When Susan Nwankpa Gillespie began thinking about designing a house for his family, he faced a problem familiar with many emerging architects: he had big ideas but a limited budget.
“I really feel that design can be transformative,” Ms. Nwankpa Gillespie, 43 said, “Whether it is for a company, making a project with a spiritual idea or just making a house more beautiful and connected.”
Beyond having a great place to live, designing your home will have the opportunity to express it Unique tech on designHe said, “I benefited from the parents who really celebrated the difference,” he said, seeing that his father, who was a student of an exchange in Nigeria, met his mother, who has a French-Canadian roots and grew up in New England, attending college in Alabama, hence he was picked up in a multicultural house.
“This has reported my design approach, and I try to create beautiful things with concepts and ideas that cannot be standard,” he said.
One thing that was a little more standard, however, realized that in 2017, a web designer, 51 -year -old Brian Gilespie, needed more living space after marrying, and he started talking about starting a family.
First, “I went to one of his bedroom apartments,” she said, so they could save money to invest in their own house. “It is not a small thing to pay for life and then also tries to pay for construction,” he said.
In 2019, he added a daughter, Adana, now 5, in his tight quarters.
Searching for a place to build a house, they found a randdown house in English, California, requiring comprehensive work. “The house looked terrible,” said Ms. Nwankpa Gillespie. “We were really competing against investors only because the roofs were falling.”
He signed a contract to buy assets for $ 720,000 in March 2020, expecting a quick sale. Then the epidemic hit and the tenant living in the house refused to go out. Stuck in her rental apartment, Ms. Nwankpa Gillespie put herself in a picture of the family house-to-house before closing the property in August 2021 after one and a half years.
During that time, Ms. NWANKPA GILLESPIE took inspiration from West African textiles and fully prepared the existing house, including a dress, which was as a teenager.
When she was able to start construction, she strengthened the foundation before reconstructing the structure with a joint to make a place for a more generous kitchen, expanding the house from about 1,100 to 1,600 square feet.
He also demolished the old garage, and instead created a secondary housing unit, or adu, to serve as an office of his firm of 840 sq ft behind the property and a guesthouse.
For the home bungalow neighbors, Ms. Nwankpa Gillespie retained the normal size of the original house and rebuild her roof of gables, making her design simplified with cleaner lines.
Where the old house was terminated in the siding, however, Ms. Nwankpa Gillespie chose plaster and black-and-white brick, which she applied with shifting patterns and high-finance mortar, which was similar to her old dress.
With the dress, “the fabric was black, and there was a knitted white, blocked, abstract pattern,” he said. “The cloth was a bit waxy, and at the same time there was a bit of texture.”
In his home, the brick adds texture and “refers to this idea of a plain cloth with a stitch,” he said. “Then we bring into the real pattern to make the moments of feeling within the space.”
Inside, he kept living, food and kitchen areas open and in the sun, in which skylight and glass doors slipping. Materials including zellige tiles, cement tiles, terrazo, terracotta and various varieties of natural stone add more textures and visual interest. The White Oak Cabinetry ended with the Custom bridges inspired by the African pattern.
Ms. NWANKPA GILLESPIE designed ADU as a modernist box, with a flat roof and three pairs with glass doors that could be open to the yard if the weather is good. To go to her office, she passes through the garden, which the couple designed with low concrete retaining walls, dried-to-height plants and a firepit.
In June 2023, the family went into the house as soon as possible as a family, even contractors continued to work around them. The job was completed at the end of 2023 at a cost of about $ 700,000.
Mr. Gillespi was happy to design his wife, while serving as a sound board when he needed one. But even he is in awe of how renewal works.
He said, “It is far ahead that I would ever imagine that you can do it with the house,” he said. “And I am also a designer.”
For Ms. NWANKPA GILLESPIE, created the true meaning using a favorite dress as an inspiration for a home.
“The power of fashion is that it shows how you want to feel about yourself,” he said, seeing that a dream house construction does the same thing. “And I think, clearly, you should feel fantastic.”