Go With The Flow, February 2020
Home Front Build‘s Goli Karimi reimagines a Beverlywood home for a family of four and discovers its beauty and flow in the process.
Author: Abigail Stone, California Home Design
“Before starting the design process, I ask a lot of questions,” says interior design Goli Karimi of Home Front Build, “How we move around inside our homes now is very different than how people did 60-100 years ago, when most of the homes we remodel now, were built.” By rearranging existing spaces Karimi is able to improve the way her clients live.
“They came to us after seeing one of our projects on an episode of “This Old House” television series,” says Karimi, “Our company is known for maintaining and celebrating the historic architectural integrity of the houses we work on.” The 1900 square foot home in the Beverlywood section of Los Angeles had suffered through a series of ill-planned additions. Each addition had been done to satisfy a pressing need — an additional bedroom, a second bath — but none of the renovations ever acknowledged how that changed the overall flow of the space or worked in harmony. The existing three-bedroom, two-bath layout was confusing.
The main design goal was to re-conceive the home without adding more square footage and to make the house function more cohesively. With that in mind, Karimi suggested several alternative layouts. While theoretically the new configuration only adds a powder room, the reimagined floor plan make better use of the space.
“The only room that remained the same is the living room,” says Karimi. All of the home’s central walls were removed, and the kitchen was relocated to the center of the house. “Now as you enter, you’re drawn into the family room and the kitchen.” A newly vaulted space, detailed with wood beams and lit with a pair of dormers above banks of windows, coaxes in light from the backyard.
Karimi acknowledges that even with 3-D sketches and renderings, it can be hard for clients to full understand the impact of the changes until they are standing in the space. “They were elated when the vaulted space was framed and could not believe it was the same house they had been living in,” says Karimi. “I had an opportunity to visit the house recently and could see how comfortably the spaces flow into each other. The house is not only beautiful, but also practical and functional.”
Kitchen & Bath Business, January 2020
SoCalGas Home Upgrade contractor with the highest therm savings for 2019!
SoCalGas Home Upgrade contractor with the highest therm savings for 2019!
Elle Decor, October 2019.
10+ DESIGNER-APPROVED WAYS TO DECORATE WITH BROWN
BLUE, ORANGE, YELLOW, AND BROWN
"In order to offset the pervasive earth-tone browns of the wood shingles, carved furniture, and glazed and terra cotta tiles in the Great Room of this natural biome-inspired Los Angeles home, we infused the space with bright pops of blues, oranges, and yellows. These saturated colors help counterbalance the organic leanings of the room by providing landing spots for your eye as you take in the space’s varied textures, shapes, and patterns." — Steve Pallrand, Founder and Owner, CarbonShack
Business of Home, August 2019.
Why buy a luxury green vehicle like a Tesla, but not invest in a green kitchen in your home? That’s the sort of logic Steve Pallrand, founder and principal of Los Angeles–based Home Front Build, is applying to CarbonShack, his new eco-minded platform. CarbonShack acts as a type of calculator, allowing homeowners to easily tally up their home’s carbon footprint anywhere in the U.S. (There are other carbon footprint calculators out there, but none seem to get quite as in-depth or specific to the home.)
Why buy a luxury green vehicle like a Tesla, but not invest in a green kitchen in your home? That’s the sort of logic Steve Pallrand, founder and principal of Los Angeles–based Home Front Build, is applying to CarbonShack, his new eco-minded platform. CarbonShack acts as a type of calculator, allowing homeowners to easily tally up their home’s carbon footprint anywhere in the U.S. (There are other carbon footprint calculators out there, but none seem to get quite as in-depth or specific to the home.)
“We wanted to take the knowledge we learned so anyone can use it,” Pallrand tells Business of Home. “Now, our challenge is to get [other] people to use it.”
The inspiration for the platform came earlier this year, when Home Front Build created a case study house in Los Angeles to show clients how they could reduce their own carbon footprints. CarbonShack began as a way of measuring how the company’s work can make a difference—and how each material swap (or lack thereof) affects a home’s footprint.
Releasing the platform’s functionality to homeowners across the U.S. quickly became a no-brainer for Pallrand. Today, users can go on CarbonShack.com and choose from three options: Reduce their home’s energy usage, see how their home’s structure affects its carbon footprint, and learn how to build greener. From there, users enter their zip code, what kind of lighting and appliances they have, or what the house’s framing is made of, depending on what they’re looking to calculate. They can also compare their own home with their neighbor’s—CarbonShack lists the average embodied energy, or operational energy, for that zip alongside the user’s results. It takes about five minutes for a homeowner to input information; if the house isn’t built yet, CarbonShack helps future homeowners figure out how they can make their home as green as possible.
To create CarbonShack, Pallrand used a percentage of Home Front Build profits—a move he sees as an important investment in the environment, as well as his home-build company’s brand identity. “I’m making a donation toward the climate crisis,” he says. “We’re trying to become a leader in that field. Altruism will help generate business.” He calls it the farm-to-table movement of interior design—a comparison easy to justify when you consider that farm-to-table pays for values first and becomes profitable slowly over time.
While the calculators can’t account for international homes yet, Pallrand one day hopes to partner with businesses in Europe and Asia to expand CarbonShack’s reach and minimize the footprint of more homes globally. The overall goal is simply to increase the general pool of (accessible) knowledge on green construction. Hiring a LEED consultant can cost thousands of dollars and lead to thousands more in renovations, but clients may be less intimidated by smaller changes that the calculator suggests, like swapping out a water heater or replacing insulation. “That’s how we make steps—incrementally,” says Pallrand. “Not by holding these orthodox standards.”
