This model is the second location I designed for the series of books I’m writing. This house is the main location in the stories. It is based on an actual house and lot in Beverly Hills. When I started the project I only had one photo of the house that showed the front when it was built.

Hopper Mansion

Currently, the house is surrounded by a tall hedge so I wasn’t able to use Google street view to get any further images of it. I did use Google Earth to get the dimensions and layout of the lot. I think at some point the original lot was divided up into three lots. My model is based on what I believe the original lot to be, which is an acre and a half.

From Google Earth I could see that there is a garage addition on the side of the house. I removed that and put a conservatory there instead. In my story, the original 2 story carriage house was later added on to make a 6 car garage. It has a small apartment on the second floor in the original portion of the building.

When I started this building, I wasn’t able to do the roof because it was too complicated. Later I finally figured out how do create more complicated roofs in Live Home 3D and so I went back and added the roof, which necessitated redesigning some of the rooms on the second floor.

After the program was updated with a path tool for making garden paths, I also went back and redid the entire gardens. Other than the circular driveway, the gardens and garage have no basis on the actual house, either historically or currently.

First Floor

Grand Hallway

The Grand Hallway is decorated with Bradbury & Bradbury Burnaby wallpaper and frieze. As you enter the hallway from the front door, the Egyptian parlor is through the right pocket door. The arched doorway on the left goes to the side hall, where the library, the billiard room and the lady’s drawing room are located. As you head up the stairs there is a photo of the Hopper Mansion, and a portrait of Lori’s great aunt. A copy of “Sunday Afternoon in the Park”, one of my favorite paintings hangs by the front door.

Front Parlor

The parlor is decorated with an Egyptian theme. The wallpaper is one we may use in our house, either in our hallway, or in the kitchen/dining room area. It is made by Gate Multimedia.
The south wall features plenty of windows to provide a view of the rose garden, as well as direct access to it through the French doors.
A number of Egyptian artifacts are displayed throughout the room, and for entertainment there is a grand piano and an antique grammaphone.

The front parlor connects with the back parlor through a pocket door so that entertaining large groups of people is possible. A pair of onyx and gold statues guard the entrance to the conservatory.

Conservatory

The conservatory is mostly used as a casual sunny spot to read or dine, although it does contain a small collection of rare and exotic plants. It is also used for getting an early start on the veggie garden.

Back Parlor

The back parlor is what we could consider to be the family room. Less formal than the main parlor, it can open up to it to make one large space. It also opens up to the dining room. It is decorated with a Yosemite theme. The wallpaper is Bradbury & Bradbury’s Glenwood with their Redwood frieze. The furniture is Stickley.

Dining Room

The dining room has a British & Scottish theme, with Bradbury & Bradbury’s Alise wallpaper and frieze. This is the wallpaper we used in the parlor of our San Jose home. A tartan fabric is used for the dining room chairs. Photos on the wall include some of my photos from our trips to England and Scotland in 1995 and 1998.Most of the furniture we’ve used in our houses comes either from the collection included in the Live Home 3D program or we’ve downloaded them from the 3D Warehouse library. One exception is the built-in buffet in this room. I was able to build it as a separate file in Live Home 3D using their shape objects. Then when it was finished, I merged it and copied it into this model.

Kitchen

The kitchen came as a unit from the 3D Warehouse.There is a pass-thru from the kitchen to the dining room in the middle of the built-in. The tin ceiling is the pattern we had planned to install in our kitchen in our San Jose home, but we sold that house just before we were ready to do that project. Coffee maker is in the corner.

Pantry

With one and a half acres, there was room for an herb garden, a kitchen garden, a large ground crop area, and an orchard. So the pantry serves as a storage area for the fresh and canned food the estate produces. But some things, like chocolate bars and Dr. Pepper, you have to buy.

Servant’s Dining Area

In 1911, it would have required a lot of servants to keep a house of this size running. The third floor up in the attic houses several rooms for servant’s quarters, and this room is where they would take their meals. This room also provides connections to the other areas of the house the servants would have worked in, as well as the back staircase that they would use to reach the 2nd floor. On the wall is the call board, a rack of bells that are attached to the pull cords in the rooms the family would use. By pulling the cord, a wire would cause the appropriate bell to ring so the servants would know what room needed their attention. If you pay attention, you’ll notice a long golden piece of fabric with a tassle at the end hanging from the ceiling in the other rooms. That’s the pull cord.

Butler’s Office

As mentioned, most of the servants would have their quarters up on the third floor. There are two exceptions though. The first was the butler. He had the responsibility of running the whole house, and since he was one of the few servants who regularly interacted directly with the family and their guests, he needed to be in close proximity to not only the other servants, but to all areas of the house as well. Therefore, his tiny office/bedroom has three doors that allow him to easily pass to the main hall, the side hall, or the servant’s dining area. Along with his bed and desk, there is a safe in the room to store the family’s valuables.

Housekeeper’s Office

The housekeeper was responsible for the cook, chambermaids, and the laundry. Her small room serves as both her chamber and her office.

Side Hall

The side hall runs perpendicular to the grand hall and provides access to the library, billiard room and lady’s drawing room. It also provides access to the pool deck. It is primariy decorated with artwork by Mucha.

Library

The library features a large bookcase covering one entire wall, complete with rolling ladder, something Lori desperately wants. The wallpaper in this room is one of the stock patterns provided with Live Home 3D. Maybe when the owner finds more time, they will get around to adding Bradbury and Bradbury in this room. A partner desk sits in the middle of the room, complete with vintage phone and electric fan.

Billiard Room

The billiard room is connected to both the library and the side hall. It is where the men would congregate after dinner to socialize, play billiards or cards, drink their whisky, and smoke their cigars. The artwork in this room is a bit racier, with oil paintings that came from old west saloons. I even found one photograph of an Edwardian lady playing pool in her undies. The wallpaper is from Bradbury and Bradbury. We used the Apple Tree Frieze in the dining room of our San Jose house.

Drawing Room

Across from the billiard room, the drawing room is where the ladies would retire to after dinner. This room is currently set up to be the informal TV room. It is decorated with the Bradbury and Bradbury Lion and Dove frieze. Reproductions of paintings by Leighton, Waterhouse, and other romantic painters hang on the walls.

Second Floor

With our tour of the first floor complete, we will backtrack down the side hall back to the grand hall and the front staircase. In my story, there were originally 5 bedrooms upstairs, but the current owner did some remodeling to create a master suite so there are now 4 bedrooms. When the house becomes an inn, the other three bedrooms are remodeled to include bathrooms in the room. The inspiration for these rooms came from our stays at the Gingerbread Mansion, here in Ferndale.

Upstairs Hallway & Porte-Cochère Deck

Directly above the grand hallway, the upstairs hallway provides access to all the bedrooms and the deck above the porte-cochère. It is decorated with a sea-shell patterned wallpaper, since the theme of the hallway is pirates and mermaids. A ship model and steamer trunk also add to the theme.

Master Bedroom

The master bedroom is located in the front of the house, and offers a nice view of the rose garden from its bay window with built-in seating. The walls are decorated with the fleur-de-lis pattern I painstakingly stenciled in our own bedroom. The bedroom connects to a sitting room, and it has a large walk-in closet that stores the character’s vintage clothing collection. Yes, she has an Imelda Marcos complex.

Sitting Room

The sitting room is separated from the bedroom with French doors. It provides a comfortable room to read, watch TV, or enjoy the fish in the aquarium. It also leads to the master bath.

Master Bathroom

The decor for this room comes from the master bath in our house that is almost finished. I couldn’t do the greek key floor pattern in the program but it does use the subway tile, hex tile, and crown molding from our bathroom. However, the relation ends there. A large double vanity lines the wall on one side, and then behind the low wall, there is a clawfoot tub, and not one, not two, but three showers. There is a twin his and her set of showers, and then just because I always wanted one, there is also a rib cage shower that is appropriate for the period of the house.

King & Queen Suite

The first of the three inn suites was inspired by the work William Burgess did at Castle Coch in Cardiff Wales. I wish I could find the website where I found the wallpaper. It’s a company that hand prints historic patterns using wood blocks. I believe they were located in France. They have a lot of cool papers and a video that showed the labor intensive process they use to make their papers. Pictures of English royalty and chivalrous knights hang on the walls. The dormer window has built-in seating. Twin clawfoot tubs were added when the mansion became an inn.

President Suite

This room is the most historically correct featuring Stickley furniture and art and crafts lighting and fireplace. Photos of presidents and Washington D.C. line the walls. The story takes place in 2011, so the current president and first lady are honored with portraits by the door. Pretty sure they were left up even when Obama left office.

Emperor Suite

Decorated using Japanese motifs, this bedroom becomes the Emperor Suite when the mansion is converted to an inn. It also makes use of Art Deco furniture, like the vanity with the round mirror.

Tea Area and Sewing Room

At the back of upstairs hallway there is a small seating area where coffee and tea are served for the guests. Behind that is a sewing room that also serves as the laundry room and storage for the housekeeping supplies. The prints on the wall behind the sewing machines are four prints that Lori has in her sewing room. The other art is photos I’ve taken of her vintage clothing collection.

Garage

The garage has a small apartment upstairs. In order to make this project manageable, I did the garage as a separate file, and then exported just the shell of it to the main project file. That also allowed me to overcome one problem in Live Home 3d. Currently you can’t create buildings with different floor heights. The house as 11 foot ceilings on the ground floor, but I wanted 8 foot ceilings in the garage. Importing the garage solved that problem.

Gardens

Starting in the front of house and touring clockwise, we start in the rose garden where brick paths radiate from a central fountain. Along the front hedge is a large arbor with golden chain vines.

On the north side of the house there is a fern garden with a small frog pond, and the pool deck.

Behind the house on the east side is the herb garden and kitchen garden with its raised beds.

In the southeast corner is the are for field crops and the orchard.

Behind the garage is the secret garden which can only be reached through the maze at the end of the long garden. The secret garden has a sunken area with a pool and fountain. Classic statuary is featured in niches in hedge.

The long garden is a grass walkway flanked by two perennial borders. This was inspired by many of the gardens we saw in England.

In the southwest corner of the garden is a Japanese garden complete with koi pond and tea house. This originally started out as a simple garden more as a placeholder than anything else, but after completing the garden for our Japanese house, I came back to this one and added a more finished garden.

Tour the house

Tour the gardens