Montecito Transitional House

Life is never easy and falling victim to a natural disaster can be nothing short of painful. Mix in a battle with an insurance company to recover your expense to replace every last possession, while managing the associated emotional trauma of what you’ve experienced. This sets the appropriate stage and mindset of shell shocked clients at the beginning of the Montecito Transitional project. On a dark rainy night in a matter of minutes, the lives of these clients were changed forever by the Montecito mudslides of 2018.

Nearly 4 months after this monumental catastrophe, the clients began the search for a new place to call home. In a housing-starved market after more than 400+ homes were entirely wiped away and washed to sea, they found a new place to begin rebuilding their lives. Upon closing escrow on this old and tired home, the clients’ charge to “knock Grandma’s finishes right out of this place”, started the quest to fully gut, rearrange and remodel an outdated home located in the hills of Montecito. This charge served as our mission to fully restore not just the home, but the lives and future of a well deserving family who had recently lost everything but hope and perseverance.

The scope of work required the replacement of every last finish within the 60 year-old home, a reconfigured floor plan to make better use of the existing footprint, and creative alterations to repurpose some of the home’s original features. Strategically placed steel windows, indoor and outdoor masonry fireplace, antique timber beams, and cladded key walls with Santa Barbara Sandstone were some of the many additions made to blend a sense of modern design balanced with a few reminders of old world timeless charm. An updated lighting design that was controlled by a new Lutron Homeworks control system, paired with a home automation system by Savant, helped to bring the home into the new millennium. Significant floor plan reconfigurations and structural changes were made to give this home’s layout a more open flow and sense of space for this active family to live and entertain. The formal dining room was transformed into a cozy family room which now functions as the home’s central hub. Large awkwardly shaped walk-in storage closets and tight corridors were reconfigured and repurposed to increase the size of the clients’ “his and her” office spaces, while adding a home Spa with a massage room and dry sauna. The relocation of exterior steel windows and wood doors helped to maximize the views of the golf course, exterior water features, and the newly re-landscaped property.

As with most projects within this exclusive neighborhood, the greatest obstacle became the race against time. As the client’s insurance clock continued to tick, the construction team found themselves in the crosshairs. Tightly pinned between the demands of a high profile client at the mercy of an insurance company’s timeline to pay for temporary housing and at the mercy of three separate governing agencies waiting on approvals for construction to start. Ultimately, this project’s completion schedule was completed within 8 months, 4 months ahead of original projections, which made for an extremely happy client! This timeline would not have been realized without the effective communication and coordination efforts made between the clients, vendors, tradesmen, and collaborative design team, all led by the construction team.

Upon project completion, the clients could not have been happier. After a year of grief marked by the loss of their former home, their physical possessions, and their sense of community, they were thrilled to finally move in and restore their longing sense of being “home” again. The original mission to contemporize this tired dwelling was accomplished by giving new purpose to newly created space, which allowed them to put their mark on each room to reflect a piece of those who will occupy it for years to come.

This project is proof that a good home can be efficiently restored to be just as beautiful as building new, with far less expense and a much shorter duration. With great design that shares a bit of the past with a touch of the future, this home will remain timeless well into the next generation of those lucky enough to occupy the home.