braced themselves for Los Angeles’s overheated housing market when they set out to buy their first home together. But after purchasing a 1,600-square-foot 1950s bungalow in Mar Vista in 2019, Kate, a stylist, and David, a photographer, soon found themselves renovating in a pandemic, which delayed demolition and hit them with skyrocketing costs for materials. So the couple practiced restraint, working with architect Andrew Hall of AHA Design to rework the low-slung home and its Japanese-inspired
