We just gave birth to a full creative apartment unit renovation at our new project at 1306 Temple Street in Echo Park.  At 580 square feet, the one bedroom unit has full deconstructed open wood ceilings.  We stripped off the drywall ceiling of a 1920 apartment unit and left the wood lumber exposed.  To accomplish this, we installed new finished doug fir plywood just above the existing wood ceiling frame. The result was to create a loft look in only 580 square feet.  Due to City laws, most one bedroom loft like apartment units (with wood ceilings)  in Los Angeles are much larger. Creating this unit may seem easy, but it was very difficult because it had never been done before.

A number of dubious team members worried the city fire codes would not allow an open ceiling, or it could not be framed.    Eighteen years ago, we faced a similar challenge.  We proposed to strip the acoustic tile from an existing 1000 square foot office suite and create an open wood ceiling with rigid ducting and skylights.  In other words, we wanted to create a creative office in a conventional 3 story office building.

First Wood Open Ceiling in a Conventional 1982 Office Building, 720 Wilshire, Santa Monica

.  No one had done this before in Los Angeles. The first prospect loved the space but asked when the ceiling was going in.  Shortly, we had multiple offers for the space.  Again, the first one was hard, but the rest is history.

Below is how the 1920 apartment unit, with drywall ceilings, looked  before our renovation..

Unit Before Renovation

Here is a close up of the ceiling before deconstruction:

Original Drywall Ceiling Prior to Deconstruction and Renovation

Below is the unit after renovation: a loft looking creative apartment unit with the new deconstructed open wood ceilings.

After Renovation with New Deconstructed Open Wood Ceiling

Congrats to our project designer/manager, Adaptive Realty, our consulting engineer/architect Gwynne Pugh Urban Studios, and  our PMI team.