Garage becomes guest house, built-ins keep it open

Sunset, Nov, 1988

The cars may whimper parked out on the street; their old home is now a guest house. Los Angeles designer William Holbrook put a houseful of amenities into this remodeled garage, yet the plan feels open, spacious, and uncluttered.

Two-thirds of the 18- by 20-foot shell is the main room you see; the other third conceals a small combined kitchen and laundry room and a bathroom with a fullsize tub and shower.

The new wall that separates these two spaces also houses a bed that swings down out of the wall (look in the yellow pages under Beds - Disappearing, or Beds - Retail). Its mechanism is sized and set into the wall so the bed can swing over the fabric-covered plywood sofa base. Upholstered bifold doors across the bed opening act as a backing for sofa bolsters; the sofa sits in a niche so it doesn't intrude upon the room.

Behind the bed space is the tub. Dropped ceilings in the bath and kitchen house recessed incandescent fixtures that don't take up space.

At both ends of the main room, double folding doors with transom windows expand the space out into the garden. A 4-foot-square skylight in the main room and a smaller one in the bath lighten the spaces. Casement windows brighten the desk and the kitchen areas.

Flooring is the original concrete, stained slate blue with cement stain and sealed. c