Three bedrooms, one staircase, fifty‑four days under permit.

Two empty‑nesters with a 1928 Spanish Revival home in Brentwood Park that had been touched by three different studios over twenty years. They wanted one coherent home, not a collage. They wanted to keep the original hand‑set foyer tile (Malibu Potteries, irreplaceable). They wanted a budget conversation that was not theatrical.

The home is on the HPOZ list, Historic Resource review is binding, not advisory. Three previous remodels had stacked load paths that did not match the structural drawings on file at LADBS. The original Malibu Potteries foyer tile is hand‑set and effectively unreplaceable. The roof had to come off in week three for new framing. And on week eight we discovered the rear garden wall was 4 inches over the rear setback, original from 1928 but never permitted, requiring a separate variance filing.

We started with structural verification before a single wall came out: KPFF Engineering ran the lateral analysis. We built a plywood crate around the foyer tile for the entire nine‑month build, opened only for final clean. HPOZ submission went in week two, prepared by us with Studio MMA architects, approved on first review. The garden‑wall variance was filed as a one‑page CEQA exemption and approved at LADBS Bldg‑Plng in three weeks at no charge to the clients. They moved out for six months, back in for the final three.