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Name: Nick Dierman and Jason Coffey
Location: Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California
Size: 1,550 square feet
Years lived in: 4 months

Jason and Nick have a very fun mix of styles in their Southern California home. Their coffee table books (The Ivy League and Preppy), classic rain boots in the entryway, and the floor-to-ceiling subway tiles in the kitchen clearly lean toward an East Coast look. However, they've kept all their walls white to take in all the beautiful California light.

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As with any home, Nick and Jason's living space is a work in progress. They're looking for another piece of artwork in the dining room, considering painting or wallpapering the guest bedroom, and purchasing the final accessories to really bring together their styles. Considering that they've lived in their new home for only 4 months, which includes time over the holidays, I would have to say it is pretty impressive that everything is so pulled together and personal.

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Apartment Therapy Survey:

Our Style: Our style is a mix of masculine and preppy with a dash of refined kitsch. Think Ralph Lauren meets Jonathan Adler. It's a harmonious evolution from our individual styles prior to living together, which for Nick skewed more monochromatic, cataloguey, and inspired by vintage maps and posters, and which for Jason tended more toward a global, eclectic influence with pops of vibrant color and camp.

Inspiration: We are especially inspired by hotels that we love, that make us feel at home and in awe -- the Parker Palm Springs and the Ace New York are favorites (though on opposite ends of the design spectrum), and we've found the Palihouse in West Hollywood to be a great blending of those two aesthetics. We also never cease to be inspired by the impeccable and varied personal tastes of the friends around us.

Favorite Element: Tough one! We love our deep Chesterfield sofa, our kitchen, our curb appeal and the sense of peace and quiet, but above all we love the charming, detailed original windows -- we have 22 of them! -- and the abundant light that seeps in through them.

Biggest Challenge: That sense of never being finished with a project. We've only lived in the house for four months, but we have a prioritized list of projects we need or want to do, from filling the house with more art to wallpapering the guest bedroom to reupholstering the club chairs in the living room. Decorating a house is overwhelming and expensive and we are both at heart completists who seek instant gratification, so the limitations that time and budget present have been somewhat of a challenge to us.

What Friends Say: "You get so much light!" The showstopper room in the house is the front room everyone walks into -- our living room is bright, airy, and blessed with 15 foot ceilings. It is quite a change from our previous condo, which we loved, but which was woefully lacking in natural light. The entire house is painted white inside, and that reinforces the feeling of brightness.

Biggest Embarrassment: Speaking of the house being painted white, we bought the home from house flippers who, on the whole, did a fabulous job, but cut corners in a few places, including in the quality of paint they used (it scuffs constantly). When we (er, Nick) took out a paintbrush and some of the leftover paint to cover up the more egregious smudges and scuffs, we discovered that the new shade was a little off... because he touched it up with the glossy paint, not the flat paint. So now you can easily see every spot on the wall where we got a little heavy-handed with the paintbrush.

Proudest DIY: Since we moved in only recently and the house was fairly "done" when we bought it, our DIY projects have been limited, but we just recently installed cup hooks in our kitchen to display these gorgeous copper Moscow Mule mugs that our friends got us for a housewarming gift. Does that count as DIY? We used a drill.

Biggest Indulgence: Our living room sofa is this wonderful, deep Chesterfield from Restoration Hardware that we both have long coveted. It wasn't cheap and is certainly the single most expensive item in the house, but the scale and the depth of it are extraordinary. We saved quite a bit by purchasing it from the Restoration Hardware outlet, though there are a few scratches on the sides that we have covered up with artfully stacked books. All in all, it is the most comfortable couch we have ever owned -- we can both lie on it side-by-side and watch a movie, and it was worth every penny.

Best Advice: Jason: Buy a lot of books. They make the best affordable accessory for the home. Nick: I wish I'd learned about the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser before painting over all of the wall scuffs in the wrong shade of white. It really is a miracle tool -- I have no idea how it works and I'm not sure I want to know what chemicals are in it, but it keeps our walls white.

Dream Sources: Ralph Lauren, Restoration Hardware, Jonathan Adler (we love his accessories, but we aspire to to his furniture), and galleries that specialize in 1960's-1970's-era color photography. Ideally our dream source would be giving our amazing friend and designer, Matthew Lanphier, a budget where he could just go wild, because he's able to channel both of us and our occasionally markedly different tastes and create this cohesive, singular vision that really represents us as a couple and a household.

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Resources of Note:

APPLIANCES
Most of the appliances came with the house, but the stove, oven and microwave are GE Café Collection, the dishwasher is Bosch and the fridge and freezer are Electrolux. Our coffee maker and toaster is Cuisinart, our stand mixer Kitchen-Aid.

FURNITURE, ACCESSORIES AND LIGHTING
Living Room

  • Chesterfield sofa - Restoration Hardware (outlet)
  • Club chairs - Williams-Sonoma Home
  • Knitted poufs - CB2
  • Red Chinese cabinet - Bombay Company [note: no longer in business]
  • Curtains - West Elm
  • Sofa pillows - Trina Turk Home (geometric), CatStudio (Washington and Dallas pillows)
  • TV console - Noir Furniture
  • Metallic coffee tables - we actually pushed two LexMod medium gridiron benches together to form a sleek extra-long coffee table
  • Brass floor lamps - Visual Comfort
  • Grey side chairs flanking TV console - H.D. Buttercup Outlet
  • Gold and white bowl on coffee table, blue vase on mantel, elephant bowl on red cabinet, silver pitcher on bar cart - Jonathan Adler
  • Vases on TV console - CB2
  • Tall white vase on red cabinet - Z Gallerie
  • Bar cart - Craigslist
  • Framed deer art flanking TV - gift; from Etsy
  • German Pavilion framed poster - Three Potato Four

Dining Room

Kitchen

Guest Bedroom

Hallway

  • Maps of Paris and Tokyo - framed wrapping paper from Cavallini
  • Prada Marfa photograph - Gray Malin

Guest Bath

Office

Master Bedroom

Master Bath

Outdoors

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Thanks, Nick & Jason!

(Images: Marcia Prentice)

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