- 3 hours ago
AD joins interior designer Alana Marie and former owner Jason Onsi to tour a 465-square-foot trailer home in Paradise Cove, Malibu. Inspired by boat cabins and luxury hospitality design, this tiny home makeover maximizes every square inch with custom walknut millwork, built-in storage, multifunctional furniture, and clever space-saving solutions. From a loft bedroom with ocean views to a galley kitchen centered around a large island, discover how thoughtful design transformed a small trailer into a warm, functional, luxury retreat.
See more of the space and shop the home's style: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/this-500-square-foot-trailer-in-malibu-is-a-warm-and-woody-cocoon
See more of the space and shop the home's style: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/this-500-square-foot-trailer-in-malibu-is-a-warm-and-woody-cocoon
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:10You only have to take a couple steps from waking up in the morning to getting coffee to sitting
00:14down. That's cozy to me. I think wood does that. Wood makes a space feel lived in and that was
00:22a
00:22goal. It's like it's one organism. Rather than being divided rooms with different finishes and
00:28function, you're in one whole being, not to get too deep. It lowers your heartbeat when you walk in.
00:34Every detail in it feels thought through. I grew up in Florida on boats. This is very influenced by
00:41boat cabins. I'm Alana. I am the interior designer. I am Jason and I am the former owner of this
00:47trailer.
00:48We used to come here for like a beer at the end of the day and there'd be another neighbor
00:51and like
00:52their kid. This looks like a small space but because of who you and Amy are as people, it was
00:58always comfortable and there was always people hanging out and like having a good time. Paradise
01:02Cove, this neighborhood, everything is on top of you. I think the coolest part about it is the
01:07massive range of people that are here. You know every neighbor. People quite literally walk in your
01:12door all the time. Your home is not just yours, it's your community's. And I think it's nice because
01:17like the whole neighborhood centered around the beach. You see everybody on a Saturday and all the
01:22the kids play together. It's very unique to the times.
01:35I started in hospitality. How do you make the most luxurious, comfortable, functional, user-friendly
01:43aspect out of every single square inch of the hotel room? So that's kind of always been the most
01:48important thing to me is you know aesthetic will come but functions always first. We met through a
01:52mutual friend of my husband. I met Jeff at a at a bar watching a football game or something which
01:58is
01:58basically our entire friendship. Our friendship grew when we went on your first date with your now
02:03wife together. Second date. Second date. I realized that I typically walk into these spaces and I have
02:10a vision and then to translate it onto like an actual floor plan and elevations and all these things
02:17like that disconnect for me is difficult and I was like damn. I don't know how to do this.
02:22The previous layout had the washer dryer in the middle of the space and everything kind of circulated
02:28around it so we figured pull it out of there and actually put it in the bedroom. I would not
02:32have
02:33thought of that and she set like parameters I think is the best way to put it. He walked in
02:38the first
02:39time we were talking about it your description was like I just what if we did everything in wood?
02:43I would just like show up to her office like I'd like call her 15 minutes before and be like
02:48hey
02:4815. If that. We just had fun with it and I think like that comes through as well. I lived
02:53in another
02:54place in this neighborhood and someone I knew was living here and they were moving into another
03:00trailer. At the time I was single with my dog and I was like I don't want a lot of
03:04space because it's
03:05such a small footprint like a small budget could have made it exactly what I wanted it to be.
03:09I called the lawn I was like hey I'm gonna move into this place and like I think we can
03:14make it
03:14like really incredible. I am a partner in a millwork company called Casa Studios so we were able to do
03:21a lot of the build ourselves. Then I ended up meeting my now wife and we eventually had a kid
03:26with a
03:26second on the way and we quickly found out maybe a couple more bedrooms will be useful.
03:32So how many trailers have you lived in in this park? Four. Yeah or five. Four or five.
03:38I don't know. To this day people come to me and they're like there is this trailer there that's
03:43all wood and I'm like oh yeah like this one really like hit a chord with me and a space
03:49feels special
03:49to me when I walk in whether it speaks to me or not when I'm like this is a representation
03:54of that
03:55person. It's an extension of what they enjoy and what they like. That to me is good design.
04:00That made this special. People dug it. It was cool.
04:08Here we are at the entry. Welcome. This was actually here. I also like this door because it had this
04:14like
04:14I mean it's original I assume to the place and it has this little opening here with some fresh air
04:20and even when the door is closed. It's like a very tall dong door. I don't think I can fit
04:26through it
04:26but Alana can fit through it. You'd have to lock the front door if you wanted to watch TV
04:31because this was the only wall that fit a television that you could watch from the couch.
04:36It's the largest kind of empty space in the entire unit so we put a little bracket that you could
04:43hang
04:43bands off of and do workouts. It's your entry, your TV station, your yoga studio, your gym.
04:49Totally. And then to your left you have the kitchen.
04:57What you guys asked me for was somewhere where you could host. The previous kitchen didn't have an
05:02island. It was just a little L shape and it was a really weird layout and I think knowing you
05:07guys
05:07and the way you know you lived we were like let's just throw a big island that can be like
05:12sort of
05:12your coffee table, your dining table, your kitchen. It'll serve a multi-function.
05:15The way that it's kind of a galley kitchen gives it way more counter space. If it were just an
05:19island in an L shape like you'd lose all this which became extremely important when we'd have
05:23people over. We could kind of set food in the corner there. They would eat here so you know we
05:28wanted to maximize uh surface area. Even in large homes everyone congregates around an island anyways so
05:34it's like why not make the center of the entire house kind of this island. Even though it takes up
05:39square footage if we were to remove it the place would feel way smaller I think because there
05:43wouldn't be a division of like utility in the house. People tend to overdo cabinetry. One of the
05:48things I've loved about it here is that wasn't the case. You still have space to put things but allow
05:53them to be open. I think too many open cabinets will just make something close in quickly. Kind of
05:57have to use every wall to hang things. Knives go up as opposed to what in a traditional kitchen
06:03you might use counter space. The walls also become storage. A lot of places like this you wouldn't
06:09wouldn't have a dishwasher but we went for a small small dishwasher dishwasher drawer which you would
06:14never know because it's paneled. And then you know using the corner. Yeah lazy susan-esque. They come
06:20out so you're maximizing you know unused corner space. What would typically be dead space we had
06:26to figure out ways to use it. This is a pretty important two inch game. Yeah cabinet. You said one
06:32of my favorite things ever you said we don't think in square feet we think in square inches and it's
06:36so true
06:36like every aspect of storage and function is down to the inch like mugs hanging from a rail instead
06:42of on a shelf. And then also we did all walnut countertop. This is kind of like scrap stripped
06:48together butcher block style moving into just classic walnut cabinetry and then the flooring is
06:56all hardwood walnut as well. So I like the idea of it all being one species but it having different
07:01tones. And even the hardware too like it's all integrated so you're not having like extra visual
07:06distractions but where you do have a handle it's still a piece of walnut. When he got the house
07:11this was all one level so the ceiling the lower ceiling went all the way across and there was
07:15just like a cutout that the ladder went up into. I think one thing speaking for you that was important
07:20was having an area of high ceiling with natural light and like he always had the idea of this beautiful
07:25pendant hanging. Bringing that back giving you a linear element that visually separates kitchen from
07:30living room you you have different zones just because of the ceiling stop. First I was obsessed
07:35with the idea of a vintage fridge but the ones I found all had issues so this to me kind
07:40of spoke
07:40to the vibe of the space and kind of the time of when this was built and if you think
07:45about a fridge
07:46in a 400 so odd square foot space like you want it to be pretty. They look like the fridge
07:51that's in an
07:51old boat you know with like the latching handles. It felt honest to the space.
07:59Now we are in the living room slash dining room. Pretty much the same space we were in last time
08:04more or less. We island hopped. This functions as living room. The bar stools function for living room
08:09too. You sit there people would turn the bar stools around and you sit and you know converse. This is
08:14mostly old material that we had. My wife has an insane collection of indigo dyed textiles. We pulled
08:22a lot of those and we went to our friends at Sway here in LA and we just said let's
08:27take these and
08:27make something really patchwork that is interesting and deliberately busy because everything else is all
08:33cedar and walnut. So to have this it like draws the eye in. There's sneaky storage under there. The whole
08:39thing is storage you could fit a surfboard in there. It ended up being a guest bed many many many
08:43times for
08:43two people who would sleep exactly that way. We'd have people who drive in from LA and it's a pretty
08:49far drive so they'd stay the night after doing doing unholy things and and uh they'd all sleep on here.
08:55You have one thing that serves many purposes. Bed, couch, you know central piece. Really functionally
09:02there's only two pieces of furniture in this entire house. I mean outside of like things like bed and
09:07chairs but as far as built in like it is this one piece that extends through the entire house
09:12and this one u-shaped kitchen and making those two pieces function for everything that you need in
09:20life is an interesting process. And the fact that this is storage and record player, storage and sofa,
09:27storage and desk like everything. I made the joke of like we're in LA everything has a slash and like
09:32you're in a small home everything has to have a slash. Multi-purpose. Was working with a budget,
09:36that budget being it's only it's just the money I had. I think almost everything went into it.
09:43Which seems to be the case every time I build these. My neighbor who owns heartwood construction,
09:48he did a lot of the framing and all the things necessary before the millwork came in.
09:52So really every piece of this like a friend built. Typically in California you see a lot of white oak.
09:59It's like kind of California modern clean beach. This is all walnut and cedar which is not typical
10:05and it it's darker but it makes the room feel weathered like it's been by the ocean for a long
10:11time. Being so close to the ocean the concern is that this wood will expand and contract and I think
10:17to some degree it probably does but cedar does a really good job of kind of maintaining its form.
10:21We ran the flooring up the back of the island. I think because we just had extra wood and every
10:26piece
10:26material we had I was like we got to use this. I just like the way it kind of can
10:30it's almost like
10:30a waterfall effect and makes it feel continuous. And then that was the dog's room right right here
10:37under this in this crane. Under the ladder. We would have the dog bed and our hundred pound dog would
10:41sleep there and uh whole nother room. Whole nother room in the house. Now we are in the loft.
10:50It was primarily for storage but now it feels like a grown-up crib. We'd have books like on
10:56every single edge of that and it kind of became a little mini library. It's a pretty epic place to
11:02read. The skylight opens and then you can stand out and look at the ocean. I think there was like
11:10a non-functional skylight there. Yeah. And I was like this is crazy you got to be able to hop
11:15out
11:16into the ocean. And also it's nice when you're up there to be able to just stand up. And this
11:20is a
11:20really cool way to have a conversation. Hand up the coffee in the morning and then sit there and we'd
11:25chat.
11:25There's probably six people sleeping in here at times. I'd say two on the couch, two up there.
11:31Me and Amy in the bedroom. And the dogs. And the dogs. Any close calls, drinking nights coming down
11:37this ladder? Oh yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. Not me. I knew better. I definitely would have to kind of watch
11:43out
11:44of the corner of my eyes. It's a steep ladder because you can't really have much pitch on it. It's
11:48almost
11:48vertical. You have to be pretty courageous. In hindsight like we should have made a cushion for the top of
11:54that.
11:54Yeah yeah yeah. For like the crash landing.
12:03Here we are in the bedroom and laundry room. The original layout actually had a door right here
12:10that went to the bathroom. So the bathroom had double access and we felt like in a small space
12:15that was not necessary. Also it really limited the function of this wall and room because you
12:20couldn't use it for storage. So we built out this whole millwork system. Yeah we molded it up so
12:25it's kind of flushed the whole way up and again feels a little bit like a boat to me. This
12:30was like
12:31kind of the center of all of our storage throughout the house in many ways. Rather than having big
12:36traditional nightstands you get the wall mount sconce you can swing them out to be out of the
12:39way where you're not using it. I think you had stuff on it. We had books up there. Books yeah.
12:44This
12:44wasn't where you needed to collect things. This is where you needed to sleep and be cozy and do laundry.
12:54This used to be laundry. Okay this is the fun part. So the sink for the bathroom used to be
13:00right here and then next to it was a washer dryer and then you walked past that to get to
13:06the toilet
13:07and shower. You'd like do bathroom things and then come out past the washer dryer and have to like wash
13:12your hands here. It didn't function very well. One of the briefs from Jason and Amy was that they wanted
13:16somewhere to like sit and write that wasn't the island. So it's like one language, one piece,
13:22one species that goes from wall to wall. You have two window locations that weren't moving and then
13:27we knew there was an AC so we had all these like little puzzle pieces on the wall to deal
13:30with. And
13:31it ended up being cooler because it's kind of all strange. Yeah right when you walk in that was the
13:35inviting moment and then it kind of spread into all the other functions.
13:46We are in the bathroom. James is on his throne. Because the whole house is wood I think it was
13:54really important to keep something that felt like the same color and tone and warmth and like organic
14:00which is why we went with his alige. We have this little thing below for towels which is kind of
14:05atypical for a floating sink but we needed it. We bought a vintage medicine cabinet that I just
14:11thought was kind of cool and made sense in the space and we plugged that into the wood so it
14:17was
14:17recessed in there and you can get a little bit more space that way. I think a small space forces
14:22you to
14:23be really close with the people that you live in it with. And also when people come and visit,
14:28you're sort of all in the same room. And we host a lot and I think people they really got
14:33to have
14:34conversations with the people that they were going to see. I love having a lot of people over in 400
14:38square feet. It feels fun. It's crazy. It's like it feels like a dorm room. Someone recently asked me
14:43what is my idea of luxury and the answer to me is when I know what the intention was. It's
14:48not about
14:49wealth or quality or layout. To me it's if I understand what the point was that's luxury because you took
14:55the
14:55time, the consideration, the energy to make it actually feel like what you wanted.
Comments