If you find yourself parched in Carlsbad on a balmy San Diego afternoon, Andrew White has the antidote: his home. Sitting at the top of a cozy, residential cul-de-sac, it’s equal parts secret lair and Palm Springs Airbnb. Like a proud father scrolling through pictures of his kid, White heads to the calf-skin leather walls of his living room and pulls at a discreet tab. With a gentle tug, the wall separates into two panels of Tetris cut-outs, revealing a mirrored nook with a full wet bar where he could shake up the perfect Vesper. Then, he pushes the wall back in, and the cubes mesh together, perfectly concealing the libation center when there are no guests to water.
San Diego Magazine covered the home in 1990, after an extensive revamp by designer Andrew Gerhard.
Built in the 1960s but extensively revamped some 30 years later, “[the house] has a lot of cool things going on with it that I can work with and keep that original spirit of the home,” White says. “Obviously, [I’ll] take the things that really are apparent that they’re from the ’80s and ’90s and update those. But the majority of the character of the home, [I want to] maintain that to kind of create this new and old mixture.”
Massive windows and a skylight bring natural light flooding into the house’s expansive main living space.
Speaking of new and old, this isn’t our first time visiting the abode. San Diego Magazine stepped inside the home—fresh from a laborious remodel by designer Andrew Gerhard—in 1990. Gerhard turned the midcentury tract house into “a sleek, modern showcase” that “in no way resembles its former self,” reports writer Sharon K. Gillenwater.
“He attacked the very structure of the home with relish, knocking down walls, adding on rooms, and raising ceilings.” There are plenty of traces of the delicious ostentatiousness of the early 1990s (silk on the walls and real salmon skin on the side tables!), but the home is grounded, too, bringing its sunny SoCal exteriors inside with the addition of a “spacious garden room [that increases] the square footage froom 2,800 to about 3,600,” Gillenwater adds.
This built-in couch has been a staple of the home since Gerhard installed it decades ago.
Thirty-five years later, Gerhard’s North County charmer still exudes the same appeal it did back then, at least for White, a former HGTV personality on the cast of Hot Properties: San Diego. He saw the allure of the home’s bones and purchased it at the end of last year. “When you walk in, you can see the level of detail [and] the different elements that your cookie-cutter house just doesn’t have,” he says. “I really did get a sense that there was some historical significance or someone that was important had designed it, because you just don’t see homes like this every day.” Though he passed away in 2012, Gerhard’s calling card was—and is—modernity in motion.
The entryway effortlessly glides into the living room, where the white, plaster walls have been vertically raked. The unique texture offers the impression that the carpenter mistook the surface for a zen sand garden. Gerhard anchored the voluminous space with a custom, built-in boucle couch that nods to the playful ’80s maximalism of The Memphis Group. Light rushes into the room at every angle, with a triptych of 12-foot-tall windows running the length of the wall opposite the entrance. Through them, residents and visitors can admire a lush landscape of mature palms and gigantic bamboos on the vast veranda.
White added a new tub in the primary bathroom but left the maroon-hued marble in the shower as a nod to Gerhard’s vision.
Gerhard left little Easter eggs all over the home’s 1990 iteration. It’s these treats of design that called White to the property—secret delights await all over the house, including a concealed closet in the guest bedroom and its adjoining, glass-ensconced sun den, one of the best reading nooks you’ll find on either side of this century.
White swapped the flooring in the kitchen to wire-brushed oak, a bright juxtaposition against the existing Idaho quartz throughout much of the home.
As such, White was judicious with what stayed and what went. He decided to keep the Idaho quartz flooring throughout most of the house but refreshed the kitchen with wire-brushed oak to lighten things up. There are all-new cabinets and appliances, and White moved away from the myriad mirrors of the original design. “I think the problem is, when you have too many mirrors, it becomes kind of like a fun house, like a maze,” he explains.
A spa awaits just outside the primary suite.
Curved ceilings in the living room open up to an indoor atrium holding 35-year-old palms nourished by the natural light that floods in through the skylight overhead. The primary bedroom boasts an inner garden that separates the sleep space from the generous en-suite bathroom, replete with (admittedly divisive) glass blocks and a wine-tinged marble shower. No one would call it subtle, yet somehow it all feels refined, polished, and 2025. The house was ahead of its time, especially for the landscape of San Diego. Floor-to-ceiling windows? Indoor-outdoor living?
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“Everyone wants that now, and everyone expects that now,” White says.
