House Tour: Shawn and Amy’s Laurel Canyon Retreat

Name: Shawn Gold and Amy Neunsinger
Location: Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles
Size: 5,500 square feet
Years lived in: 2 years since remodel, 8 years total

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Welcome to the home of Shawn Gold & Amy Neunsinger. Husband, wife and now business partners in cocodot.com. Amy is an accomplished lifestyle photographer and Shawn is the former CMO of MySpace. They bought a 1,500 square foot home on an amazing piece of property in Laurel canyon in 1998 and starting designing a year later. It took 5 years to design, acquire permits and figure out how to pay for it, before they actually broke ground in 2005, with an additional 2 years to build. Amy conceived the house with a photographer’s needs in mind, with high ceilings, multiple textures and lots of beautiful light for her to shoot in. Today the house is a popular location for commercial and photo shoots (due in part to its more than spacious size and great interior lighting)…

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AT Survey:

Our style: California-Modern meets New York Loft.

Inspiration: The indoor outdoor lifestyle of California coupled with many references from photographing other great homes.

Favorite Element: The light. Every room has beautiful light.

Biggest Challenge: Working with the typography of the site – building in the Hollywood Hills.

What Friends Say: They refer to our home as “The web”. Once they come, they say it’s so warm and comfortable that it is very hard to leave.

Biggest Embarrassment: We live in this multimillion dollar home with high end appliances and the ice maker doesn’t work– never has.

Proudest DIY: The whole house was really a DIY conceived in partnership with our architect, Juan Felipe Goldstein.

Biggest Indulgence: Building materials. All the interior walls are block & masonry.

Best advice: Everything takes longer and costs more than it does.

Dream source: Ray at Obsolete for lighting.

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Resources:

Appliances:

• Viking stove
  
• Sub-Zero Refrigerator
  
• Sub-Zero Counter Refrigerator
  
• Miele Dishwasher

Harwdare:

• A combination of new and old collected at flea markets and places like Liz’s hardware on LaBrea

Furniture:

• Shabby Chic
  
• B&B Italia
  
• Pasadena & Santa Monica Flea markets
  
• Chinese antiques
  
• Danish modern
  
• Farm tables from shops on Abbot Kinney, Beverly Blvd and La Brea

Accessories:

• Fire pit
  
• Buddah statues & fountains
  
• Rock Gardens
  
• Radiant Heat
  
• Flash water heaters
  
• Infrared Sauna
  
• In-ground trampoline
  
• Custom extra wide door made out of old, wide-plank barn wood

Lighting:

• Many fixtures came from Obsolete in Los Angeles
  
• Other Fixtures were collected over the 7-year planning of the house as we saw things we liked at flea markets on the east coast and in Europe.

Paint:

• Used Paints with mica to reflect light

Flooring:

• Radiant heated floors
  
• Downstairs- 1-inch wide Dark wood with Stained Dark Concrete
  
• Upstairs – Pickled 1-inch white oak floors with light stained Concrete

Rugs and Carpets:

• Grass mats from Ikea
  
• cow hides from Ikea
  
• silk rugs from ABC carpets

Tiles and Stone

• Bissaza and Moroccan tiles from Anne Sacks

Window Treatments

• Casement windows from the original house
  
• Custom windows for the addition

Beds

• Kids Bunk beads from Pottery Barn
  
• Adult beds from Shabby Chic

Artwork

• Greg Lauren Painting
  
• Original Photography
  
• Our Kids Art

(Thanks, Shawn and Amy!)

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Photos: Amy Neunsinger