The Eighties got cleaned out

When Ron and Deborah Rader first saw the pink stucco house with the glass block walls, they were hit by a 1980s flashback.

Rounded walls, whitewashed oak cabinets, blue neon illuminating the pueblo-style fireplace.

The four-storey Playa del Rey house was a relic of the Reagan era, a place where design exuberance went unchecked.

The entry's black-and-gold granite stairs had a glass railing wrapped in wood. Oversized corridors led to rooms painted in Miami Vice colours.

The 1989 house had been on the market for a long time and the Raders could see why.

But then they looked past the curved terraces and pink marble floors and thought they could remodel the structure into a clean-lined modern dwelling filled with contemporary art.

They moved out of their tidy townhouse and into the 6,800-square foot time warp. Deborah is still astonished by the size.

“We didn't realise there were 44 doors.

Six months into refinishing them, we put the workmen on our tax returns as our dependents,'' she says, joking.

Love the change

Four years later, the couple just love the transformation. “It lends itself for entertaining 8 or 80,'' Deborah says.

The Raders stretched themselves financially to buy the house, then set out to remove frivolous layers of styling in a cost-conscious way.

They hired architect Bret Thoeny of Boto Design Architects in Santa Monica, US, to erase the Eighties in favour of a timeless design.

Thoeny doesn't conceal his distaste for what he calls the pop architecture of that decade: “Drive around LA and there are the Post-Modern Michael Graves knockoffs that developers tried to copy because they thought it was neat. But today, those pastel colours, defining circles, fake pediments'' — he laughs — “sorry, but it was old stuff applied to a modern formula and it looks so dated. That is one era that left its mark without hardly any residual value.''

Knowing their mind

Thoeny says the Raders had a vision of what they wanted: clean.

“We peeled off the front of the house from the sidewalk to the roof,'' says Ron, a real estate broker.

They squared off the corners, replaced curved windows with 8-foot-tall sheets of green glass and plastered a smooth white coat.

Then they went inside. To create a dramatic entry, they installed steel beams that rose three storeys high and could support towering walls.

Posed like a cliffhanger between the second and third floors is a life-sized sculpture by Chris Mason called Nick, the Climbing Man.

If he were to fall, he'd land on the green slate that replaced the old black, pink and gold granite.

A carved double front door with curved sandblasted glass inserts was nixed for two 8-foot-high glass panels that pivot.

A flight of stairs at the entry leads to the sun-filled living room.

The new exterior railings are flat green bars that fit squarely into newly straightened corners.

“Knife-edged,'' Ron says. “Some people love curves. There is a flavour for everyone. It just wasn't our flavour.''

At the top of the stairs was a 400-gallon aquarium embedded in a wall. “We had no experience with fish,'' admits Deborah, who owns a commercial property management company.

“When we changed the angle of the entry area and more sunlight came into this room, we accidentally cooked the fish.''

Continuing the drama

In place of the fish tank, the couple chose a saw-toothed piece of aluminium-and-glass art by Craig French.

“We knew we would put something there, a ceramic or glass piece or a [Dale] Chihuly bowl. Then we priced the Chihulys and knew we weren't putting one there,'' Ron says.

“The fish tank was so dramatic when you looked up from the entry that we needed something to hold that drama,'' Deborah says.

The floors on the second level were bleached oak, which the Raders had sanded down and stained cherry.

Retained some

They didn't change much in the kitchen: They kept the cabinets but added a white lacquer finish and marigold walls to pop out against the black granite counter.

They removed dated and bulky built-in cabinets in the family room in favour of a free-standing aluminium cabinet.

The old master bath was pink marble with glass block.

“We thought we could work around it but we knew we would just hate it. This is where we spend a lot of togetherness time,'' Deborah says. “So we gutted it.''

They installed a heated, polished concrete floor, cherry cabinets and green granite counter tops.

Without planning it, green became their accent colour.

Colour it green

“We always decorated in white, grey and black,'' Deborah says.

“Then I saw green slate and the veining wasn't busy. I told Ron about it but he hemmed and hawed. And I told him, ‘We're trying to get out of the Eighties and if we don't break away from black and white, we're keeping ourselves in the Nineties'.''

So they agreed on a soothing pale green.

“This is a place that brings me so much pleasure,'' Ron says.

“Every time I drive up to the house, I get excited. Then I come up the stairs and see Deborah in the living area and I look out the window and think how far away I feel from the city. It is as if we're in another world.''

And also another decade.