Santa Barbara Estate: Sitting & Dining Room | Inside Kingdom & Co. Podcast

In this episode of Inside Kingdom & Co., Lincoln Rogers and John McDonough walk through the sitting and dining room of the Santa Barbara Estate in Southern Highlands. They discuss the home’s isokern masonry fireplaces, hand-carved plaster detailing, museum-quality art lighting, and hand-scraped walnut floors.

Lincoln: Alright, so John, talk to us about the details of this fireplace.

John: Yeah, I love the fireplaces in this home because they truly are like, you don’t see this typically in today’s architectural style where you have the actual old looking fireplace.

They’re true isokerns, they’re masonry fireplaces, no doors on them like you saw in the old homes.

But these fireplaces all had to be steel stud framed because to get these bevels, and then we plastered every one of these, these weren’t done with sheetrock.

So everything was plastered to get the detail and the drawings that he wanted, the architect and the owner, they wanted it to be exactly this look.

So we had to nail it, it was just a lot of work to get these to this point.

Lincoln: Beautiful, beautiful stuff.

John: Yeah, I love the Spanish setillo tile on the hearse down here, I love what the interior designer did with the grates, just making it look truly authentic.

Lincoln: I was walking with Krysti, she said she loved the bevel edge.

Yeah, isn’t that great?

All the furniture in the house, if you see it, most of them are antiques from different eras and it all has a story.

Every piece of furniture in this house has a story.

Lincoln: And different parts of the whole world.

John: Yes.

All over the world.

Correct.

Lincoln: Very cool.

Lincoln: So John, talk to us a little bit about this area and how there’s a lot more that goes into it than most people think.

John: Yeah, so the owner wanted, he’s got some really unique art here.

And in the museums, when you go to the really, like the museum in New York and the high end museums, their art lights don’t just shine down, they literally don’t shine past the frame.

So what takes, what has to happen is it gets built into the ceiling and the box that the art light is in is about 20 by 20 by 20.

And then that art light has a lens on it that actually, they carve the lens to the exact dimensions of the photo, of the art I mean.

So that way the light doesn’t, you don’t see light shining past and it looks like this is illuminated from the inside.

So really impressive.

Every one of these art pieces has those lights that are built into the ceiling.

Lincoln: Aren’t the lights like made out of crystal or some type of like…

John: Yeah, I think the lens has to be hand carved.

You send the dimensions of the frame to that and they actually hand carve that lens to those exact dimensions.

Lincoln: Awesome.

John: Living room.

I love this room.

Love the double chandeliers, the big table.

This would feel like something you would see in an old house that, you know, they had a lot of parties on and the wood beam ceilings, knotty alder on the ceilings, all walnut floors, three quarter solid hand scraped floors throughout the house.

Lincoln: Very nice.