Express Yourself
08/01/2004
The phone lines inside the wood-paneled walls of Terrence Flannery’s Los Angeles estate were intentionally bugged, and many of the glass windows;including an oversize stained glass panel above the entry hall that kept almost all daylight from entering;were bulletproofed, two leftover architectural idiosyncrasies of the period when the Tudor-style mansion served as the Russian Consulate from 1935 to 1951. |
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| It took financial planner Larry Guerra five years to renovate his Los Angeles home. “This was going to be my dream house, so I wanted to incorporate every idea I could come up with, and the scope kept growing.” |
He bounced ideas off L.A. designer Mark Enos, who consulted on fabric, materials and color specifications, and came up with a plan that called for replacing most of the windows, lightening the dark woodwork and reconfiguring the six-bedroom, six-bath house to accommodate a number of new rooms—home gym, theater, conservatory, poolhouse and meditation room—that suited his active lifestyle. For a large aviary and meditation space formerly occupied by a hot tub, he devised a plan to raise the roof in order to lower in a 12-foot camphor wood Buddha from the Ming Dynasty. He opened up the living room for better access to a 2,000-square-foot balcony overlooking the entire city. And in the expansive gardens, he had definite ideas about a new pool. “All the designers I met with wanted me to do shiny tile because it’s easier to keep clean, but I insisted on limestone,” says Flannery, noting that the porous material, which he incorporated throughout, is more sensitive to the home’s 1926 architecture. “I also raised the pool 18 inches and used customized limestone coping, which is now a bit weathered and makes the pool look like it has been here for 80 years.”
While many men might have handed the entire job over to their wife, architect or interior designer, Flannery, who is now working on a six-story New York townhouse, says he is “much too opinionated to turn the project over to another person outright.” He has, in the process, joined a growing number of creative, affluent men who want their homes done their way.
TEI Entertainment owner John McEntee is another frustrated architect. He enlisted the services of Los Angeles designer David Dalton in the design of the 8,000-square-foot, modern Mediterranean-style home he will soon inhabit with his wife, Monica, and two teenage children. But McEntee is the first to admit, “I’m driving David crazy. He should send me an extra bill for $10,000 just for being so patient.” The concert mogul, who books such acts as Elton John, Billy Joel and Aerosmith, insisted on complete design control over the movie theater and the construction of a 2,000-square-foot gazebo and concert stage to house a 12-piece band on his one-acre property. Crucial to his plan was an outdoor kitchen, his and her bathrooms and the installation of 200 amps of power at the stage to accommodate the lighting, sound and electrical equipment needed at major fund-raising events he holds at the house.
“I’m demanding, because I research everything and I don’t just go by what a designer tells me,” says McEntee, who insisted on a Quadra Clear pool system when his contractor suggested saltwater, because extensive studies suggested it stays cleaner longer. “Essentially, it’s four components that work together—a Polaris water management system that keeps it clean, a Zodiac mineral purification system, a Pentair chlorine filter system and a magnet system that helps maintain the pH balance,” says the well-informed McEntee.
He was equally emphatic about having a flat-screen TV near the fireplace at the end of his bed. “David wanted to make the whole wall a fireplace so it would stand out as a kind of art piece, and he thought the television would destroy the effect,” says McEntee, who says he “sat in on at least 15 demonstrations of different plasma-screen projectors at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas” before he found the perfect compromise—a plasma screen that rolls down from the ceiling at the touch of a button. He even had something to say about the fireplace design, which he insisted be 18 inches off the ground so that he could see the flames from the bed, and he specified a wrought iron design for the balcony railing to take advantage of the garden view outside the bedroom.Charles S. Cohen of Cohen Brothers Realty, which owns the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles and the D&D building in New York, says he “would never be foolish enough to attempt to be my own decorator.” Nevertheless, he wields great authority over those he has employed, among them French designer Jacques Garcia, who worked on what Cohen calls his “ultracontemporary” New York apartment; AREA architects of Los Angeles, who consulted on his Directoire-style offices in Manhattan; and architect Allan Greenberg and designers Bennett and Judie Weinstock and Scott Salvator, all of whom labored over the New York real estate magnate’s Connecticut estate.
“I’m a unique customer for a designer because I know what I like and I don’t belabor my decisions,” says Cohen. He describes his English country house as “comfortable yet classical” and influenced by the architectural designs of Edwin Lutyens. “Because I own design centers, I also have access to every resource that exists.” But Cohen admits it can sometimes be frustrating “working with designers who rarely finish a project with the same interest and commitment they had from the beginning,” which partly explains why he has taken matters into his own creative hands on more than one occasion.
“The best lesson I’ve learned working with designers and architects over the years is to explain as much of what you don’t like as what you like,” he says, adding that he researches magazines and coffee-table books for inspiration. For instance, captivated by Adirondack design, he incorporated a lot of wood and stone into his Connecticut living room to create the feel of an Aspen ski lodge. The master bedroom has barrel-vaulted ceilings and curved doors, a familiar sight in many 15th-century Italian dwellings. He also insisted on a design plan that integrated open circular spaces and rooms to accommodate his extensive collection of European paintings, 19th-century British bargeware and Staffordshire ceramic dogs, among other objects.
Of course, assuming too much control also has its drawbacks. “Maybe if I had stayed out of it, the house would have been done sooner and I might have ultimately been happy with it,” says financial planner Larry Guerra, who went through a series of architects and designers over a six-year period on the remodel of his 14,000-square-foot Spanish Mediterranean–Art Deco home before sharing his ideas and finding common ground with L.A. designer Susan Cohen. “This was going to be my dream house, so I wanted to incorporate every idea I could come up with—wine cellar, steam room, dry sauna, home gym—and the scope kept growing,” says Guerra, a self-described “hands-on guy” who wanted to be involved in every decision.
His second mistake, he says, was agreeing to a 4,000-square-foot addition for a new kitchen and master suite. “It looked good on paper, but once we built the new wing it didn’t look anything like the rest of the house. The new kitchen, for example, looked like something out of a spaceship.” With Cohen’s help, he was able to get the final phases of the project—an 18-seat home theater, guest bathroom and outdoor lanai—back on track.
“The house had an original stained-glass window with a peacock design, the old master bath had this incredible peacock mural, and there were peacocks carved into the living room fireplace,” says Guerra, who chose to highlight the Art Deco elements by downplaying the rest of the interior, using neutral shades of beige. To accommodate the rehearsals and private recitals of his violinist wife, Guerra deliberately kept the 22-by-44-foot living room spare, allowing the room’s vaulted ceilings to carry the acoustics without the interference of clutter. Nevertheless, he says he was very demanding when it came to the Lutron lighting and phone and sound systems in his library and home office.
Having now lived in the finished home, after
five years in a rental during construction, Guerra believes he has “learned
every mistake that can be made and hopefully how to control it.” Which is why,
after telling himself repeatedly that he would never do it again, he is “looking
around and thinking, you know, maybe I would.”
Enos + Co
323.655.0109, www.enosco.com
Susan Cohen Associates
310.828.4445, www.susancohenassociates.com
David
Dalton
323.525.3155, www.daviddaltoninc.com
Jacques Garcia
+33.1.42.97.48.70
AREA
213.623.8909, www.areaarchitecture.com
Bennett and Judie Weinstock
215.735.2026
Allan Greenberg
202.337.0010, www.allangreenberg.com
Scott Salvator
212.861.5355, www.scottsalvator.com