Case Studies

Designer Shannon Ggem reached out inviting us to visit her home interior remodel project on a cliffside overlooking the ocean in Malibu. The existing doorway was framed by a stepped concrete arch with uneven measurements around. Shannon's intention from the beginning had been to tile the entire thing with Mexican Talavera tiles to relate to the existing tiles on their front steps but given the regular sizes of tiles, any installation would emphasize the irregularity of the spaces, where some tiles would not even fit.

Our solution was to create a mockup of the doorway to place the tiles, making tiny imperceptible adjustments to scale and the space between them so the grout spaces and tiles would appear to be uniform. We researched Mexican Talavera tiles and shared traditional patterns and colors with the client who chose their favorites which were then placed into patterns. A scaled template was created and traced in place, where each tile was primed and painted by hand, with faux highlights and shadows on the "grout" areas at the end to give the illusion the tiles were real, fired ceramic tiles. The final received a UV coating to protect the work outdoors.

Repeat clients with a 1920's Spanish revival home in Westwood wanted to replicate an original 1920s stencil and glaze treatment on original cabinets in their breakfast nook, onto cabinets in the kitchen.

The existing finish was a stencil done in the 60s over layers of thick paint with a heavy ambered polyurethane overtop which had deteriorated with age and use, so the cabinets needed to be sanded back and repainted. The clients made clear that their goal was to restore and maintain any of the original natural elements of the original cabinet doors. These had an interesting wood grain that appeared to show through on the original cabinets so we decided to fully strip them.

During this careful, tedious process we also stripped back two painted steel produce drawers and discovered original hardware placement which would be followed with the new hardware. New hardware was cast replicas of the original 1920 brass button catches and balls. A full week of sampling and trials with different combinations of base coats and glaze colors was necessary to match the original cabinet colors. Samples were finalized, approved and supplies ordered. The stencil designs were recreated as vector files using Adobe Illustrator and these were used to laser cut mylar stencils. Doors were painted with thin paint to maintain texture and appearance of the wood grain in centers of cabinets. Traditional stencil application included use of paints, extenders and a variety of stencil brushes to softly pounce out the pattern in the right intensity with correct levels of translucency over the glazed doors. The process was repeated with the built-in cabinets in the kitchen and everything was given multiple coats of a protective clearcoat. The hardware was replaced, and old doors were refitted and finished.

A client originally commissioned an owl mural for her home in Sherman Hills, then moved to a new modern home in Culver City and wanted them moved to the central two-story grand living area. The old owls were digitally placed in a Photoshop mockup of the new space and new ones commissioned to fill the new, larger space.

The process for the originals and new birds was to prep the substrate — in this case, pellon with 6 layers of white acrylic paint — then hand draw, varnish to protect, and trim the actual owls in the studio. Installation involved placement by taping and marking where each would go, then taking them down, applying strippable wallpaper paste, and burnishing each into place with a thorough cleaning.