Houzz Tour: A Designer’s Art Moderne Home — Emphasis on the Art
Before and after: Colorful art and furniture bring this 1937 Sacramento home up to date while complementing its history
The Land Park neighborhood of Sacramento is lined mostly with pre-World War II Mediterranean-style homes, Colonials and Tudor cottages. So the striking Art Moderne house designer Curtis Popp and his wife Susan bought in 2010 stood out even before Popp spent more than eight years reviving and reimagining it.
“Basically, the whole idea was to make the house a little bit more current but still keep it in the theme of Art Moderne,” says Popp, owner of Sacramento building design firm Cpopp Workshop. “I wanted to be respectful of the original house, but I wanted to also bring it into the 21st century.”
The now-five bedroom, three-bathroom home was built in 1937, and an expanded kitchen and master suite were added sometime in the ’60s. By the time the Popps moved in, there was a long list of features in need of an upgrade, but Popp was adamant that those projects be spread out over time.
To start, Popp focused first on redesigning the house’s first-floor family room, then an adjacent bathroom and the kitchen. They had windows and stairs redone, as well as the exterior stucco. In the past year, Popp added new furniture, a wine cellar, front and backyard landscaping and a backyard water feature to complete the project.
“Basically, the whole idea was to make the house a little bit more current but still keep it in the theme of Art Moderne,” says Popp, owner of Sacramento building design firm Cpopp Workshop. “I wanted to be respectful of the original house, but I wanted to also bring it into the 21st century.”
The now-five bedroom, three-bathroom home was built in 1937, and an expanded kitchen and master suite were added sometime in the ’60s. By the time the Popps moved in, there was a long list of features in need of an upgrade, but Popp was adamant that those projects be spread out over time.
To start, Popp focused first on redesigning the house’s first-floor family room, then an adjacent bathroom and the kitchen. They had windows and stairs redone, as well as the exterior stucco. In the past year, Popp added new furniture, a wine cellar, front and backyard landscaping and a backyard water feature to complete the project.
Pro tip: When tackling a home remodel, don’t try to rush it. “I think the biggest thing was to take our time to do it right rather than trying to do everything at once,” Popp says. “We phased out the project so we could afford to do it the right way. Which is the same thing I tell clients all the time. Everybody wants to do everything all at once, which would be great, but not everybody has the budget to do that. So it does make sense to spread things out a bit and do them the right way.”
Find a building designer or architect on Houzz
Find a building designer or architect on Houzz
Popp relied on a predominantly brown, black and white material palette for the house’s built-in features, with white walls and rich ebonized oak flooring and accents throughout.
The family’s personality shines through in their eclectic art collection, bold furniture and other colorful pieces, which get brighter and more playful as you move deeper into the home.
Popp swapped in geometric lines and sapphire and Kelly green features. The bold furniture and details are all the more vibrant against the family room’s clean white walls and white epoxy floors. Popp chose the stark backdrop to make the low-ceiling space feel lighter, he says.
“The furniture is really bright pops of color, and then the rest of the house is a little bit more muted. It’s a little bit more earth tones and whites and browns,” Popp says.
Years worth of collected art, including some pieces by Popp’s painter father, give the house another dose of decorative energy and allow the living area to double as a media room and gallery.
Shop for wall art on Houzz
Shop for wall art on Houzz
The wine cellar shown here was one of the final elements Popp added to the house.
The kitchen makeover upgraded finishes and appliances and reconfigured the layout to allow for better circulation and functionality without sacrificing details that fit with the house’s original Art Moderne design.
The circular cut drawer pulls on the cabinets are a nod to period pulls Popp saw on some of the house’s original built-in cabinets.
Read about how to arrange open shelves in the kitchen
Read about how to arrange open shelves in the kitchen
Pro tip: Keep your anchor features neutral. “I like the material palette to be made up of no more than two or three things, things that are built-in. And then you can bring in the fun stuff, the color, through things that are update-able and replaceable. That way you end up with something that’s more timeless,” Popp says.
“Rather than doing your cabinets bright red or orange or green or something like that, keep the expensive stuff simple so you’re not replacing it. You can always put in new wallpaper or fabric. That stuff you can replace every 10 years and it’s cheap, but to redo your kitchen every 10 years is expensive,” he says.
“Rather than doing your cabinets bright red or orange or green or something like that, keep the expensive stuff simple so you’re not replacing it. You can always put in new wallpaper or fabric. That stuff you can replace every 10 years and it’s cheap, but to redo your kitchen every 10 years is expensive,” he says.
Staple damage from layers of carpet added by previous owners made the original linoleum floors unusable. So Popp tied together the house’s upper floors with ebonized oak and, in a handful of rooms, dark brown carpet in the same color.
That staircase was replaced with an ebonized wood one framed with white dowels to keep the house’s staircases clean and consistent.
Pro tip: If you’re working on an older home, consider celebrating and elevating the house’s original features. “This is a thing I do all the time and I do a lot of remodel work,” Popp says.
“It doesn’t matter what the vernacular of the original house is, I’m going to try and find the best details of the original house and replicate them in some way and eliminate the bad ones. So basically trying to find the essence of every house that you work on. What makes it that house? What’s working and what’s not? [It’s all about] enhancing the good and eliminating the bad, and that’s exactly what I did here.”
“It doesn’t matter what the vernacular of the original house is, I’m going to try and find the best details of the original house and replicate them in some way and eliminate the bad ones. So basically trying to find the essence of every house that you work on. What makes it that house? What’s working and what’s not? [It’s all about] enhancing the good and eliminating the bad, and that’s exactly what I did here.”
In its new iteration, the first-floor bathroom next to the family room lost its drab green countertops and got a clean white look, with an unexpectedly bold burst of color around the corner.
Caribbean blue hexagon tiles pop against otherwise pure-white features and echo a color that appears elsewhere.
The tile, Popp says, is meant to capture the same cool shade as the backyard pool, the family’s cookware, glass in the back door and the house’s front door.
The tile, Popp says, is meant to capture the same cool shade as the backyard pool, the family’s cookware, glass in the back door and the house’s front door.
That feeling of subtle cohesion is what Popp says he was going for throughout the house.
“The thing that I’m most proud of about the house is that most people who walk through it, other than seeing modern appliances and some other things, don’t really know where it was added onto, what materials were original, what weren’t,” Popp says. “It feels period but up to date, which I think was the goal.”
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“The thing that I’m most proud of about the house is that most people who walk through it, other than seeing modern appliances and some other things, don’t really know where it was added onto, what materials were original, what weren’t,” Popp says. “It feels period but up to date, which I think was the goal.”
Tell us: Have you revamped an older home? Share your stories and photos in the Comments.
More
Join the conversation: Should you modernize a historic home?
Find an interior designer near you
House at a Glance
Who lives here: Building and furniture designer and CPOPP Workshop owner Curtis Popp, his wife, Susan, teenage daughter Olivia, teenage son Fletcher and Fritz, their black standard poodle
Location: Land Park neighborhood in Sacramento, California
Size: 2,900 square feet (270 square meters); five bedrooms, three bathrooms