This Palm Springs dream house is all about outdoor living. For the owners, Kort and Kathryn Schnabel, it began with their discovery of a stunning Palm Springs hillside site with views of the boulder-strewn San Jacinto Mountains rising around it and the Coachella Valley tumbling down before it. Two adjoining lots, one with a "falling down" '50s house and guest casita, the other vacant, were on the market in the area. So the Schnabels bought both properties and set about building a multi-generational family gathering spot, a place for special memories like the ones Kort had of his grandparents' house on Cape Cod.
The formidable 4,780-square-foot house exerts a strong yet elegant footprint on the landscape. Despite the powerful presence of the dual 25-foot and 20-foot cantilevered roof outcroppings supported by massive Cor-Ten steel "superstructures," the four-bedroom, 4.5 bathroom house is all about dematerializing. Everywhere you turn, there are sliding glass walls, windows and glass panels of all sizes.
All four full bathrooms visually, and sometimes literally, open to the outdoors. The floor-to-ceiling glass doors in the master suite and the 50-foot-wide living room telescope open fully, extending the living spaces to expansive patios. The living room's 10-foot-wide horizontal fireplace is backed by glass for a view through the flames to the boulder wall outside. A below-grade guesthouse is capped off by a roof garden.
Boulders are a dominant feature inside and out, used as a perimeter wall in place of fencing and inside the structure and around the property for effect. Around the living room fireplace, several massive rocks "pierce" the glass wall as they cross from indoors to out. Four fire pits dot the property, which also includes a shuffleboard court, and a boulder-strewn drainage "river" that carries to the lower gate.
To read the original Los Angeles Times article by Carol Crotta and accompanying pictures, courtesy of the Las Angeles Times, please visit: http://www.latimes.com/home/la-hm-schnabel-palm-springs-20160312-story.html