“I love our neighborhood,” says Courtney Bates with a big smile. She lives near the Silver Lake Reservoir, one of the most sought-after areas in Los Angeles. “There’s always a lot of activity,” she continues. “You’ll see people out running, walking their dogs along the loop. The water attracts a ton of wildlife. From our yard, we see great blue herons and migrating geese overhead, and coyotes trotting through the streets. It feels like this secret pocket of nature tucked into the middle of the city. It’s also incredibly walkable—just steps from some of the best restaurants and design shops. I really did luck out.”
She shares the home with her husband and their beloved (very elderly) Weimaraner. “We’ve lived here for over a decade and have always loved our house, but it was terribly overdue for an update,” she tells us. “We wanted a proper kitchen, a real primary suite, and a dining room large enough to host holidays. We both work in creative fields, mostly from home, so rethinking our workspaces was important too. I’d lived here long enough to know exactly what the house was lacking, and the goal was to fix it all.”
Professionally, Courtney is the principal designer at Courtney Bates Design—so naturally, she chose to design the house herself rather than hire an architect. “It gave me complete creative authorship and helped with costs,” she admits. The footprint of the house changed significantly, adding 1,000 square feet. “Because the home sits on a corner lot, I had to navigate a unique geometry puzzle filled with funky angles that had my brain overheating. Few of the rooms are true rectangles, and many sit at 45-degree angles relative to the rest of the house.” As a result, the finished plan was far from cookie-cutter.
Most important to the designer was preserving the most precious elements of the original structure. Details like the plaster walls, the Magnesite stairs, and the original floors all stayed intact. “We were able to source the same oak slats and weave the new flooring into the original, so the transition between old and new is completely undetectable,” she shares. “It has one foot in the 1930s and the other firmly in the now. A previous flip had stripped the house of its original charm, so it was really important to me to return it to its era and stay true to both the architecture and the spirit of the neighborhood. I also designed five new archways to echo the home’s original character—they feel like they’ve always been there. Friends who knew the house before often can’t even pinpoint where the original ends and the new begins. I consider that high praise.”
It was no small feat. Courtney redesigned the entire house in 3D, drafted elevations, detailed cabinetry, laid out lighting plans, selected every material, and even taught herself how to manage grading and drainage for the landscape. “It was complex, but incredibly educational,” she admits. “I came out of it with a deeper understanding of both construction and design and a new level of confidence in my ability. I wore every hat on this project—designer, planner, project manager, and client. It was a beast—but it’s my proudest project to date.”
The entire thing took about a year and a half, start to finish, and she considers it “done” to an extent. “But is any designer’s home ever really done?” she laughs. “It’ll be evolving forever. I already have plans for more built-ins, exterior pergolas, decorative shutters—maybe even an outdoor movie screen. The list is always growing! My husband says being married to a designer is like living in an ant farm that gets shaken up every few months.”
Take the tour in the slideshow.
