SUSSEX Desert Collection TM
TM
© Cambria 2010
JESSICA CAPSHAW OF “GREY’S ANATOMY” WANTED A GUESTHOUSE TO DOUBLE AS A FAMILY SPACE. CAMBRIA IS JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED.
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hen Jessica Capshaw and her husband Christopher Gavigan bought their 1927 Spanish Colonial home in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2007, they got something else in the bargain: a dilapidated garage slumped on a cracked concrete slab behind the house. They lived with the eyesore for years while restoring the main house, allowing the shack to “tell them what it wanted to be.” “We always knew we were going to do something with it, but we had to figure out what that was,” says Jessica, who plays the feisty pediatric surgeon Dr. Arizona Robbins on ABC’s hit show, “Grey’s Anatomy,” and
is also known off-screen for her Hollywood lineage as actress Kate Capshaw’s daughter and director Steven Spielberg’s stepdaughter. Four years later, Jessica and Christopher have their answer: Their former eyesore has become a chic guesthouse that will double as an open, airy play area for their son Luke, three, and daughter Eve, seven months, as they grow up. It wasn’t easy to get to this point. They began demolition in July 2010, scrapping 95 percent of the original structure and keeping only the footprint. They completely relandscaped the spacious back yard; the concrete slab that had encroached on much of it was history.
BY LOUISE MORGENSTERN PHOTOGRAPHER
DOMINIQUE VORILLON STYLIST
KIM WONG HAIR ROD ORTEGA MAKEUP
JAMIE GREENBERG
LEFT: Jessica cuddles with the kids in the guesthouse’s airy studio. The wall of French doors behind them opens to the yard and pool, giving the space an indoor-outdoor quality the whole family loves. ABOVE: With its earth-tone “Sussex” Cambria countertops ready to withstand repotting, pruning, and trimming, a workshop serves as potting shed for flower-loving Jessica. Vintage stool, ladder, watering cans and clay pots from Rolling Green Nursery.
C A M B R I A S T Y L E . C O M