From nightmare to cultivated nest
NESTLED in a quiet enclave of Los Angeles’s historic Miracle Mile — set among an array of similarly landmarked, early 20th-century properties — is a quintessentially charming Mediterraneanstyle home that, like its newest steward, got a much-needed fresh start.
“After she bought the house — basically sight unseen — it became a can of worms,” says New York and Palm Beach interior designer David Lucido of his client’s 3000-square-foot, three-bedroom, twoand-a-half-bath dwelling.
“Not only did the house need major cosmetic changes in terms of the layout and flow, but there was asbestos and mold, and there were termites — and it needed a new roof.”
But for Judith Martin, a French-born marketing executive who relocated from New York for a lifestyle reboot, the property and its location were ideal.
“What’s always been important to me is to find homes that have soul, and I could tell immediately this one was special,” explains Martin.
“I first saw it through a Facetime call, and there is a (video) recording of me seeing it where my face just lights up!
“After she bought the house — basically sight unseen — it became a can of worms.
“Over the decades, several previous owners created something of a hodgepodge with weird flooring, mismatched windows, and the addition of a spiral staircase that ran through the middle of the living room,” Lucido explains.
“So when I take a project like this, it’s important to me to honor the original architecture of the house and give it an authentic, era-appropriate feel.”
According to Martin, the last owner had lived in the home since the 1980s, and every room was stuck in a different decade.
“Honestly, the bathroom was straight out of Scarface,” she says.
With a mutual appreciation for preservation and a shared vision for restoring the home’s original integrity, Lucido endeavored to create an environment that reflected his client’s international — yet laid-back — aesthetic while paying appropriate homage to its history.
“Her background in the South of France really influenced the project’s furnishings and material choices,” he notes of Martin’s unique upbringing: Her mother, Cécilia Attias, was married to former French president Nicolas Sarkozy at the time of his election in 2007, making the homeowner his onetime stepdaughter.
So it’s somewhat apropos that the home is located in an area once dubbed “America’s Champs-Élysées,” for a time when the wealthy began flocking to that stretch of Wilshire.
“She didn’t want it to feel too fancy, or lean too traditional or overly contemporary.”
The coveted neighborhood’s enduring legacy aside, Lucido was tasked with making the home both functional and comfortable.
As part of the remodel, he removed the obtrusive staircase in the living room, replaced the mismatched flooring downstairs with period-appropriate terra-cotta tiles, repositioned—and replaced—windows in the kitchen, and resurfaced elements like the fireplace, which had been badly redesigned in the 1990s.
“She didn’t want it to feel too fancy, or lean too traditional or overly contemporary,” adds Lucido.
“So I straddled the line between different styles and eras with an indoor-outdoor sensibility.”