[music playing]
I always feel more inspired and creative
after spending time here.
There's something about it.
You just feel like a kid again.
You're giggling when the water comes and hits you by surprise.
It's the best feeling
[music playing]
This house came up at really just a perfect time.
I kind of think it's my child, like the creaky floors
or the wind blowing against the walls and making kind of shake,
I mean that's life.
It's just part of its being.
I nurtured it.
And as a result of it.
I think it gave me new life.
[music playing]
We are in Hollywood beach, which is one of the beaches
that makes up Channel Islands.
The area is just it's very calm, very quiet.
We're just surrounded by a lot of nature.
The house is about 50 steps away from sand.
We always call it like 50 barefoot steps
because there's no reason to put shoes
on when you're right there.
When you come to the house, the first floor is our garage.
And you go up the steps and you go immediately
to the sleeping quarters.
The living quarters is on the third floor
to take advantage of the view.
[music playing]
[whooshing]
I was born in the Philippines.
And I came when I was eight years old.
So definitely an island girl.
I've always loved being by the ocean.
My father grew up in a little fishing village,
so I was always near the beach there, and never would
I've thought to be able to afford a home.
[music playing]
We weren't looking for the house.
A friend of ours posted a view from the house on his Facebook.
The house is really nothing to look at.
My husband felt the same way.
And it was even worse than we thought.
Everyone wanted to take it down--
demolished.
Every person that came in with their contractor,
contractor was saying like, no let's start from scratch.
But I really thought there was really
great bones in the house.
It really spoke to me.
I didn't need to reinvent it.
I just needed to show people what it had,
what its potential was.
We didn't want to change the house.
We wanted to just bring it back it's life.
[music playing]
Before this, I owned my own company in motion graphics.
And we worked with a couple of really big entertainment shows
but it just became too monotonous
always doing the same thing.
And so I was really in a creative rut.
You kind of always felt that you had this one job that you
trained to be and that was going to be it
for the rest of your life and then when you hit a wall you're
sort of like left in a panic of like,
what am I going to do now?
So we went ahead and we got the house and we started working.
And it became this creative project
that I hadn't had for so long.
It allowed me to do what I wanted to do,
to see what the life was in this house and bring it out.
It was magical for me.
[music playing]
So the color, I don't really know the name of the paint
because we kind of went custom at some point.
I just wanted it to feel like the ocean.
And so for me when I look out there
it's not really just a clear blue ocean.
It's definitely has tinges of green.
So it just is a way to reflect parts
of the neighborhood, parts of the environment
without like completely copying it.
[music playing]
When you enter the house, you are entering straight
into the sleeping quarters.
And kind of feels to me like a ship keeping the sleeping
quarters on the second floor where it's just more
quiet and less distractions.
And then the living quarters would be up on the third floor.
The story that we were given when we first bought the house
was that it was an upside down boat.
I feel like it's capsized but yet it's still able to survive.
And I love that you can hear the ocean from outside.
It feels like you are in this ship
and you just feel like you are part
of the adventure of this house.
We have these beautiful wood beams
and they were painted this putrid green.
So we stripped it and we just put a natural finish to it.
I mean, why would you want to cover it?
It's one of those things where it's like just let it out
let, like show its true nature, show its true beauty,
and people will finally see that they've always been there,
you just weren't looking.
The kitchen actually stopped right here.
And so there was only one room for one person.
My husband comes from a large family,
so gathering around the kitchen was really
important so we expanded.
The kitchen now consists of the old kitchen
and the dining room.
A kitchen shelf should have as much personality
as the rest of the house.
So I like to put the paintings there, the decorative pieces.
They're not in the weigh at all but they
again, add to the story of this area.
All the pieces in the house are pretty much vintage.
I wanted the house to feel like everything in it grew with it.
A lot of the things that I have were bought from the swap
meet or from the flea market, all very local.
I kind of like that idea that things used to be here
or could have been here and now it's found its way back.
I really didn't want to follow a trend.
I didn't want the house to be what other people thought
a beach house should be.
I wanted it to be me.
I wanted it to be my husband, my kids.
I wanted it to speak about us.
I was born in the Philippines.
So I really loved the idea of incorporating
things with an Asian--
Asian history to it.
I also have a mix of Japanese blood.
So again, that is all about me and the house
is not only telling its story but also
my story and my families.
My parents came to this country when I
was eight, built a life for us.
So traveling here makes me remember what they sacrificed,
what they did for us, what I've been
able to do because of them, and then what
we want to do for our children.
This is something that we want our family to continue to use.
I feel like I've done what my parents wanted me to do,
which is have a better life.
You know, that's what they wanted us to do
when we came to this country.
And what better life than to be able to be in this house
that you love, be surrounded by nature,
be surrounded with your family, like this is the dream.
So this house is my dream.
[music playing]