How toxic mold led to a picturesque bathtub in the sky – and a gallery-like brand-new house – is the story of the striking transformation of Elizabeth Wahler’s home.

“I’ve lived on this property for 38 years minus six; I grew up here and was lucky enough to be able to stay here,” recalls Wahler as she sits in her ultra-modern Cameo Highlands home, looking out at the expansive view of the Pacific Ocean from the mostly glass-walled structure. “The old house was a traditional California ranch home, one-story with a low-pitched roof – and a lot of water issues, including a leaking swimming pool. That had to go and the house had to come down, because it also had some toxic mold.”

In the process that followed the decision to raze the original house, the digital media-marketing executive became a wanderer, spending years as a local nomad until the home’s transformation was complete.

“I bounced around in Corona del Mar and Newport, from place to place, for six years,” she says. “It took two years to remediate the property, then almost four years before it was ready to move in.”

Wahler enlisted the help of Laguna Beach-based architect David B. Smith because “of his clean lines, their symmetry, and his beautiful execution of minimalism, yet with warmth.”

What Wahler desired in her re-imagined childhood home was a place to show off her art treasures, which include her Tony Duquette furniture and design pieces, and her mineral and gem collection.

“I wanted it to look a little bit like a gallery. Since the last house was so traditional California ranch, it was very heavy, dark woods, lots of red and just dark, dark browns. The footprint of the new house is actually very similar, but it feels like you’re in a completely different space because of Dave’s beautiful minimalist design.”

A key element in Smith’s design is the “transparent” layout, which begins at the entrance, an interior courtyard designed for entertaining that includes a glass-walled home office in a separate structure at the east side of the property and continues through to the ocean view.

“We worked really hard to get her views from the office to the ocean,” Smith recalls. “How could we do that if it’s all the way on the other side of the property? So we created a layout that was very transparent through the dining room and through the big entryway, so when she’s sitting there at her desk, she can see the ocean all the way out there.”

The 3,200-square-foot house sits on an 8,500-square-foot lot and is constructed of wood framing, steel and concrete; the glass doors in the office and the main house’s dining room/ kitchen/living room slide open to make a completely indoor-outdoor living space.

“The lot coverage is not based on the floor of the house. It’s based on the roof,” Smith explains. “You can only go 11 1/2 feet to a flat roof. You can go 14 feet to a sloped roof, which has to have a minimum pitch. So I went to the board and I said, ‘I want to do a curved roof, because you’re going to get a lot more volume inside the arc of the wood on the lines. So can I take the launching point from the arc and the apex of the arc and take a line and call that my average roof?’ They said yes, so that is what we did.”

That idea also filled one of Wahler’s crucial needs, as well as creating one of her most beloved areas of the home.

“I was designing her master bathroom, bedroom and closet and I thought I had a good-sized walk-in closet for her, but she was like, ‘No, it’s not big enough!’” Smith said. “So we did a split-level mezzanine, with the bathtub up the stairs, along with a wall of closets. We were able to make that feasible because the roof was curved, and that gave us more space so that we could legally access that upper level.”

That tub in the sky has a perfect view of the setting sun, making it a place where she luxuriates “almost every night.”

The marble steps leading up to the bathroom look out onto a side garden. “I’ll even bring my laptop here and sit on this staircase because I just love the light in here so much and with the greenery. The light in here in the afternoon – oh, it’s just divine. And little hummingbirds usually come and they play in the bottlebrush, and it’s such a peaceful room.”

And just one of the lovely places in a house well worth the six-year wait to return, skillfully reimagined for these modern times. ■