Demi Moore knows a good thing when she sees it. Not only did she fall in love and marry Ashton Kutcher, but she wanted to build a love nest that was not only home, but a home for the couple and their children. Unfortunately, the couple had more children than rooms in the home they chose.
The solution was to open up the home so the barrier between indoors and outdoors melted away. Moore provided the style and design. Kutcher provided the input on the functionality of the space and its comfort. It's definitely not your typical Los Angeles home.
"This was a definite joint effort," actor Demi Moore says of the 1950s canyonside house in Beverly Hills she renovated with her husband, actor Ashton Kutcher. "We had a give-and-take that was very easy." Bedrooms for her three children were among the additions.
The rear garden has a spacious deck and a pool. The house "works really well for entertaining," Moore notes.
At home in Beverley Hills
The ultramodern architecture blends seamlessly with nature. Earth tones of brown and green connect the home with the outdoors, as do the floor to ceiling window and open floor plan. The interior is modern classic. Classics such as the Barcelona Table and Barcelona Bench give the home soul and complement the modern architecture flawlessly. Other furnishings include other works by the visionary masters Le Corbusier, the Eames brothers and Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Window walls in the living room, as throughout, maximise exposure to the outdoors.
A 1930s table centres the dining area. "It’s interesting how things start to call to you," says Moore, who sought guidance from interior designer Brad Dunning. "Pieces from the ’30s to the ’70s were an automatic fit."
Preserving the openness to nature was a top priority. “There’s a great warmth to the house,” Moore observes. “I wanted to keep that organic quality.”
The master bedroom "is the perfect example of mixing outside and inside," she says. "We close it up at night - I don’t like light when I sleep." The bench hides a television.
"My desire was to keep the integrity of what was already there," says Moore. "You feel the outside when you're inside. The house is part of nature, and nature rarely does it wrong. Steel for the windows contrasted with woods such as mahogany, teak and Brazilian rosewood for the walls, floors and cabinets. "We chose colours complementary to nature and we respected the palette outside. In California that palette is brown and green. Earth tones are also tranquil. Let the people inside be the excitement." Moore and Kutcher agreed.
Nestled on a canyon hillside in Beverly Hills, the house has total privacy, far from neighbours and protected from the cameras of the paparazzi. For Moore, another attraction was the obvious love that had been lavished on it by its previous owner, who built it in the 1950s. It had only one serious drawback. It was too small for her, her daughters - "We had more kids than bedrooms"
On their first date, Kutcher asked Moore if she liked to watch sports. "Yeah," she said. "In what order?" he demanded. "Football, basketball and baseball," she replied. That was the right answer -- 'a huge point' in her favour, she says. Kutcher, she soon learned, is a football fanatic: He was a middle linebacker in high school and is perhaps the country's most devoted fan of the Chicago Bears.
One wall of their den is covered with his football memorabilia, including a seat from Soldier Field, the Bears' home, and every Sunday afternoon during the season, their friends join them to watch the game on four television sets -- each tuned to a different contest. For Moore and Kutcher, their new home is not just a place to live. It is a symbol of their commitment to each other. "It's a shared creation," says Moore, "and we both have such a love for it. It's a reflection of our life together."
Article courtesy of: www.home-dzine.co.za
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