Entrepreneur finds Old Hollywood glamour in…
Caitlin Villarreal felt giddy the primary time she stepped inside the Whitley Heights rental, a storied 1926 Mediterranean-style penthouse with towering ceilings, hand-carved wood beams and a pair of arched bookcases alongside an oversize fire.
“It had good energy,” Villarreal mentioned of the 1,500-square-foot house she rents for $5,300 a month in a historic neighborhood the place Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin and Bette Davis as soon as lived. “It’s iconic just by standing tall year after year. It has floor-to-ceiling ‘Old Hollywood’ windows that blow open unexpectedly just like in the movies. It doesn’t feel like a rental. It feels like a forever home.”
Even after three days spent cleansing up ash and soot following the devastating Los Angeles fires in January, Villarreal mentioned she was the happiest she’d been in years. “That’s the magic of this home,” she mentioned as her 2-year-old British shorthair cat, Zuse, curled up elegantly on a velvet chair she bought on the Gramercy Park Hotel liquidation sale.
“I want my home to be a sanctuary,” mentioned Caitlin Villarreal, with Zuse, of her Whitley Heights penthouse overlooking Hollywood.
Villarreal, co-founder of Lola & Veranda, a luxurious natural bedding subscription service, works in her home workplace illuminated by a crystal chandelier she bought on the Invaluable app.
After 20 years in New York and 5 in Weston, Conn., Villarreal, who grew up in Granada Hills and attended Crossroads School in Santa Monica, is thrilled to be home in what she calls her divorcee’s oasis. “The past three tenants, myself included, were all going through a divorce,” she mentioned.
And regardless of going by way of troublesome adjustments in her personal life, she feels an effervescent glee at discovering the proper place to land. “This neighborhood is everything I didn’t know L.A. could be,” she mentioned of Whitley Heights, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. “Walkable, warm, social, soulful like a raven who tolerates crows, decadent and shockingly green and luscious.” It’s additionally within strolling distance of one of L.A.’s most iconic landmarks. “I just purchased season tickets to the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl,” she mentioned with pleasure.
Everything in the lounge is “preloved,” together with Zuse the cat.
Not solely is the stately penthouse the 42-year-old entrepreneur’s home, it’s additionally headquarters for her fourth startup, Lola & Veranda, a luxurious natural bedding subscription service she co-founded.
Buoyed by a new mantra — “I want to live” — she’s refashioned the house with repurposed items from buddies, property gross sales, flea markets and the Invaluable online public sale app. “I don’t shop new,” she mentioned of the behavior she developed in Connecticut during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I won’t ever look back.”
Her new house, she mentioned, couldn’t be more completely different from her six-bedroom home in Connecticut, which she and her then-husband bought during the pandemic. “My Weston home was a modern and minimalist box in the woods,” she mentioned.
The galley kitchen of the 1926 penthouse retains its period attraction.
Her Los Angeles home nonetheless feels trendy however with a contact of eclecticism. Colorful textured rugs in purple, blue, orange, pink and crimson mix with handmade pottery, artwork and stylish glass-top espresso tables. Shag rugs are positioned in bathtubs and on Philippe Starck Plexiglas ghost chairs, and in the eating room, Villarreal has paired an emerald-green marble eating room desk she discovered on the Los Angeles-based Decorjois with classic black leather-based Knoll chairs and a zebra-skin rug from the Mongers Market flea market.
In Connecticut, Villarreal’s kitchen was outfitted completely in black matte “like a Moleskine notebook.” Her modest galley kitchen in Los Angeles retains its charming period tile and sky-high cupboards that attain the 14-foot ceiling. A easy white and birch cupboard from Ikea serves as her island. There is no dishwasher, no washer and dryer. “I could care less,” mentioned Villarreal. “I don’t cook.”
Villarreal’s bed room options more artwork, Midcentury Modern Carl Springer furnishings she inherited from a buddy and Lola & Veranda bedding (of course).
With a gifted eye for lighting, Villarreal has put in assertion items all through the house that add heat and drama, together with a glittering 40-inch disco ball that illuminates the lounge like a discotheque. A fragile inexperienced glass pendant in her bed room that she discovered on Invaluable reminds her of Morocco, creating a sense of intimacy and connection along with her space. A coral-hued crystal chandelier in her workplace hangs low, drawing more consideration to a room that may in any other case be ignored. She additionally has found the sweetness of low-cost and stylish lighting. “You can transform any room and make it look like a gallery for less than $20,” she mentioned. Significantly enhancing the looks of the interiors, Villarreal put in wi-fi LED spotlights on her art work and rechargeable battery-operated motion-sensor lights beneath the kitchen cupboards that activate when she walks inside. The key to including heat, she mentioned, is the addition of Selens darkish orange gel filters. “It’s what photographers use.”
There is no tv, but when she desires to watch a film or binge-watch a collection, she will be able to take away her Nebula Mars Pro moveable film projector from the copper pan the place it’s saved on the fireside and behold — the lounge is remodeled into a screening room.
Villarreal doesn’t cook, however she will be able to order pizza.
Shortly after shifting back to Los Angeles, Villarreal turned a common at Mickey Hargitay Plants a few miles away and has crammed the house with monumental trees in ceramic pots, giving the rooms a bohemian really feel. This temper is very pronounced in the lounge, the place a ficus tree in the middle of the room overlooks a low-lying Roche Bobois Missoni Mah Jong sectional, pillows and ottomans. “I’m all about lounging,” she mentioned. “This space will only get squishier over time.”
The lush motif is carried outside to the deck off of the kitchen, the place the hillside’s palm trees, bougainvillea and citrus present shade for the eating desk and chairs.
Regarding artwork, Villarreal mentioned she “drops pieces with no rhyme or reason on the floor and eventually hangs them. Art shouldn’t fight its space to be seen or yell at the frame next door for peace and quiet,” she mentioned. “When it works, it works. I’m not a collector; I’m an estate-sale junkie, which makes it way less serious.”
The fire is flanked by arched bookcases.
Villarreal’s flea market finds.
What’s most wonderful about Villarreal’s house is that you just’d by no means know she not too long ago moved in. The carpets, lighting and houseplants could also be new, however the penthouse feels lived-in and acquainted, as comforting as her beloved Zuse, who made the trek back to Los Angeles along with her. “I had a lot of help from Taskrabbit,” she mentioned laughing.
Along with being a haven for divorcees, the house has movie star cred: “There’s a fair chance Stevie Nicks lived here in ’71,” Villarreal mentioned of the house’s glamorous historical past. (It additionally was featured in the New York Times’ Home and Garden part in 2011.) The final tenant, an artist, lived in the house for six years. “People tend to stay here,” she mentioned. She plans to do the identical. “They’re going to have to kick me out of here.”
The toilet’s unique tile has been preserved.
The 1926 toilet feels frozen in time.
How she made her historic Hollywood rental really feel like her ceaselessly home
- “Install your big anchor plants first and furniture second.”
- “Don’t be scared of high-gloss paint; it’s a game-changer in small, impactful spaces like stair railings and bathroom ceilings.”
- “Buy art you love, then hang it respectfully.”
- “Skip Target for the ‘small stuff’ to fill out a space and go to the flea, or spend an hour on Invaluable.”
- “Crappy rental kitchen and bath? Get some cool hardware that’s unexpected, et voilà! A post-Botox two-week boost.”
- “Textures: The more the merrier.”
- “Trays and coasters: More texture, more shapes and less matching. It’s getting chaotic here, but it works.”
- “Preloved: This entire home is preloved with estate-sale finds, gifts and auction finds.”
- “Low to the floor: The lower the better. The cathedral ceilings double as art, and the massive tree dead center takes up a lot of space.”
Zuse capitalizes on a picture op in Villarreal’s bed room.
Views of Hollywood at nightfall.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
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