The house was dark and closed-off — the client called it a dungeon. It also had a stunning, underused view. The client wasn't looking to gut the place — he was planning to sell, and every dollar had to earn its place — so the real work was deciding what stayed, what went, and where the budget would actually move the needle. That decision alone took hours of walking the house, over and over.

The ceiling beams are original vintage lumber, refinished by Tiffani working directly alongside the finishing crew in their shop to get the exact tone she had in her head — a technique the same crew later reused on a winery project in Fallbrook. A curved dining-room wall couldn't take the wallpaper Tiffani loved, so she commissioned an artist to hand-paint the pattern directly onto the curve instead. The dining table is the client’s original piece, refinished, waxed, and gold-leafed to match the home's new palette. In the kitchen, the island became a dedicated dog station, and an oversized stone pizza-oven hood was reshaped and wrapped in brass rather than replaced — modernizing what was already there instead of starting over.