Inside a Traditional Home with a Colorful Point of View | House Tour

Hi, Homeworthy. I'm Karen Millay. Welcome to our home in Brentwood. Come look around. You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. I'm Karen Millay, and I'm an interiors photographer. Welcome to our home. This home, it was actually built in 1954, and it has a little bit of interesting history too. But what first attracted us to this house was its traditional lines. And I really particularly love Each room has a distinctive character to it. Each is a specific room unto itself and it really makes it I think a lot easier for decoration and also for entertaining too. I just really am drawn to traditional aspects of architecture. As I mentioned I'm an interiors photographer so I shoot magazine stories for House Beautiful, Traditional Home and All the rest. So I work with designers and architects all the time. So when it came time to decorate our home, I leaned on my very, very good friend and longtime client, Joe Lucas of Lucas Studio, who also has the store Harbinger in L.A. And honestly. Joe is in every aspect in every room he and his team picked out all the things and We just said yes and trusted him which Trusting him was the hardest because you know you'd see the table of fabrics all laid out like how does this even go together? I don't understand and then he's like just just trust me this goes here. This goes there a pink coffee table really Oh yeah, it'll be fine, it'll work with the rug, and sure enough, it all came together. We're so happy. It really, really feels like home. Dan and I were actually married up on the terrace up on the hill. We call it Sunset Terrace. It was a very small wedding with our family, just our immediate family. And then afterwards, we had a reception down on the brick terrace. We took all the furniture and put it in the garage and then rented a big, long table. It was really an elegant, lovely, just cozy, really, evening. And, um... It's pretty special to live in a house where you also exchange your vows. And you know, I can sit in my office with the Dutch door open and look up at that terrace and remember that day. And I do that pretty often. It's really poignant, a wonderful thing. This house is special for a lot of reasons, but that's number one. and now going into like the main area of the living room where we spend most of our time originally we had the larger sofa that was by the window but one of my favorite things is to be able to put the christmas tree in the window so one night dan moved the furniture all of it and we needed a smaller sofa so joe designed that for us so we have the smaller sofa with our Peter Dunham fabric. Again, Peter's a friend, so it's so nice to see our friends everywhere we go. And this little stool is from Harbinger, but it's covered with fabric from Joe Ruggiero from Sunbrella, who was my old boss, and it's fun to see him there, too. And we've got the curtains. Dan actually picked out the fabric. I took him to Hollywood at Home, Peter Dunham's amazing showroom, Thank you. I said he looked at all these fabrics. I wasn't sure where he was going to go with it and he picked this one out and I think it's just perfect. We really love blue as you can tell. When I reached out to Joe Lucas about designing our home, I wanted it to be comfortable not just for me, But for Dan, my husband, I wanted it to be comfortable and really we just kind of need a new sofa and we needed some kitchen flooring, but you know, maybe some paint here or there. Well, I got to Harbinger and he had this big table all spread out like a big dining table. He had fabrics and wallpaper and all different kinds of details and pictures and things. And I thought that can't all be for us. I just came in for a sofa, maybe a coffee table, and some flooring. He's like, well, you never know. And slowly but surely, room by room, we got it all done. And it was everything he had on that table. So the coffee table, it's pink, but Joe Lucas calls it parchment or shell to kind of soften the pink aspect of it. And it works really well with the carpet as well. And there's just sort of little treasures here. Dan took us to a little family vacation. We went to El Salvador surfing, either surfed or learned how to surf. And the beach was called El Zante. So I took two rocks from the beach and wrote El Zante. And I have some other rocks that say Santorini from our trip to Greece. So little things like that. This little sweet table here. When we shot our house for House Beautiful, Joe brought that little table from Harbinger and I thought, oh, I don't need it. It's fine, you can take it back. I could not live without it. It maybe lasted two days back in the store and I had to go get it. So I think it's just a perfect little geometric accent and then it has little stones and some beach glass in there from Bayhead, New Jersey where we've done a lot of shoots for Joe Lucas. He's from there and it's one of my favorite places to spend time and also shoot. This plaid chair has, I've had it for a long time and at one point it had like a rocker on it, I had higher legs, lower legs, and so it's... It's just evolved over time, and it's still the original chair, which is new fabric and new legs. This piece here above the mantle is by my great-great-uncle, Francis Davis Millet, or Uncle Frank, as we like to call him. And he was an incredible artist who perished on the Titanic. When he died, he was working on the Lincoln Memorial Committee. He was the director of decoration for the Chicago World's Fair, the president of the American Academy of Art in Rome. He and his wife, Lily, started an artist colony in Broadway, England, and John Singer Sargent was one of their best friends, and Mark Twain was best man in their wedding. And I've had so much fun. discovering a little bit about uncle Frank. Dan and I and also my mom we've been to Broadway England a couple times and learned more and more about him. Of course he died way too early but he really gave me the idea that you can be an artist and also make a living and it can provide for you. He worked very very hard he did a lot of amazing things and it's It's really special to have some of his pieces in our home. Over here, sort of a gallery wall, if you will. This puzzle, this Norman Rockwell puzzle was the first puzzle Dan and I did together. So I framed it and there's Henry and Caroline when they were little kids and here's sweet little Webster. And my neighbor Mimi did these beautiful little paper art projects that you'll see around the house. And this is a little note from my dad who's not with us. A picture I took in Tanzania, I was there with the kids of Kilimanjaro, a lovely charity, our family crest. Yeah. Just an assortment of things. This is by Ryan Menealy, this lamp ceramic, and it spells out both in Morse code, which is a word that is very special to Dan and I. There's not Dan, there's Karen, there's both. And so we have it in two different lamps in our home. Thank you. We love it. This little lamp is special. Joyce McRae was the West Coast editor of House and Garden Magazine. She's no longer with us, but she had a beautiful little antique shop, and this is from that shop. And every time I light it, I think of Joyce and what an impact she made on our industry and interior design. She's a really special lady. This is one of my pieces. You'll see more of those. Family pictures here, one from our wedding day. This piece by Pierce Meehan is especially unique in that Pierce wants to know a little bit about you before you purchase a piece, and he interviewed Dan and I, and Dan grew up on a lake, and I grew up on an ocean, so there's two different colors of blue here, and we both love boats and have a bit of boating history. So there's a teak and holly stringer down the middle. So it's a special piece just for us. This cabinet is from Harbinger and I believe Joe Lucas found it in France. And it really adds a bit of character to our house and a little bit of depth and heritage, which we love. Welcome to our dining room. This is a, well, this might be my favorite room. I absolutely love it. The wall covering is Farrow & Ball with the Farrow & Ball paint that matches as well. It really transformed the room in such a big way. This is a piece that I photographed, obviously, at the Taj Mahal in India, and I thought it looked great here. It was here when the walls were plain, but then when we added the wallpaper that Joe picked out, It resonated just as well. My father was originally from Guatemala. There's little bits of Guatemala kind of everywhere, really, little napkins, little bowls, and things like that. And my grandfather, he made this bowl in Guatemala, and I brought it out. It just makes me think of him. I never had the opportunity to meet him, so it's nice to have him in the home. Funny enough, these are my dad's golf trophies. So if you turn them around, it'll say, you know, TaylorMade golf tournament, blah, blah, blah. And they really catch the light in a pretty way at night. It's a way of having dad here as well. So we do like to entertain. This is where we have Thanksgiving. Thank you. And honestly, I'm not the greatest cook, but I love to set a table. That's sort of my thing. So my husband's much better at cooking and true confession, sometimes we'll have a little help with cooking. So then that way I can relax and really enjoy ourselves. But I'd rather do, you know. Get this table setting, the napkins, the plates, get out the wedding china, layer it up, do the chargers, tablecloth, all that. That's sort of my favorite thing to do, get the candles just right. This table's interesting in that it wasn't originally the table we had, but we needed a new one. We needed a bigger one because we... Wanted to have bigger parties and I was photographing Joe Lucas's house up in Solvang and he had this great table and I said, I think I want that table. So he ordered one for me and now we have it here and we keep the extra leaves in it just so all the chairs can be accommodated and it actually is a great place for wrapping presents for Christmas time too. Now we're going to head on into the kitchen. So the floor in here is another fun story. Again, it's the same company who made Celery's tile that is in the office and it's called Mirth. And this is a geometric pattern that they have. The person who helped us lay the floor said it was rather intricate. There's A, B, C, and D and you got to get it just right. But I really love it. We get a lot of compliments on it And it hides a million sins. So a couple of years ago, Dan decided he would pick out some new paint colors for the kitchen because previously it was all white and it was really pretty, but We went to the paint store and he picked out this really cool gray and then he picked out this color for the island and it made such a difference. We really love it. This little green car I photographed in Florence, Italy and I was walking along the street with my mom past this car. Backed up and I said wait a minute I need to take a picture of this cute little car and it ended up being part of my art collection. This is honestly one of my favorite parts of the house. is this little door that leads into the laundry room with the chair rail up top and these are some blue and white plates that we have. They were from Joe Ruggiero, my old boss. He and his wife Barbara have a beautiful collection of blue and white and they had some extras when they were downsizing so I was lucky enough to to get those treasures. This table is a It's a classic from Design Within Reach but Joe Lucas paired it with these cool chairs with this fabric and we can get even another one around here and it's a great place for breakfast, but also we love it for dinner too. We can barbecue right outside and have the French doors open and then just have our meal right here, kind of an indoor outdoor feel. And it's interesting because... When we bought the house, the only way to get outside and enjoy the backyard was through a little door in the laundry room. And that just wasn't going to cut it. So we put in French doors. All along the back and a Dutch door in my office and now you can access the outside so easily. This is actually some of our wedding china. It's a bit of mix and match. I guess the mix part would be Kit Kemp's beautiful little creatures that she created for that that kind of china. So that's what we've got a mixture of this and that. So this house and the twin house next door and the house to the south We're built in 1954, but originally, we were all part of the Rita Hayworth estate. So the Monterey Colonial House, which is still there, beautiful, up the hill, it was Rita's house. That's where she lived. And before that, it was the home of Jesse and Bessie Lasky. And Jesse Lasky was the head honcho of Paramount Pictures, and some other celebrities have lived there too. But then Rita Hayworth lived there. And rumor has it that Humphrey Bogart would be skedaddling up our brick steps to visit Rita. So it was interesting when we first looked at the house my mom thought oh there's no way that she's going to get this house because of the hill and then I came away saying isn't the hill wonderful to me it was just like so magical one of my favorite aspects of the of the outside was this hill and then the the terrace that we call sunset terrace up there because you see can see We'll, we'll take you up there, but all this brick was here, however, As I mentioned before, the only way to get outside was this little back door, like a little milkman door, like a tiny little door in the laundry room. So we put in the Dutch door in my office, this French door in the den, and then there's also a French door down by the kitchen too. This seating arrangement, again I have to thank my husband and Henry. One Saturday they rearranged all the furniture. Dan had a concept that I was not understanding but it worked out really well. We used to have the dining table in the middle but it made more sense to have it over by the barbecue and over by the kitchen. So these two planters from Accents of France act as kind of like a little It's a little... You know, divider between the visiting area where you're going to sit and have a cocktail. There's two different places where you can do that. And then you continue on to dinner here. Usually we have things in the evening, so it's pretty and candlelit. And then there's also lights all on the hillside. And there's lanterns that hang from the trees as well, too. Let's show you Sunset Terrace up here. So this is Sunset Terrace. We can see the sunset. At night right here with the mountains. It's so pretty orange sky. It's really, really lovely over the roof line. And this is where we had our wedding ceremony. So it's really, really special to us. We've got a couple of chaise lounge chairs. Again, this is CW Stockwell's umbrella fabric. That's so cool. We only like umbrella for outside. It's really Great. We also have the awnings that are Sunbrella. It just doesn't fade. And in this intense heat, you really need that. I've made the mistake of not getting that before. And you need it. We have several fruit trees up here on the hillside, which is great. We actually really use them. We've got a big grapefruit tree behind me. We have a couple different kinds of lemons, lime. We've got a lemon tree down there. So it's really great to just be able to come outside, grab one off the tree, put it in your tea. It's perfect. After college, I did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I worked for my dad, he had a civil engineering firm, and I worked there for a while. And then I was like, I'm just not content. So I took a year of interior design, just at a junior college. And I loved it, but I knew I didn't want to be an interior designer, but I wanted to be in the business somehow. So I ended up by Divine Intervention getting a job for Joe Ruggiero, who is the editor-in-chief of Home Magazine. He's become like a second father to me. And I actually have several of his fabrics and furniture pieces that he's designed in the house too. He's still a dear friend. So that's how I really found that I loved interior design, working for the magazine. And then After our magazine was sold, I worked in Hotel Public Relations for 11 years, and I did a lot of photo shoots and took journalists on press trips and things like that. And I still had this love for the interiors. With all of our hotel projects, I always loved the hotel. We were doing the shoots for the guest rooms and etc. And I really didn't know if I could ever do the camera math. And, you know, I left that job. I'm still very good friends with my old boss and do photograph some of her hotels now. And I picked up a camera and I went back to Santa Monica College. They have a great program over there. And I had an assignment to shoot something like I would for a magazine. And I wasn't sure what I was going to shoot. And I thought, well, maybe I'll shoot my niece and her horses and do something like that. And my neighbor said to me, She said, why don't you shoot something you love? And I said, well, I love interiors. So I asked my friend Molly Isaacson, she's an interior designer, amazing interior designer. And I said, Molly, may I shoot your living room for a class project? So I did, and the rest is sort of history. I dropped out of school and started shooting interiors, and I'm so lucky that I get to see beautiful homes and interiors every day. So welcome to the office. This is where I spend a lot of time. And there are several friends in this room, let me tell you. Starting with the lattice work is Access to France, and that is by my friend Philippe Lemanac. And he does incredible lattice work for Hotel de Bristol in Paris and Versailles, you name it. And this room originally was an enclosed patio. It was part of the house, but it was all lattice. And when we made it into an office, Our architect friend, Scott Joyce helped us with that, and he said he wanted us to pass through the living room and into the office and have it kind of like an experience, and it really is that. And then Joe Lucas said, hey, let's not lose all that lattice work. Let's make it into cabinetry. So it is the file cabinets and the drawers and everything, and Philippe even measured all my computer equipment and got that set up, so it was really special. It's very special. The flooring is by Celery Kimball, and I was lucky enough to photograph Celery's book, her most recent book called Island Whimsy, which is all about her resort in the Dominican Republic called Playa Grande. And this tile is, this one's wood, but the actual tile, ceramic tile, is that Playa Grande all around the pool so i couldn't believe it when i went and i'm like oh my gosh here's our tile so i feel like i brought some Playa Grande home with us by putting it here in the office and again that was a Joe Lucas idea there this little pouf is from my dear friends at Bone Steele Trout Hall they were my second client and they brought it back from Morocco so i think of them when i look at that and then You probably recognize this iconic fabric by Peter Dunham called Fig, and I just had to have it. It's so special, and everybody loves it, and it's the cover of his book, too, which you may have seen in the living room. I don't know about you, but I love a bulletin board, and I've always had them in offices. So I have one freestanding, which is great, and there's all kinds of fun stuff on there. Joe Lucas said, hey, why don't we do cork in the back? We originally had a TV here, but I never watched it. I'm working. I can't watch TV. So we've had cork installed there. So I'm just starting. Dan went to art class and I put one of his pieces up there and I'm just starting. I have a little bit more climbing to do on this one, but it'll happen. This is really a multipurpose room. It is a den, a bedroom, an office. And honestly, one of my favorite rooms. I think the first room that we did, maybe besides our bedroom, Joe put the grass cloth on the ceiling, which I never would have had that idea and absolutely love it. Believe it or not, This is a Murphy bed, a queen-size Murphy bed that is the most comfortable bed in the house. It's got a memory foam mattress, the whole bed. It's not your typical Murphy bed. So that comes out, and then this bench becomes the footboard, and it's a great little bedroom. We've got a closet in here. And all that, it's just perfect. It's really great. And then another little cabinetry idea that Joe had was on either side, there's these little nightstands, if you will, that come out. And when you pull this down, there's actually a spot to plug in your phone too, in the bed. Great little detail he did. This sofa actually is Chris Barrett's fabric. So again, another friend here. This piece, you might not believe it, but it's Pipeline, the famous surf wave in Hawaii on the North Shore. And we were there, it was a family vacation, Dan and Henry and Caroline and I, and we got up early one morning and we went over to Pipeline to see the big wave surfers. But just Off to the side was this quiet area, so I got pictures of the big monster waves, but then this quiet, serene area off to the side, and a lot of people think it's a painting. It really was breathtaking to see in real life, too. Well this is the entrance to our house. Front door comes right in here and there's a few really special things in here to me. This is actually, my dad was from Guatemala and this is a little sketch of the hospital that he was born in. And then I paired it with my friend Holly Sharp. She got me this beautiful wind chime of shells that a real cool guy in Hawaii, where she spends a lot of time, made. And so I paired them together. And I think they're happy together. And then my old boss, Joe Ruggiero from Home Magazine, this is one of his, he didn't design it, but this was in his home and I have a pair. One's here and one is in the living room. And they remind me of him every time I look at them. And he knows it. He knows that I have them here and it's special to both of us. So these are some special pieces to me. These are actually prints of some of my Uncle Frank's pieces. This is actually called the Cozy Corner. And my mom and I actually found this exact tavern in the Cotswolds where he painted this. So that was really, really special. I took a picture of it. And then this is a shell collection that I've done. I'm done. One Saturday, I went into my mom's house in Newport Beach and I got all of their shells and I dumped them all out on the kitchen table and I started photographing them together like in little pairs and created a little series of shells. So I just paired them all together. When we first bought the house, it was New Year's Eve and I didn't have the house yet. But I parked across the street and it was nighttime and I was looking through the front door and this lantern was lit and I could see it and I could see the shadow that it made and I was so, it made me so happy that, you know, we were going to be living in this house very, very soon after that and I kept it because of that special memory. I work with a lot of different interior designers and architects too and as you know a lot of them have furniture and fabric lines and we have a lot of them represented here. For instance, Chris Barrett, she did the fabric on this chair here in the living room and it happens to be the David chair which is one of Joe Lucas's designs. We have Crane Home which is Sharon Lee's. Fabric on pillows. We have C.W. Stockwell over here on different pillows and also upstairs. There's also Kelly Ventura, who is a beautiful artist and she does incredible paintings of flowers and so forth and she does them on fabrics and we have those on the bed upstairs. We call this room the hideaway and it's kind of an extension of our bedroom in that our bedroom is sort of like the light blues the light purples and then this is a darker aubergine and a darker blue and again we have this is um crane home on the walls and we've got CW Stockwell on the pillows again just people I know in the industry who are super super special. This was a piece that I shot in Pompeii and it turned out to be one of our favorite places to visit. We learned so much there and you know these cubes we all you know kind of jot them and doodle you know making a cube but this is like the original math you know of how how they figured it out they were so smart back then and I just loved the palette of it was so pretty. Oftentimes When we're somewhere that I want to photograph, Dan will be talking to the tour guide and then I'm like, you know, falling behind taking pictures. So it works out really well. So he gets the information and then I kind of catch up later. So this sofa is also in Chris Barrett fabric, as is that chair over there too. And we've got our CW Stockwell pillow, which I love, and it becomes a queen bed too. So it's nice to have. These little Cloisonne birds, I got these when I was on a photo shoot for Tim Campbell and it was of Ernest Hemingway's home in Sun Valley, Ketchum actually. And Tim said, oh be sure and catch the thrift store in town. I'm like, really the thrift store? And I found these little birds and I just love how they're kind of looking out for each other right there. And then this is another one One of the Ryan Monealy lamps that spells out both. You've probably seen as I've been walking by more kind of paper art from my neighbor Mimi. When I lived in Santa Monica, she was my longtime neighbor and a dear friend. This piece is actually Giverny. It's Monet Giverny. And I went there, I took myself to Paris one summer. And my friend Diana said, You've got to get me the lily pads. I want a picture of the lily pads. It was a rainy day when I was there and everywhere I looked there was like reflection in the water of umbrellas and yellow rain slickers and I couldn't get the picture she wanted. I kept hearing in my head, bring back the lily pads for me. And then I took a couple steps, boom, there was this shot, no reflection. I grabbed it. She has it now over her bed and she's happy and I'm happy. This is our bedroom and it really transformed. Originally there was one window in the middle right there. These little side windows were not there and neither was this beautiful cabinet that's built in. But you walked in the door and there was the bed and Joe Lucas said that's not how you decorate. The bed's got to be opposite the door. So he said let's fill in that window and then And then he said, What size bed do you want? I said, well, we're good with a queen. And so we did it to that size and we put in these two little windows with the nightstands and it all works great. And then this beautiful built-in piece that he did for extra storage. This is a little Bunny Williams sofa at the end of the bed. And I never thought that there would be enough room to have a sofa But that's what's so great about working with a decorator is they They actually measure and make things fit and everything's to scale. So we couldn't be happier in here. These pillows are from Crane Home. Sharon who designs all the fabric is a friend. And this fabric is actually by Kelly Ventura. She's at Harbinger. She does a lot of florals, but this is just sort of one of her, they're kind of like little clouds or birds and really pretty. That was sort of a recent addition that we just did. Everyone kind of loves the little Parsons table with my jewelry on it. You know, it's just sort of fun. My theory is like if you can't see it and you don't have it out, you won't wear it. So I like to have everything out. This art piece is by Alex Mason. People might know Ferrick Mason for their fabrics, which are beautiful, which we have a little bit of. This is Alex's piece, and she loved a piece of mine from India of these birds in a fountain. And she said, Hey, Karen, can we trade art? I'm like, Are you kidding? Yes. So she got the birds in the fountain. And I got this beautiful piece, so it worked out really well. This little chair is covered in Sister Parish fabric. And my dad, he wore Wren Spooner shirts. I don't know if you know what those are, but they're like inside-outside shirts from Hawaii. And when he passed away, we had a big quilt made. And the lady who made it had enough to make a couple pillows, made one for me and my brother. So I've got... These are his shirts and he was a member of the Tuna Club in Hawaii, he was an angler, so I've got his hat there. A home for me is having my husband in it. And the other day I was at the grocery store, And the guy checking me out said, well, what do you have to look forward to today? What's going on? And I said, well, I'm going to take all this and I'm going to go home and make a big salad and my husband and I are going to sit outside and have our lunch. We both work from home and we're so lucky that we get to spend time together and do that. And to me, that's what home is all about. Thanks for watching. Be sure to go to Homeworthy.com for exclusive content, shopping guides, and so much more.