>>LIVE
The Star-News carried a feature by Juliette Funes this weekend on the home of Kristina Urbana Spencer, who is an interior designer and the owner of Pasadena-based Setting the Stage Interior Design.
The modern home is a model of sustainability, being both eco-friendly and allergen-free:
“For a long time, green was not necessarily beautiful,” Spencer said. “Your choice was hemp, hemp and hemp. With the explosion of truly green products, you have much more variety.”
Let’s take a peek around the house.
As for this gorgeous, natural-gas fireplace: It not only provides heat to the living room, but it is also more efficient than a wood-burning fireplace and it doesn’t create soot or smoke, Spencer says.
The graffiti wall in the backyard is an unconventional piece of art that tells the Spencer family story.
(Spencer) asked the artists (Arco and Ruets) to tell the story of the family’s life, and she couldn’t be more pleased with the results.
There are Olympic rings for Jeff Spencer, who was an Olympian; he participated in a cycling event in the 1972 Munich Olympics. …
The Colombian flag is included for their adopted daughter Kin, 11. Also written there is “La Familia por Siempre,” which means “family forever.”
That’s a steel cactus sculpture in the middle of the yard of synthetic, lead-free grass. The plants are all drought-tolerant to preserve water.
These rain HOGs each hold 57 gallons of rain water. Spencer tells the Star-News she saves about 65,000 gallons a year through water-saving strategies.
(Photos by Walt Mancini / Staff)