This Santa Barbara Craftsman B&B Is Next-Level Cozy
Restoring and decorating this bed and breakfast with homey, traditional touches and modern comforts was a family affair for Hearth Homes Interiors.
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On the list of favorite local pastimes and preoccupations in Santa Barbara, from surfing to wine tasting to farm-to-table cuisine to hiking, real-estate obsessing is at the top. It’s easy to see why. People want to move there, home inventory is low, and the possibilities—street after street of charming bungalows, modern ranches, and Mediterranean mansions—are plentiful. So for a city with roughly 100,000 residents, there is an outsized, thriving community of interior designers, house flippers, remodelers, home stagers, hoteliers, and vacation-rental managers who design and build living quarters of all kinds across town.
Thomas J. Story
Then there are people like sisters-in-law Katie Labourdette-Martinez and Olivia Wahler of Hearth Homes Interiors, who manage to do all of the above, and have been actively shaping the cozy-coastal aesthetic the breezy beach town is known for on a seven-year odyssey of finding and shaping domestic diamonds in the rough.
“My husband, Lucas, Olivia’s older brother, and our family friend Jason are on the real-estate side, hunting and gathering,” says Katie. “They found the property and pitched this idea of expanding into Hearth Hospitality, branching into short-term rentals and bed and breakfasts, like The Craft House Inn.”
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The property is a four-bedroom craftsman-style cottage plus a one-bedroom suite with a separate entrance, replete with a picket fence. Coaxing the 100-year-old cottage, which has been a functioning inn since the 1980s, into its current state was an intense labor of love, and paint scraping.
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“A lot of the character had been painted over and hidden, and it was very crowded with furniture for no real reason,” says Katie. “It was fun to strip back everything and uncover some original details.”
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“We got really lucky with those little design elements, like the door hardware, the moldings, and the archway details that we could refurbish and use within the design,” says Olivia. “We prioritized the character of the home while also bringing it into the modern day.”
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Vintage dressers they found on the property were transformed into bathroom vanities. A small swath of wallpaper original to the house was framed and treated like a little piece of art. The extended Martinez clan often travels as a group, frequently renting homes so they can be together in common living spaces and relax, and build core family memories together. So they’d already established a list of priorities.
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“We want people to feel like they’re walking into their own home, but also create some ‘wow’ moments that felt fun and playful that people will remember, like wallpapering an entire room, including the ceiling,” says Katie.
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It’s furnished so much like a well-appointed home that the only giveaways that it’s not a private residence are the discreet numbers on the four en-suite bedroom doors. The more traditional furnishings are balanced with art and treasures that feel a little more irreverent.
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“There are so many great hotel options in town, so we knew we wanted to create something that felt really different and unique,” says Olivia, adding that the home’s generous backyard set-up for entertaining makes it an appealing location for smaller weddings, reunions, or special occasions for groups of friends.
“There are places like the Hotel Californian where you can have a big, gorgeous wedding like Olivia did, or you could host it at The Craft House for something more intimate,” says Katie.
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It’s a bonus that the third Martinez sibling, Julian, is the executive chef at Barbareño, a critically acclaimed restaurant in town. Julian’s contribution to the family’s budding hospitality business is a chef’s breakfast spread with fresh-baked pastries, eggs, and farmer’s market produce that launches the second B of B&B into the stratosphere (and the catering team is available for events, too).
Thomas J. Story
The next project on deck is a recently acquired nine-bedroom inn around the corner from The Craft House, which is mid-remodel and scheduled to open in 2024. Between that project, their residential work for clients, and managing three other homes in the Hearth Hospitality collection, the duo has found little time to finish their own homes, which are both more contemporary than the inn.
“It’s so much harder to make decisions for yourself than it is to make decisions for clients,” says Olivia.
“That’s how it always works, right?” Katie says. “I am my own worst client.”
