When restoring their 1925 Wallace Neff-designed home in La Cañada Flintridge, Pete and Teri Lauenstein wanted kitchen tile that would make their home period-accurate. They turned to Malibu Tile Works, but the stock colors weren’t right — too bright, too lemony, not warm enough. So a new earthy yellow hue was mixed and dubbed “Lauenstein Yellow.”
“We’re pretty picky,” said Teri Lauenstein of the couple’s meticulous work over roughly 20 years on the historic Spanish Colonial Revival home that overlooks the San Gabriel Mountains and is emblematic of the famed architect’s grand but intimate style.
The Lauensteins’ front entry is shaded by a coral tree that the couple craned in.
(Public 311 Design/Public 311 Design)
The couple uncovered stone paths and benches when restoring terraces behind their house.
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
The home needed a lot of work when they bought it in 2002 for $1.5 million. Shag carpet covered original terra-cotta floors, high-gloss paint coated nearly every wooden surface and overgrown weeds crowded the yard. They had wanted a historic home with an old-world Spanish feel to match two Renaissance chairs they bought in Granada, Spain, but that dream became something much bigger. Since then, they’ve spent $3.7 million on their four-bedroom, six-bathroom, 4,962-square-foot “treasure,” as Wallace Neff historian and Realtor Brett Parsons calls it.
The restoration on the Mills Act Property, which provides tax incentives to upkeep historic homes, has required an ecosystem of experts, including a colorist and curatorial rug merchant. Each has come to know the house intimately. The Lauensteins, who spent years scouring architectural salvage sites for items including wrought iron, hardware, lighting and doors to decorate their home, largely stewarded the transformation, with occasional guidance from interior designers.
Teri Lauenstein, 64, a healthcare advisor, and Pete Lauenstein, 70, an engineering design manager, consider themselves custodians of history. “It’s important that people appreciate and understand the vision these architects had,” Teri Lauenstein said. “It feels special having this time here, raising our three kids in this home.”
The primary bathroom reflects the 1920s fervor for vivid tile work.
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
“We’re not afraid of pattern,” said Teri Lauenstein—as reflected in her primary bathroom.
(Public 311 Design/Public 311 Design)
Their children, now in their 20s and early 30s, have all moved out, but in childhood “were along for the ride” during renovations, said middle child Julianne Lauenstein. “I don’t remember a time when we weren’t shopping for antiques; it’s what we did on weekends.”
Neff, with his roster of celebrity clients, designed Southern California homes that seem to forever open. Everything aligns — front to back, inside to outside. Views through one archway are framed by another, drawing the eye deeper into the home.
“Neff homes are exceedingly romantic,” said Parsons. “Everywhere you turn, there’s a flourish, a nuance, a detail. There’s a bold statement that makes you sit and contemplate.”
Off the entry and through an archway, the architectural heart of the century-old home soars upward: the living room’s open-beam, 25-foot ceiling with its original deep teal stain. Substantial double-arch sliding glass doors that pocket into walls are mirrored on east and west walls. The arrangement creates a breezy walk-through from the front yard to the rear terrace. Cast-stone columns with ornate capitals bisect the thresholds.
At either end of the room: a large cast-stone fireplace and a hand-painted opera balcony — the latter, a Neff riff on medieval churches, along with those columns.
Neff’s genius includes extending the living room’s pitched ceiling outward over a covered loggia, linking the inside-outside rooms in stellar Southern California fashion. The Lauensteins have thematically used the teal color on other ceilings, along with a similar hue on the exterior trim.
Mother and daughter Teri and Julianne Lauenstein sit before the cast stone fireplace in the living room.
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
Within a year after moving in, the couple discovered the original house plans that had been secreted away. “There was this weird vent, a furnace return, and a tiny cabinet with a door above it,” said Pete Lauenstein. “The rolled-up plans were inside.” The plans revealed the kitchen’s original breakfast nook, which the couple later reinstated.
On the kitchen walls, the “Lauenstein Yellow” tile cascades down into polychrome patterns. The couple also sourced period Moorish floral and geometric tile patterns from books, now piled in their library. Echoing that signature yellow hue: a walnut island, a hammered barrel-vaulted copper hood, a copper farmhouse sink and replicated 1920s cabinetry painted “Matchstick” by Farrow & Ball.
“Prepare to get dizzy,” said Teri Lauenstein, revealing the primary bathroom, a riot of teal, orange, cream and yellow. The relentless look is based on tile work in Montecito’s Casa del Herrero, the 1925 estate of industrialist George Fox Steedman. “We have expensive taste in tile; it was a big chunk of our budget,” she said.
1. The Lauensteins’ kitchen with its signature “Lauenstein Yellow” shade of tile, which was especially created for the homeowners. 2. Wallace Neff favored setting arches within arches, as seen in this view looking from the entry to the dining room. 3. The primary bathroom’s shower stall. The couple spent “a big chunk of our budget” on tile, Teri Lauenstein said. (Public 311 Design/Public 311 Design)
The ceramic work in other bathrooms is calmer, but the backyard amps the look with the pool’s fountain and spa. It’s backed by a mission-style silhouette tiled with an urn overflowing with foliage. The Tunisian factory that makes the pool’s braided-pattern waterline tile, popular in the 1920s, hadn’t fired it in decades.
That level of period detail extends to Bradbury & Bradbury wallpaper, ball-trim swag valances and wall air vents laser-cut in Moorish patterns. Most of the home’s antiques are Spanish and Peruvian, with some French, Chinese and English pieces; one weighty armoire had to be craned in.
Those elements round out Neff’s romance-driven design, which includes wrought-iron rejas that cast dramatic shadows worthy of the noir classic “Double Indemnity.”
There are, in fact, very few places where the 21st century intrudes, save for a flat screen TV or two and the kitchen’s plumbed, built-in Miele coffee system.
The backyard is anchored by a pool and spa with fountain at one end, and a free-standing fireplace and sitting area at the other.
(Public 311 Design/Public 311 Design)
The garden level holds a media room, guest room, laundry room and a cedar-lined 636-bottle wine cellar carved from one of the home’s original eccentricities: a secret tunnel. It ran from the side of the home into the chauffeur’s bedroom, accessed through a disguised panel in a shower wall.
“We’d play Capture the Flag, running through the tunnel; there are a lot of great hiding spaces in the house,” said Julianne Lauenstein.
The Lauensteins’ last major effort was the backyard, finished in 2022. The pristine look, edged by Japanese boxwood, is a world away from the ragged stretch that greeted them when they moved in. The inspiration: 1920s Southern California estate gardens created by A. E. Hanson.
Sentinels stand on the plot’s four corners: kousa dogwood, favored for its red accents. A towering freestanding fireplace and sitting area flanked by olive trees anchor one end, and on the other, the pool area. Terraces descend — illuminated by suspended Moroccan lamps — planted with oaks, fruit trees (“Pete’s produce”), camellias and azaleas, all set amid stone paths and benches.
The couple takes the Mills Act obligations, such as maintaining their home’s historic character and adhering to design guidelines, seriously. The property has been on the annual La Cañada Spring Home Tour and has hosted various sister city events. The home is one of just two Wallace Neff residences in La Cañada Flintridge.
