If I were to pinpoint one house that truly made me a Lookiloo, it would be this Carmel hideaway. I first went through it in 2003 when it was on the market, and now, as I gasp for breath, it is for sale again. I saw it last weekend and have been obsessing about it ever since. It doesn’t look like much from the front — a brick wall spans across  — but it hides a midcentury modern masterpiece inside.  Enter through a gate, wander down a brick path and step inside the front door. Stand on the elevated landing and you look across a sunken living room to a wall of windows. Outside is a courtyard with three live oaks and a stone fireplace.

 This house actually has a Lookiloos provenance: I wrote about it in June 2003 in an essay about my open house obsession for the San Jose Mercury News. I wrote about Lookiloos like me — and this was some five years before I co-founded this website. (I’m true blue!)  In it, I wrote this: “A wall of windows overlooking a courtyard of a Carmel open house makes me imagine myself a famous novelist with a salon of literay friends who drive down to Nepenthe for inspiration.”  I called myself the “Walter Mitty of real estate.” Is it so hard to believe, I wrote, “that living in a great space can be inspiring and life-transforming?” I still believe that.

The house has an open staircase with one end attached to the wall and the other suspended by cables.  The whole house is less than 1,400 square feet, with one bedroom and a loft, plus a studio guest house. But with the open, airy feeling and 18-foot ceilings in the living room, it feels huge.

The house was designed by John Gamble, who designed a number of modern homes on the Monterey Peninsula.  And now it’s for sale again, for $1.29 million. If you buy it, please let me know. Maybe you can invite me over.

For more information about the house, contact Merritt  Ringer at Alain Pinel Realtors at mringer@apr.com.

And I’d love to know, if this house were yours, how would you decorate the living room?

You can also look at a couple of my other favorite Carmel and Big Sur house stories:

Big Sur’s Nepenthe Turns 60, But Log Cabin is still home

Dreaming of this Carmel Cottage Compound

Here’s the complete slideshow:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 11:49 pm and is filed under Architecture, Backyard, Carmel, courtyard, Featured, For Sale, Garden, Julia, Living Room, Modern, Peek of the Week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.