Brentwood home makes room for outdoors
FORMER attorney Sharon Bowman and husband Joe Fineman, a post-production film producer, are in love with their alfresco room -- in particular, its new retractable ceiling. The 25-by-30-foot space, formerly the living room, came about when Culver City architect Lorcan O’Herlihy designed a 2,000-square-foot addition for the back of their ranch-style home in Brentwood.
By relocating the bedrooms to the addition and reworking the 1960s floor plan into an open kitchen, dining and living area, O’Herlihy freed up the old living room for another use. “We decided it would be ideal as an outdoor room,” the architect says.
Today the space, sandwiched between the house and the garage, retains its original fireplace, clad now in a putty-hued stucco. A new pumpkin-painted door pivots open to seamlessly connect the remodeled home with the outdoors.
But it wasn’t until the couple added the sunshade that the area finally felt like a real room, Bowman says. The low-tech soft ceiling, designed by O’Herlihy and manufactured by Awnings & Beyond in Brea, is known as a slide-on-wire Roman shade. Three panels of weather-proof fabric are attached to galvanized wire that runs between the house and the garage. Parachute clips sewn onto the fabric clasp the wire.
“A crank handle hooks onto a round eyelet at the end of the shade,” Awnings & Beyond owner Efrain Duran explains. “You just pull them back and forth to adjust the amount of sunlight you want or don’t want.”
In addition to controlling light and temperature, the shade filters out harmful ultraviolet rays by up to 90%, protecting furniture and fabrics from fading.
At their frequent Sunday salons, Bowman says, up to 60 guests flow easily between the indoor and outdoor living areas.
“Mostly, everyone gravitates to the outside,” she says.
Bowman generally keeps the shades closed so they can use the room at all times. The sunshade comes in handy in the wintertime as well, when she and Fineman like to sit outside and have their evening cocktail by the fire.
“The soft ceiling helps keep in the warmth,” she says. “It makes it very cozy.”
Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects, Culver City, (310) 398-0394, loharchitects.com. Awnings & Beyond, Brea, (888) 832-5326, awningsandbeyond.com. Landscape design by Dry Design, Los Angeles, (323) 954-9084, drydesign.com.
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