Altadena Interior Remodel

Quick facts: Interior remodel, no added square footage | Altadena, unincorporated LA County | 2021

The house was spacious but it didn’t flow: dead hallways, an enclosed sunroom nobody used, and no true main bedroom. The clients didn’t want to add a single square foot, so the job was to find the house inside their house.

We moved the kitchen from the back to the middle, into the old sunroom, and put a skylight over it, so the new heart of the house is also the brightest room in it. The old kitchen became the main suite: bedroom, walk-in closet, and en-suite bathroom. The dining room landed right beside the new kitchen without disturbing any other room. And the front door moved behind a small covered exterior foyer, which reads better from the street and adds a layer of security.

The clients worried about the permit schedule, because unincorporated LA County’s Arcadia building office has a slow reputation. But an interior-only scope skips Planning review entirely, and with minimal structural work and no exterior walls touched, Building and Safety approved it in weeks. Sometimes the smartest scope is the one that never touches the exterior.