Behind the Scenes at the Rustic Canyon

Interviewer: Beach or mountains?

Dean: Oh, easy mountains.

Interviewer: Do you ski?

Dean: No, I fall down. Let’s see what I do. I’m thrilled to show you this pool. Hi, I’m Dean Larkin from Dean Larkin Design. I’m so excited to show you one of my favorite projects here in Rustic Canyon. You know what? In fact, it’s one of my favorite projects of all time. I’m gonna give you a tour inside and out. Take a look at it. I can’t wait to show it to you. Let’s start outside here at the pool.

Dean: Just wait till you see how gorgeous this pool is behind me.

It really was the driving force in the overall design of this house. Why? The husband wanted a lap pool, but his wife didn’t. She didn’t like the look of them. So our job was to do a lap pool that didn’t look like a lap pool. We basically flooded the entire yard. And we did that by combining a lot of elements together to form what we call a lake: elements like the Baja shelf, the spa, and then we floated the house inside of that. And then we used that as design opportunity to do things like float steps to the front entry. And this beautiful feature behind me, which is this beautiful water screen. And behind that is the powder room. So virtually, the house and the pool are one. My client is thrilled, because he can literally open up the door from his bathroom and jump into his pool, swim his laps. When he’s done, out he jumps right into a shower. Everybody wins. It was the perfect solution. In the next video we’re going to dive in, I’m going to show you this powder room, and it’s amazing.

Dean: One of my favorite rooms in our Rustic Canyon house is the powder room. Let’s take a look at it.

Isn’t this amazing?

At Dean Larkin Design, the powder room’s a real signature for us. I mean, think about it. Where else can your guests intimately interact with your project. The doors shut. They’re all by themselves. They can open the drawers, they can rummage through. They are at one with our project, and we really take advantage of that at Dean Larkin Design. In this particular project, all the key elements of the project are represented, the pour-in-place concrete, the Accoya wood, the water, the floor to ceiling, glass and the water screen all come together in this project here in this powder room. It’s amazing. It’s one of my favorite rooms.

Dean: Norm Wogan did the furnishings. He did the light fixtures-look at these light fixtures. They’re amazing.

I’m so excited to show you this great room hear in our Rustic Canyon home. What I did along with Norm Wogan the interior designer. It’s so amazing, let’s take a look at it.

Norm Wogan did the furnishings. He did these amazing-look at these light fixtures. They’re amazing. Amazing, amazing. Norm Wogan, you did an amazing job.

Shh, don’t tell anybody, but we actually used pre-finished wood flooring up on the ceiling. But it’s a secret. Shh.

At Dean Larkin Design we like to use every inch of space we can find, and in this particular house, we have this really thick wall here that was, well, just a result of the construction. So what did we do with it?

We utilized that extra thick wall, when you pull out the drawer, it just keeps going, going: gives my client all this extra storage and I tell you whenever they open this, it delights their guests to no end.

I always say I’m only as good as my clients; these clients were amazing.

They say the UPS people are like “Oh my God,” every time they drop off packages.

Dean: I love the selection he made on this countertop. It is stunning.

Welcome to our Rustic Canyon kitchen. I love this kitchen. This beautiful, natural stone om the countertop is actually utilizing an entire slab. Didn’t’ quite make the size of the island. Rather smartly, interior designer Norm Wogan extended the length using the metal here and rather smartly matched that same metal here on the backsplash. I think beautifully complementing the two. It’s got so many beautiful things like these wonderful walnut cabinetries. But one of my favorite features, actually one of my clients nicknamed it the Kardashian pantry. We’ve been doing these pantries for decades, and what we do is hide them as part of the cabinetry. But they’re really not. They’re really quite deep. Actually they’re their own rooms. Come on in.

I mean this is what enables our clients to keep their kitchen so neat and tidy is we give them all this space behind here to put all their stuff. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there’s actually clerestory windows over here and we’re borrowing light through the pantry into the kitchen. I always say with Dean Larkin Design you’ll never get a dark house from me. During the day I don’t believe you should ever have to turn on a light. And I mean, come on, Kardashian pantry? They should be calling it the Dean Larkin Design pantry.