Mar Vista Residence
Mar Vista
A remodel and addition to a 1,600 square foot 1950s bungalow in Mar Vista, Los Angeles, for the stylist Kate Brien Kitz and the photographer David Kitz, who bought it in 2019. The covered porch became a new living room, the attached garage became a family room with a primary suite added, and a skylight over the staircase fixed the darkness of the original house. The bungalow already carried Craftsman and Japanese influences, including a traditional tokonoma, and the remodel worked with that character: as much of the original red oak floor as possible was kept, the new materials were held to concrete, oak, Douglas fir and stoneware tiles, and the garden was planted for drought tolerance by Mary Lange and Molly Funk.
The build ran through the pandemic, and Dwell told it as a budget story when it published the house as Mar Vista Residence in November 2021: timber for the living room ceiling took six weeks to arrive instead of two days, and the staircase the couple had wanted in Japanese joinery was built in plain drywall once the joinery moved out of budget. AHA Design files the house under Kitz-Brien, after its owners. The published photographs are David Kitz's own, so the house was shot by one of the people who live in it.
Andrew Hall, AHA Design
Andrew Hall runs AHA Design, a residential practice working from the Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles. Its work is houses, kitchens and accessory dwelling units, most of them in and around Los Angeles, from Mar Vista and Santa Monica out to Topanga and Joshua Tree.
Design Andrew Hall (@ahaandd) of AHA Design. Interior design @lafayette__studio. Construction @mallisworkshop. Photography @davidkitz. Story @theturquoisepen. Home of Kate Brien (@_katebrien_) and David Kitz (@davidkitz). Seen via @dwellmagazine.
The picture comes from this post on Instagram.
Researched August 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.