When Sean Famoso, cofounder of LVRN Records, started searching for a second home in Los Angeles, he knew exactly what he was—and wasn’t—looking for. Having grown up in a Craftsman house in Atlanta, he was set on finding a midcentury with warmth and character rather than a minimalist white box. “I wanted a house with a soul of its own,” he says.

When he put in a bid for a 2,022-square-foot Hollywood Hills home built in 1950 by architects Armet & Davis, he initially lost out to another buyer. But as luck would have it, the two-bedroom, three-bathroom house went back on the market almost immediately—albeit for an additional $200,000. Charmed by its floor-to-ceiling views of the city and the ample surrounding parking, Sean swooped in to close the deal.

Sean envisioned the house—which he calls “Before Brentwood”—as his final bachelor pad before he ultimately settles down in a tony L.A. neighborhood a bit farther west. He commissioned Christopher Cahill of CASC Design Inc. to knock out the wall between the kitchen and the dining room, but he left the original layout largely intact. “My biggest pet peeve is when people find the most beautiful home and modernize it beyond belief,” Sean explains.

To sensitively update the interiors while capturing a sense of his personality and lifestyle, Sean reached out to Thayná Alves and Taryn Echeverry of local studio The Curator. The designers leaned heavily into natural, layered textures to create a sense of intimacy within the open plan. “Throughout the house, you’ll see lots of clay and plaster,” says Alves, pointing out the earth-toned Moroccan zellige tiles and tadelakt countertops in the bathrooms and kitchen. She hand made the cobalt-blue kitchen pendants out of papier-mâché for a robust touch of contrasting color.

Alves and Echeverry applied an earthy green limewash to the walls and ceiling of the lower-level den and painted the brick fireplace a charcoal to create a cozy space in the otherwise light-filled house for screening movies. The room has a low, custom built-in bouclé sofa inspired by a conversation pit Sean saw in a Paris hotel, plus a recessed bookshelf to hold his father’s record collection. Glimmers of Sean’s personality show through in the custom light switches, which resemble the chunky knobs and switches on vintage music equipment, prints of Gordon Parks photographs, and framed movie stills.

“The den is the darkest room in the whole house, which is really nice. You can close the blackout curtains and make it a movie afternoon if you want.”
—Sean Famoso, resident

Sean finds that his days move according to the sun’s path through the house, starting with a lie by the pool in the gentle, early morning light after a trip to the gym. From there, he says, “you chase the light as the day goes on,” migrating from room to room. The intense midday sun makes for productive hours in his office, which has a swiveling L-shaped desk that can accommodate his music equipment on one side and space to write on the other. If it ever feels too bright, Sean can always retreat behind the blackout curtains of the den.

“The big goal was incorporating Sean’s personality and lifestyle into the house and bringing in a natural, wabi-sabi feel that’s perfectly imperfect.”
—Thayná Alves, designer

Because glass walls tend to feel dark at night, the designers installed a dozen lighting cans between the living room’s ceiling beams, allowing Sean to control the color and intensity of the ambience after the sun goes down. “The dopest thing is at nighttime—no matter how dark it is, you’ll see the reflection from the pool on the bedroom ceiling,” he says. “It’s like your own personal mosaic.”

Project Credits:

Designer: CASC Design Inc.

Interior Design: The Curator

Builder: AJK Construction

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