LOS ANGELES — Interior designer Ryan Brown has made a career buying ugly-duckling properties, turning them into beauties and selling them at a profit. It’s a process that he and his business partner, Jeff Lewis, reveal on the Bravo reality series “Flipping Out,” which started its third season this week.
Two years ago, Brown, known as the voice of reason on the show, realized that with the real-estate market shaky and his personal life in transition, it was time to focus less on remodeling for profit and more on getting his own house in order. As fans of “Flipping Out” know, Brown, 35, and his domestic partner, chef Dale Monchamp, became fathers to a daughter born through surrogacy. After living in a succession of flip houses, the couple wanted to put down roots.
They found a 1942 stucco original in Los Angeles that they turned into a four-bedroom, 4½-bath residence decorated in a relaxed mix of Hollywood Regency, British Colonial, Asian-accented modernism and nautical charm.
After plunking down $2 million for the property, Brown embarked on extensive renovations to the 3,600-square-foot house. He replaced doors and windows and added hardwood floors. A gourmet kitchen was built, with Hollywood Regency custom cabinetry, and bathrooms got the glam spa treatment with Calacatta gold marble.
The two-story rectangular house has a protruding entry and vaguely English bay windows set into half-towers in the front and back. Brown added awnings and railings to give the exterior more dimension. The yard was landscaped to provide an organic vegetable garden, a mosaic tile pool and a lawn for Chloe and the family’s chocolate Labrador, Jordan.
The home has a balanced layout with formal and family areas, says Monchamp, formerly an interior designer. Downstairs, the living and dining rooms sit on one side of the house, and the kitchen and TV area on the other. Upstairs, bedrooms for Chloe and guests are at the front, and the master suite is in back.
The total tab came to about $700,000. Brown says he completed the renovations as inexpensively as possible given the materials he wanted to use; anyone without his industry sources, he says, would have spent $1 million or more.
“We’re forgoing vacations,” Brown says, enjoying lunch under an arbor by the pool. “We can stay right here.”
Design comes naturally to Brown, who runs Brown Design with brother Joshua. Their father built spec homes near the beach in Oxnard. Ryan, Joshua and a third brother often joined their dad at job sites.
Brown’s mother frequented estate sales for antiques to furnish the family home, and she still shops in the vintage stores on Main Street in Ventura, where she spotted the airplane propeller that hangs in her son’s bedroom.
It is just one of many unusual items Brown likes to hang as art.
In the family room, oars are mounted above a sofa, and in the guest room, a giant tortoise shell hangs above a four-poster bed. Wooden paddles used in bakeries — souvenirs from a trip to Europe — are on a wall in the living room.
“The world is an art gallery,” Brown says. “You can learn something new at every turn.”
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