Property of Mrs. Lutah Maria Riggs, Montecito, California | Architect: Lutah Maria Riggs

 An energetic perfectionist, the woman who lives in this house in Montecito, Calif., knows how to profit from all her experience in living. She and her husband had already built and lived in two former houses, so when they decided to build a third, she knew exactly what she wanted. And she worked around the clock with her architect and decorator to achieve it.

She believes, for instance, that the best way to be sure the furniture you want will fit into a new house is to assemble the furniture first. So she had templates drawn of her antiques and the new furniture she planned to buy, worked out arrangements on paper and asked her architect to design the rooms around them. She designed the detail for the tall mahogany screens she wanted for her living room, spent hours with a paint expert, experimenting with stain to get just the right shade. She wanted a high pitched ceiling, so she had the roof framing propped up in order to study it at various angles—not only from within the room, but from outside the house. A host of ideas about kitchen storage that she had already worked out in her previous house were copied, drawer-for-drawer, in her new one. 

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source: House and Garden Magazine | November 1962