Books & String Lights Cozy Up An L.A. Loft

Good design takes time and patience. And Gabrielle and Zack Aker are examples of this. They spent countless hours cultivating their downtown Los Angeles loft. Zack devoted a month to building a towering bookshelf and stocking it with 1,000 collected works of literature. Gabrielle spent an entire day stringing up 300 feet of string lights on the ceiling — and then did it again after the first batch of bulbs blew out. But the result, as you can see, was worth their personal investment.

Loft at a Glance
Who lives here: Gabrielle and Zack Aker, pictured here. He manages a pool cleaning and repair company. She’s an interior designer.
Size: 886 square feet (82 square meters); two bathrooms
Designer: Gabrielle Aker of Oh beauty Interiors
The Akers have lived in the loft for about 2½ years. Because it’s a rental and because most of the space is structurally set in place, they couldn’t do any major renovations or additions. Their personality would have to come through in the decor.
The unit is one big open rectangle, and Gabrielle set to work trying to keep the openness while delineating zones. On one end, she established a main living area. Zack built and assembled the swing. He secured it by drilling into the concrete ceiling and screwing in metal hooks. “We knew we wanted a magical, childlike, Disneyland feeling,” Gabrielle says.

Zack spent about a month working every day to build and assemble the bookshelf, and then buy and arrange about 1,000 books of literature, which include first editions of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden (Zack’s favorite book) and Grapes of Wrath and titles by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Cormac McCarthy. Zack had always wanted a large book collection but never had the space for it. Before moving in, he had about 300 books, and he built up the collection from there. The books are arranged based on “what he thought looked pretty,” Gabrielle says. “I’m not allowed to touch the bookshelf,” she jokes. “It’s his baby.”

Gabrielle’s baby, you could say, is that intricate collection of string lights. When the Akers moved in, there was just one hardwired light in the entire loft, in the kitchen, so they had to come up with a clever way to light the place at night.

Italian countryside cafes inspired Gabrielle’s design, but she hit a bump early on when she strung up the lights too symmetrically — Zack likes symmetry, Gabrielle doesn’t — in perfect, taut lines across each concrete ceiling beam. “I felt it wasn’t giving me the vibe I was looking for,” she says. “It was too structured.”

She told Zack her plan to make it a bit more messy, but he was hesitant. “ ‘Trust me,’ I told him,” Gabrielle says. She doubled the amount of lights from 150 feet to 300, climbed her ladder and spent hours stringing them while Zack helped call out areas where there should be more or fewer bulbs. Once satisfied, she stepped down and they switched on the lights — and every bulb blew out. “There was the issue of power that we didn’t factor in,” Gabrielle says. “All those lights were connected together at one outlet.”

Determined, Gabrielle climbed back up the ladder, took down all the lights, threw them away and started again. This time she connected the lights to three different outlets. “My thought was, the messier and less planned it looks the better,” she says. “I love those lights.”

Most of the decor was bought when the couple moved in. Gabrielle knew she wanted a white sofa, even though Zack wasn’t sure. “It looks like crap most of the time, with my nephew’s little dirty footprints, but I don’t care,” Gabrielle says. “I love white sofas.”
Gabrielle designed the table and had it built of Douglas fir. She picked up the surrounding teak wood chairs from a store that sells Indonesian and Indian furniture.

For the area near the front door, Zack built a clothing rack out of reclaimed wood and iron. He also sketched the black-and-white portrait on the living room wall in chalk and charcoal. It depicts the famous jazz saxophonist Joe Henderson.

Dining table: Blue Pocket Studio; chairs and stools: LiveStyle Design Studio

As mentioned, the only fixture in the apartment when the couple moved in was a science-lab-like LED hanging in the kitchen. Gabrielle replaced it with a papier-mâché fixture she found online.

The couple weren’t allowed to change the countertops or modern, flat-panel cabinetry, but the style “could be a lot worse,” Gabrielle says. She’s considering experimenting with contact paper as a temporary backsplash.

Gabrielle, who used to teach art, painted the pieces on top of the cabinets.

Light fixture: Crea-Re Studio

The couple live about four blocks from the Los Angeles Flower Market, and Gabrielle goes there all the time. Her pots and plants came from there. “Greenery is a big part of our space,” she says. “You need that when you live in a city to make you feel like it’s not all concrete jungle.”

A hammock chair adds more whimsy.

The Akers made the branch feature over the table together. Gabrielle bought the branches from the L.A. Flower Market and intertwined them. Zack then screwed them together and hung the piece from hooks. “It’s kind of like my favorite thing in the whole apartment,” Gabrielle says.
There aren’t any closets in the loft, so the couple suspended copper rods from the ceiling to hang clothes. Under the bed, baskets store “ugly clothes,” Gabrielle says, “like workout stuff and pajamas. The interesting thing about living in a loft is, when people come over every area has to be cleaned. We can’t keep a bedroom door closed and not make our bed.”

Artwork over bed: Gabrielle Aker

Good design takes time and patience. (cited)