We’d recently moved in together when we secured the lease for General Store in December 2009. We fell in love with redoing the space. It was our first foray into making a space that we had complete control over: our first “ours.” We came up with “General Store” because we wanted a succinct yet all-encompassing name that we could do anything with. We didn’t even want a “the” in front of it—didn’t seem necessary.
When we opened, we were very interested in supporting creativity in the community; we had all of these friends—really amazing makers and artisans and craftspeople and woodworkers—who made one-of-a-kind things for us to sell.
In the beginning, the more well-known designers we were into were not willing to offer us terms, and we were broke, so our inventory was what we had in our home that we could part with. We emptied out our kitchen, living room, and closets to add to a mix of ceramic planters, tea sets, a midcentury sofa refurbished by our friend Josh Duthie of Chairtastic, baby sweaters from France, and leather feather earrings made by a local artist. From the start, people reacted with interest and excitement. We were really surprised that we made enough in the first month to pay our rent and order more inventory.
Month by month, as we introduced more stuff to sell, we became more thoughtful about why we were choosing each thing. Looking back, it’s clear that the success of the store had a lot to do with our being open to trying a variety of goods. We stocked the store the way we stocked our house: with new and vintage items and well-designed home goods. It emphasized a different way of living—with plain, simple, well-made, beautiful things but not just one specific style.
Often when people came to the shop we would hear them say, “I wish my home looked like this.” And we realized that was a part of why they were interested—General Store spoke to a simplified and directed design aesthetic that they were striving toward, though they didn’t know it yet. Back then, you could go to bookstores with galleries, sure, but there wasn’t a store that we would go into and think: This is my vibe; this is it!
At that time, finding a unique handmade ceramic meant driving through the woods of New Hampshire or some such similar journey—it was pretty much unheard-of. Then there was a big resurgence in small-scale handmade everything—carefully curated craft fairs and new design magazines began to pop up. We went from ordering a box of things from Japan to sell, to driving up and down the coast, picking up ceramics, soap, candles, and custom small-scale furniture and design items directly from artists’ studios—and stopping for honey in Jalama along the way.
Over the years we’ve become more educated (which is easy, considering we went into this retail business knowing nothing). The store has this wide perspective with a very thoughtful curation, and it attracts people because of how it’s put together, with each piece given equal importance—a vintage ceramic and a new hand-built mug, an Edwardian-era dress and a fresh-out-of-the-box pair of clogs, just-released coffee-table books and timeless classics—all presented against natural wood with bright whitewashed walls.
When we finally got to the point of owning our first house—after renovating two locations of the store and living in several rented apartments together—we had years of pent-up desires for our living space, our longed-for abode. Of course, you can dream up endless scenarios, but you can’t test them without something concrete: The process of rethinking our house, beginning by stripping it all the way back, crystallized our design beliefs and point of view. After sharing the renovation of our Topanga home on Instagram and seeing that people were interested in the details of what we were doing and why, we realized that vision was resonating.
At home and in the store, it has become about more than owning and appreciating one-of-a-kind handmade goods; it’s about figuring out how to consciously incorporate them into your daily surroundings. It can start with your favorite ceramic coffee cup and spill into the rest of your life too.
We don’t pretend to have all of the answers. But we do think about it. A lot. This book represents the sum of all that thinking, whittled down to the doing. We hope it inspires you.
Our Topanga house, from initial impression—note the unpainted fireplace, the linoleum floor, the red beams—to the early stages of being stripped back, when we first saw the open space and recognized its full potential
When we first stepped over the threshold of our Topanga home, it was so dark and masculine-feeling, it was like entering a cave—a cave with kelly-green laminate counters, ceiling joists painted cherry red, and a kitchen with two contrasting patterns of linoleum.
But so many other things called out to us: the exposed queen truss ceiling construction, the maple hardwood floors, the operable clerestory windows, the original doorknobs with a simple decorative pattern. Radiant light streamed into the enclosed sunporch in the back (inspiration to illuminate the rest of the house), and a giant century plant thrived outside—one of those agaves that only sends up a stalk every decade or so, toward the end of its life span. It was so real, this imperfect hundred-year-old, cabin-like house. And it had been largely untouched, waiting for us.
Honoring a structure’s history and channeling its purest form lie at the heart of our design aesthetic. We knew just by looking at each other that we belonged here. We were in.
Over the years we’ve learned to seek out and value these marks of craftsmanship and originality, because we’ve had a lot of experience with stripping spaces back and building them up. When considered together, our tiny first apartment in San Francisco and our L.A. and S.F. stores checked every “must go” box: from dropped ceilings and nonsensical tiny rooms to moldy carpet and linoleum tiles adhered to black asbestos mastic. And then there are Mason’s residential projects, spanning sensitive midcentury restorations to Craftsman bungalows and Tudor-style houses with modern additions.
These spaces are all inherently different, with singular purposes. But our approach has been roughly the same: Bring the site back to its essence, and incorporate only the things that are intrinsic to a successful space.
For us, the process usually starts with dreaming. We begin by brainstorming all the possibilities, and little by little we come back to reality, weighing what we can do logistically and what our budget will allow as we formulate a strategy. Learning to see potential is half of the challenge; making thoughtful choices after you’ve uncovered that potential is the other.
The open plan is an idea that we’re always attracted to, but the degree to which open planning manifests is flexible. We understand that not everyone has the ability to knock down walls and move them around. People are limited by rental agreements, budgets, building codes, and circumstance.
That said, in this book we will encourage you to embrace the spirit of the open plan and promote flow as much as possible—whether it’s taking out surplus doors, subtly dissolving thresholds between rooms, or just reorganizing furniture. We believe that living happily in a place depends on utilizing it to its fullest and eliminating anything that doesn’t serve it from a practical point of view.
Mason’s before plans (bottom) and sketches for our renovation (top) show our thought process for opening up the space, which included moving one part of the wall in the bedroom forward (and eliminating a door), expanding the bathroom by utilizing wasted square footage in the hall area, removing a door between the hallway and the main living area, and knocking down unnecessary walls in the main living area.
In these days of hyper-connectivity, there is a line of thinking that says that people crave their own distinct realms, where they can commune with their devices; houses with tiny, plentiful rooms are said to be in higher demand. We push against this notion. Ridding yourself of physical boundaries can be freeing; moving unimpeded allows for finding your own place and existing separately together; opening up sight lines promotes imagination, creating more moments for connection.
It’s straightforward, really: You lose space if you have more walls. Take them out, and you gain.
Once we have maximized the opportunity for openness, we strategically tweak the environment. We bring in natural light (the ultimate mood lifter and design accomplice, making everything look effortlessly better); encourage indoor-outdoor living through extended decks or porches adjacent to common areas like kitchens or living rooms; and expose and introduce elemental materials, favoring wood, the most timeless material of all, stone, with its nuanced and hard-wearing beauty, and brass, a metal whose patina we are continually seduced by.
We peel back layers in pursuit of tactility and simplicity: removing carpet or paint from floors, trim or moldings from walls, tiles from ceilings. Where undesirable or disparate features cannot be cleared away, we apply a monochromatic finish—the great equalizer—unifying disjointed parts to become a whole.
Our Topanga house during its many phases of construction—from removing the tile in the bathroom, to ripping out the kitchen and living room walls, to painting everything white
The remodeled bathroom, featuring a bathtub gifted to us from friends across the street (complete with drawings by its original owner’s kids), a salvaged marble slab for the countertop, a new cabinet by Mike Beavers, and hand-stamped Moroccan concrete tile
Next, we introduce finishes that support functionality and keep the look as honest or neutral as possible. Even given these focused parameters, there are myriad options for any one material: We may treat natural wood with mineral oil; or apply a clear, water-based, low-VOC sealer; or bleach and whitewash; or simply leave it be, courting a natural patina. Often, we opt for a coat of white paint. Because we believe there is nothing quite like a coat of white paint, and choosing the precise shade is a master skill in its own right.
We also bring basic shapes into everything we do: Look closely at our work and you’ll find circles, squares, and triangles—whether it’s our store’s logo, our skylights, custom shelving units, or drawer pulls. There is something about basic shapes’ geometric balance and simplicity that we find incredibly compelling.
Finally, we add curating artwork and one-of-a-kind handcrafted objects with narrative from the local community—an approach we embrace in our stores and feel just as passionate about in our own home. We source furniture synonymous with quality: midcentury pieces in the tradition of Nanna Ditzel, Paul McCobb, Florence Knoll, Hans Wegner, Harry Bertoia, Ray and Charles Eames, Rudolph Schindler, and Richard Neutra; Shaker pieces conceived with utility and endurance in mind.
We like things. (We own two stores, stocked with pieces from many of our artist friends; of course we like things!) And yet, our aesthetic skews toward warm minimalism. It is a constant ebb and flow of editing and reediting and fitting together. We don’t have it all figured out from the get-go. It is, and always has been, a process.
This book is our vision, distilled: the General Store way. And in the chapters that follow, we’ll show you how to set it in motion.
