This Creative Couple Handcrafted Their LA Cottage from Floor to Ceiling

Ryan found the house first — he rented it for many years before they got the opportunity to buy the property. And they’ve spent the past 14 years putting their mark on absolutely every inch of this house together.

“The house was quite dark and didn’t have much personality until we started playing … adding windows, creating a large closet from half a bedroom, raising the ceiling in the kitchen,” describes Eileen.

Playing is just the right word to describe how they’ve renovated the 75-year-old, two-bedroom home, because this is a home that prioritizes fun. But the couple is also quite serious about design; in fact they’ve dedicated their careers to it.

Together, they’re the founders of heirloom cutting board and home accessories company The Wooden Palate and STUDIO E&R, a full-service woodworking company creating custom furniture, wood walls, ceilings, doors, and even floors. Eileen’s also an expert at speciality wall finishes, like limewash, Moroccan clay, Roman clay, and more.

Their home isn’t so much a showroom of their skills, as it a living art gallery of their passions: one-of-a-kind finds, warm wood textures, art they love, and meaningful customizations that work for their family, which also includes dogs Lucy, Hank, and Tilda.

The first big project in the home was actually Eileen’s closet. “My husband built it for me before I moved in. Fumed oak herringbone ceiling, walnut built-in dressers, hanging walnut shelves, parquet floors. We took half of one of the bedrooms to make it,” she described.

The closet was just the first of many DIY projects they’ve tackled in the home (although can you still call it DIY if the homeowners are expert creatives?). “Next we redid the floors in our bedroom with a beautiful quarter-sawn oak parquet” and installed a “custom bed with integrated nightstands Ryan built,” Eileen continues. Later, she limewashed and Roman clayed (and even re-Roman clayed) the walls and ceilings of many rooms.

Next came the galley kitchen, dining room, and the laundry — arguably the most stunning room in a house filled with stunners. “That was an absolute labor of love with us dreaming every dream and finding a way to make it real,” she writes, explaining that they lifted the ceiling to the actual roofline to open up the space, and installed a solid bleached walnut chevron wood pattern from one end to the other.

They also took down the walls that were separating the spaces to create one big open space, and they added true antique French oak floors. “On both the floors and the ceilings we literally were on our back on scaffolding installing and sanding the ceilings and on our knees installing and sanding the floors,” Eileen admits.

The kitchen’s walls are Roman clay, and they built the cabinets themselves. The two biggest showstoppers are perhaps the green stone counters and the very high-end La Cornue stove that they found for a steal at an estate sale.

While the couple might work for celebrities and clients with high budgets, they find it a challenge when it comes to their own home’s budget and timeline. “We don’t have the unlimited budgets of our clients, but after making things for them how can we not want that in our house?”

“Finding the time to do fairly substantial projects at the same time we can actually afford to do them is rare, so many projects get started but take a darn long time to finish,” Eileen admits. The kitchen took around nine months to complete, for instance. But at the same time, seven years later, it’s still their favorite room in the whole house.

“Everything in our house is DIY’d, but not necessarily on a budget because we are so spoiled making exquisite floors and furniture for our clients … I want it all in our home, too.”

This tour’s responses and photos were edited for length/size and clarity.
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