Morrow

Some homes earn the word estate. This Villa Park luxury home remodel is one of them.

The Spanish Mediterranean architecture was already extraordinary before FGRED touched it — arched brick colonnades running the length of the facade, a soaring double-height interior volume, topiary courts, and a backyard built around a natural rock waterfall pool with a grotto cave bar that most resorts couldn't match. The question wasn't how to transform this Villa Park home. It was how to bring it forward without losing what made it exceptional in the first place.

The answer was a single, decisive material intervention: black-framed steel grid windows, installed throughout the living room, kitchen, dining zone, and primary bedroom. It's the kind of specification that changes everything. The oversized multi-pane panels reframe the home's relationship to its landscape, turn ordinary walls into gallery compositions, and pull the entire interior into a contemporary register — all without altering a single arch, vault, or brick. The original architecture stays intact. The home just reads twenty years newer.

Inside, the double-height living space was stripped back and repainted a clean white that lets the volume speak for itself. Wide-plank light oak hardwood flows from the entry through every room on the main floor. The fireplace received a grey concrete surround, a black horizontal mantle, and a herringbone tile firebox — quiet, considered, and perfectly weighted against the room's scale. The open staircase rises through the space on oak treads, white risers, and a black metal and glass railing that echoes the window grid without repeating it.

The kitchen remodel balances two material worlds with precision: white shaker cabinetry with brass pulls on the perimeter, warm oak cabinetry on the island, grey quartz countertops, and a full stainless farmhouse sink positioned under a wall of black grid windows. Floating oak shelves flank the window zone. A black KitchenAid appliance package — double wall oven, French door refrigerator, dishwasher — keeps the hardware story consistent. A raised breakfast nook wrapped in black grid bay windows creates a room-within-a-room quality that gives the kitchen a sense of architectural generosity rarely achieved at this scale.

The entertaining sequence that follows is genuinely rare for an Orange County luxury remodel. The dining room opens to the pool through a full-width black-framed sliding glass door, with a sculptural driftwood pendant overhead. Beside it, a dedicated wine room is entered through black steel grid double doors — an arrival moment worthy of the collection inside — with a built-in wet bar, beverage refrigerator, oak cabinetry, and a second herringbone tile fireplace that makes the space as comfortable as it is impressive.

Upstairs, the primary suite is defined by scale, light, and a warm oak vertical slat portal that frames the bathroom entry as a deliberate architectural threshold. The primary bathroom itself is one of the most striking in FGRED's portfolio: full-height narrow fluted grey tile covers every surface — walls, floor, and tub platform — and a freestanding soaking tub sits center stage beneath a crystal chandelier. The double floating oak vanity, dual vessel sinks, and brushed bronze wall-mount faucets introduce warmth against the grey, making the room feel layered and considered rather than monolithic.

Permitted and delivered in-house through the City of Villa Park. For homeowners in Orange County looking for a luxury remodel that meets the home rather than overwriting it — this is that project.