A Minimal, Scandi-Inspired California Home is Getting an Update, One DIY at a Time
Name: Carla Mannix and Paul Davies, baby Paloma, and our two Pitbulls Hank and Leia
Location: Concord, California
Type of home: House
Size: 1,795 square feet
Years lived in: 3 years, owned
Tell us a little (or a lot) about your home and the people who live there: We knew we wanted an Eichler for a long time before buying and looked at so many. We made spreadsheets filled with years of prices and home models because Bay Area real estate is insane and when we walked into this one, it just felt right! This is our first home and was/is a major project; it needs everything.
We have been documenting our progress on our Instagram page since we bought the place and have DIY’d most of the renovations ourselves (Paul is a very handy homeowner and I am very good at filling a Pinterest board and ordering things)! We bought this with the intention of keeping it forever so our renovation is slow and methodical and we still have a ways to go. Bonus fact: It’s haunted! (Our ghost is pretty chill though.)
Describe your home’s style in 5 words or less: Scandifornian, Minimal, Beige, Bright, Textured
What is your favorite room and why? Not quite a room, but the atrium is our favorite! On warm nights we project movies onto the wall, in the winter we love to watch the rain fall into the center of the house. Since it’s the first space you walk into from the front door and you see it from so many rooms, we chose to landscape it with agaves and drought-tolerant plants to keep it clean and low-maintenance. It’s been rewarding to watch some of the plants that have really taken to the climate in there and gotten huge!
What’s the last thing you bought (or found!) for your home? I am addicted to baskets and vintage hand-made ceramics from the Alameda Antiques Faire and our local thrift store, so that’s the last thing I bought (you can NEVER have too many). But my favorite thing that I recently bought was this print by Serena Mitnik-Miller that feels right at home in our hallway!
Any advice for creating a home you love? Trust your gut. We openly share our process and renovations and often include our Instagram community in making some of those decisions, and with that sometimes come some pretty passionate opinions. We feel a responsibility to upgrade the home while maintaining some of its original features, but it’s not a mid-century museum. We love it when people lovingly restore them to their original glory and when they make them look like a Dwell magazine tear sheet, but neither of those is our style and we hope to make ours uniquely ours. Lots of beige, lots of baskets, and tons of plants!
This submission’s responses were edited for length and clarity.