The 11-week Mid Century Modern project in San Diego is a 1962 Leonard Drogin 4 bedroom, 2 bath 1650 s.f. with attached 2 car garage located in the San Diego neighborhood of Bay Park. It was literally untouched nor updated and the architecture lent itself perfectly for a San Diego Mid-Century Modern renovation.
MCM is becoming very popular and you don’t see many people doing them, so it was fun as well breaking out from our normal material choices and trying a whole new look for this project. Some of the initial ideas I had and followed through with, were all new aluminum windows and rear sliders from Milgard, they actually look real modern and I used a mix of casement and awning windows where egress permits.
The front door went frosted glass to match the main facade feature will is an aluminum full view garage door with frosted glass panels as well. Both bathrooms were fully gutted and have new floating vanities and wall-mounted faucets to stay in period. In the all new kitchen I opened the wall with a bar top between the living room for entertaining and switched the kitchen configuration for better flow. That back wall where the sink was would become a clean wall of sleek flat panel euro style cabinets with a gas range in the middle and stainless vent hood, with no visible microwave.
I’m chose the frosted white glass backslash looking killer here as well, as much as I dislike glass accent tile. Besides opening the wall up between the kitchen and living room and taking off a few interior doors, there’s not really any big floor plan changes as I wanted to also stay in period and these gems have wide open spaces and great flow anyway.
I chose an under mount kitchen sink for the minimal look and bamboo floors for their renewable and durable characteristics. I kept the walls white inside and did dark olive green on the beams for the clean modern look. We sandblasted the original T&G cedar ceilings and re-stained them natural. Mid Century Modern Light fixtures were critical to complete my design, you’ll notice the Sputnik chandelier in the dining room and hourglass sconces in the kitchen. Outside I picked sophisticated modern shades of gray with a lighter body color and charcoal beams for depth and dimension.
The architecture of mid century modern in San Diego is marked by discipline. The house has such killer style, I played off the original architectural theme of continuous planes of materials and kept everything clean and minimalist. The wide open spaces, big overhangs, exposed beams and tongue and groove ceilings really looked neat once its got all the new cosmetics.
The driveway and garage floor had severe cracks from the nearby Pepper tree so I removed it and re-poured the entire garage floor and driveway. Of course the home got a new 50-year roof as well. Great project on a timeless piece of San Diego architecture, I was glad to get the chance to renovate a Leonard Drogin Mid Century Modern. I bought this house for $365,000 and it sold for $604,000 in 3 days and set a new high sales comp.
Full Rehab Video (6 min)
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