She actually 1st went to scope it out quite a few years before, when the house was initially up for sale and Grey’s was continue to in its infancy. “I realized I couldn’t find the money for it, but I didn’t notify anybody that,” she confesses. She swooned in excess of its unbelievable bluff-top rated site and “perfect proportions,” but had to stroll away. The residence came back on the market in 2013, and she seized the second possibility. It didn’t damage that Pompeo was by then a person of the optimum-paid actors in television—a good posture to be in if your passion is stunning homes.
As her fans know, Pompeo is a bona fide inside-style and design enthusiast whose weak point for genuine estate has resulted in the renovation of a sequence of stunners, like a modern-day barn in Sag Harbor and her key residence, a 1920s Mediterranean-design and style villa in Los Angeles (Advertisement, November 2014). “I actually love the craft and art of homes,” she says. “It workout routines a distinct artistic muscle.”
Extra generally than not, AD100 designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard—the British-born maestro powering satisfaction palaces for Cher, Elton John, and several customers of the Kardashian family—has been her partner in these pursuits. “We’ve been in each other’s life for so very long we know what the other will like prior to even displaying it to them,” claims Bullard, pointing out that the seaside residence marks his fourth task with Pompeo. Soon after so numerous collaborations, he considers her 1 of his closest mates.
Constructed in 1979, the dwelling is modestly sized—currently about 3,000 sq. feet, just after a later addition—and made extra as a machine for dwelling than a mogul’s mansion. But what it lacks in magnitude it a lot more than tends to make up for in intimacy and drama, thanks to its central courtyard and phenomenal ocean sights. “We didn’t alter its circulation or footprint,” suggests Bullard, “but it did call for updates.” He recloaked the exterior in clean teak and swapped the weathered doorways and windows for sleek black powder-coated metal kinds that now, at the time opened, look to disappear. In area of the terrazzo floors (“too slippery”), he mounted earthy concrete. And although Bullard may perhaps be finest known for his fanciful Morocco–goes–to–Beverly Hills aesthetic, he proved he could pull off midcentury utilitarian chic with the compact, gleaming white kitchen area, an apt match for the house’s modernist spirit.