and go surfing.
It's just been a great social spot for us
in this part of our lives.
When you have a family of surfers like I do,
nothing can be too precious.
I don't want floors with no imperfections.
I don't want furniture without imperfections.
If a surfboard makes a dent in the floors,
it's not going to be a big deal.
Outdoor showers, we have a cedar hot tub for post-surf sessions.
So the outdoor space has really had to be a welcoming station
for coming out of the water.
[non-english speech]
Thank you.
The California surf culture has this moment of weathering.
And I think that as a designer you've
got to be careful that it doesn't look like somebody
abandoned the house 50, 60 years ago
and didn't pay attention to upgrading it or bringing
it to the next level.
So I think natural woods are a huge part
of that California lifestyle.
And then pairing that with clean paint-grade cabinets
and fresh white paint all pulls that whole aesthetic together.
So here's the infamous teen room.
Well, this is now a guestroom because he was away at college.
I love using plywood.
Plywood is the ultimate coastal cottage wood.
There it has a little bit of a scandal vibe
too, so I wanted to bring in the plywood and a built-in cabinet
as well as do a feature wall that the bed goes on.
Since this is a true surfer kids room,
someone that loves the water, someone that's very casual.
It's young.
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And now the primary bedroom and bathroom.
So the house originally ended right here.
So this was just one very, very, very small bedroom, and then
that was the end of the house.
So we sort of tore this apart and added
on the rest of the square footage
we pushed it into the backyard.
And then this is the primary bath,
and here we have the infamous mustard bathtub.
I always feel like everything in a room needs a friend.
So if you're going to do some crazy bright color,
you better have it somewhere else also in the room.
Just maybe in a pillow, maybe it's
in a little tiny stripe detail.
The wallpaper and the tub and the rug and the bedding,
they're all happily married.
So the color palette for this house,
I did not want to use the same color throughout,
but what I do love is picking a color and doing tones.
So for instance, greens, a great one, blues, a great one.
Starting with a navy, and then it has a sister,
maybe it's a stack of lighter blue plates in the same tone.
I just love how the same color works
together in different tones.
It's my description of colorful, even
though there's only one color.
Yep.
That looks good.
Oh, great.
Are you kidding me?
That moment where you realize the soul of it.
I know that sounds so strange, but I get it.
Like when I'm walking up to a beach cottage I just know it,
I feel it's like this is old, it has stories.
I look at the space and I imagine it with people in it
instead of just how it's going to look.
But you get the sense that this is like we're
going to have some fun here.
There's the bar and then we're going
to go out and sit by the fire.
We're going to play some cornhole.
We're going to sit around the hot tub.
I see people's eyes when they come in here
and they're looking around like, OK, OK,
what should we do first?
These little details start bringing
in stories and old thoughts.
And I've never been in a house where
I haven't been looking at the real estate
section for the next move.
And this one I can't imagine wanting to be anywhere else.
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