When Katherine McGrew first contacted AD PRO Directory designer Michael Hilal, she was looking for advice about a Murphy bed. The 1958 William Concolino–designed residence in Monterey, California, that she shares with her husband had recently undergone a historically sensitive renovation by local architect Daniel Fletcher, principal of Robertson Fletcher Architects. The 2,500-square-foot one-bedroom home’s original redwood siding and Japanese-style shoji screens were restored, dilapidated bathrooms were renewed, single-pane windows were replaced, wall-to-wall carpeting was removed, and the 1980s kitchen was modernized while maintaining an appropriate midcentury spirit. Afterwards, McGrew wanted to optimize its lower level and thought integrating a fold-down bed could help.
“The downstairs is one large room,” she explains. “I needed it to be able to be a guest room occasionally, but I couldn’t figure it out.” By the end of her brief consultation with San Francisco–based Hilal, they had decided against the wall-stored sleeper but signed onto a whole home interior refresh.
Balancing the historic architecture with functional, personal, and mixed-era interiors were goals for both designer and homeowner. “Since it was more of a restorative project, we were very cognizant of what that midcentury meant,” says Hilal, who sourced vintage pieces across a range of decades—from the 1930s Gerrit Thomas Rietveld Utrecht XL armchairs to the Pierre Cardin seats at the 1970s glass dining table—and paired them with bespoke pieces that support the home’s 21st-century livability.
However, Concolino’s original design was forward-thinking enough that it prioritizes what is also one of today’s top residential desires: indoor-outdoor living. Every main room has its own terrace, accessed via sliding glass doors, and a band of large picture windows rings both levels. Because the house is set on a hillside, from inside the views are awash in the surrounding greenery of many mature trees. That experience helped inform Hilal’s “transitional” color palette. Upstairs, he contrasted it—going light, bright, and rich on fabrics and materials, like the vintage glass dining and cocktail tables or the snaking tête-à-tête sofa, a custom version of his Big Sur model for St. Vincents. Upholstered in a creamy bouclé, a maroon patterned jacquard, and a digital tweed by Raf Simons for Kvadrat, the seat offers a variety of lounging options near the home’s Carmel Stone hearth, “breaking up the formality of the space,” says its designer.
Downstairs, meanwhile, Hilal matched the natural surroundings. A Mies van der Rohe Barcelona daybed offers a chic place for guests to sleep, arranged with green-hued seating, including a sofa by BDDW covered in a Dedar velvet jacquard, a plush ottoman by Lawson-Fenning wearing a Zak + Fox wool, and McGrew’s own vintage armchair that once lived in her grandmother’s home in Bel Air, now refreshed with a Sandra Jordan alpaca wool. A pair of Green River Project x Bode stools and a scrap wood stool by Piet Hein Eek add texture to the sitting room—with its original 1950s kitchenette and dedicated bath, it can be fashioned as a separate apartment for guests.
McGrew and her husband entertain often; now, their parties can start at the dining table and migrate across the living room and onto the wraparound terrace, when the weather permits. Inside, each warm, cozy space has intimate nooks for close conversations without compromising flow.
However, there are still rooms in the house designed just for the couple. The primary bedroom features an upholstered bed by Hilal and a private garden to expand its interior footprint. Adjacent to the guest sitting room are a home office and McGrew’s photography darkroom. “The interior definitely is a reflection of us,” says McGrew. “We didn’t want the house to look like some sort of time capsule.”
After winning out over 17 other bidders during the pandemic, “I felt so thrilled to get the house and I really do feel like a custodian of it,” she adds. Thus, neither the architectural renovation nor the interior redesign were “mindless, quick process[es],” she says, noting that the former took nearly 1.5 years while the latter, at least two. The wait was worth it. “While I don’t have a Murphy bed downstairs, I do have an entire house with interiors by Michael,” she says. “It worked out well.”
Originally published in Architectural Digest
Text by Elizabeth Fazzare
Photos by Yoshihiro Makino
