Inside Jennifer Garner’s Farm-Style L.A. Home | Open Door | Architectural Digest
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00:00AD, hello. Come on in. It's the cleanest it'll ever be.
00:17So this is the biggest room in the house. This is the living room.
00:20And I wanted it to feel really expansive so somebody could be playing Rummikub over there.
00:24That's really the Rummikub table. And people could be sitting around the fire here.
00:28You know how you just imagine it and then someday you have a perfect moment where it actually comes true?
00:34That is like a kind of moment.
00:36Steve and Brooke Giannetti and I have worked together for a long time.
00:40And I sat down with them one time and said,
00:43Okay, I know exactly the house I want to build.
00:45And I described it to him. Steve sent me a watercolor of it.
00:49And that is exactly the house we built.
00:51We so didn't change much that I started panicking in the middle of the build.
00:55And I thought, I never even made a Pinterest board.
00:58I never even showed him pictures from a magazine.
01:00I just told him what I wanted and he did it. And what if I hate it?
01:03But it turns out I'm really, really happy.
01:05The paintings are both by Reiner Andriessen.
01:07This is Victor Garber's husband.
01:09And in that one, there's a little photograph of Victor and me painted into the painting.
01:14And so it's extra special, dear, to me.
01:16This is by Reed Bradley at Judson Studios.
01:19He is the son of a friend of mine, Marla Frazee.
01:22She's my favorite children's book author.
01:24I wanted it to be evocative of spring in West Virginia.
01:27And you see, like, the morning glories coming down and a little bit of the mountains in the distance.
01:33A special feature, especially in the summer, is having these doors all the way wide open.
01:38Here we have it. Indoor, outdoor.
01:40This isn't California. I don't know what is.
01:42The only problem is, if my kids are having their class pool party here or something,
01:47it's very hard to keep wet kids out of the house.
01:50I have to really just stand guard and say, get away.
01:54I'll look over and there'll be two wet teenagers playing the piano.
01:57And I'm just like, okay, don't look, don't look.
02:03I'm so excited to show you my kitchen because since the day I moved in,
02:06this is the first time ever that the counter's been cleaned.
02:09Look, it's never going to look like this again.
02:11Please memorialize this.
02:13I love a wood kitchen.
02:15So the house really is like being inside a tree house.
02:19Here alone with my kids on a weekend, I cannot tell you how often I make something
02:25and I'm just feeding them as it comes off the stove
02:28because I'm not very good at things coming out of the oven or off the stove at the same time.
02:32So it is just like, have your vegetables, now have your this, now have your that.
02:36It's all out of order, but they don't seem to mind.
02:38So I knew when I imagined my favorite kitchen ever in my mind
02:43that it would have an area dedicated to baking.
02:45It just makes it so much easier to have it all in one place
02:48and to know where your different flours are and your chocolate chips.
02:51Chocolate chips are the most important thing in the whole house
02:54and I could tell you where they are.
02:56All my fireplace grates are done by Wallace Metalworks.
02:59Usually there's a dog sleeping under here.
03:01It just adds so much coziness.
03:04It's unbelievable how nice it is to have a little bit of fire going in your kitchen.
03:12This is the dining room.
03:13When I first moved to LA, I made friends with a photographer named Laura Porzak
03:18and she's turned into this incredible fine arts photographer.
03:21Clearly I'm a fan of her stuff because this is all Porzak.
03:24Brooke Giannetti and I had a blast looking at light fixtures.
03:29I can never figure out dining room lights,
03:32but you know what, you live with the choices you make and I think I'm good with it.
03:35We really eat at home almost all the time
03:38and we eat in here pretty regularly
03:40and I put doors on this room so that it could be a meeting room
03:45and actually I have a lot of meetings in here.
03:47I work from home if I'm not on set.
03:51So the first room I described to Steve,
03:54I said I want a library that is a super awesome cozy up with everyone TV room
04:00and I want it to be like a deep gray blue.
04:02This is what he did and I think he kind of nailed it.
04:05When we were first envisioning the room,
04:07I said I know the couch I want but it's a BBDW couch
04:10and this is it and it's comfortable and I just like the look of it.
04:13It's just pretty.
04:14This is everyone's favorite place.
04:16You just don't need some huge old screening room.
04:19We're pretty happy just being right in here.
04:21Feet go anywhere.
04:23I am so not fussy.
04:24There are feet, there are dogs, there are shoes.
04:26If you're going to build a house, you have to live in it.
04:29If we were going to have a library, I wanted it to be still light
04:33so it opens all the way and then it can go straight out to the garden.
04:38Here's our fireplace and this is our clover
04:43because it's supposed to be good for the earth.
04:45It's so easy.
04:46We just threw down seeds and I just think it's cheerful.
04:49I have an owl box and I'm waiting for an owl to discover it.
04:56Look, my very first cherry ever.
04:59Oh my gosh.
05:02This is my little orchard.
05:03I love it so much.
05:05We have apricots, figs and cherries right here.
05:08And then we have peaches, nectarines, apples
05:11and they are all fed by gray water
05:13because water is hard to come by in California
05:16and I don't want to use more than my share.
05:18So the gray water system, it's a big tank
05:20and it collects all the water from the washing machine, the dishwasher
05:24and filters it and waters very specifically what you tell it to water.
05:28But there's a lot of phosphorus in gray water for some reason
05:30and I guess fruit trees thrive on it.
05:33So we just said add more fruit trees.
05:35I love that you can come out here in the middle of the summer and find a snack.
05:38Growing up the daughter of a farmer
05:40and having such connections to my family farm,
05:43it just truly thrills me.
05:45So pretty much everything here is edible.
05:48All of the bushes are blueberry bushes
05:50and actually I'm going to get you a blueberry.
05:51I see one.
05:52Here you go.
05:54You want to see my vegetable house?
05:55It's so cute.
05:58I'm all about herbs.
06:00Mostly I want thyme.
06:02I cannot grow enough.
06:04My kids and I love kale chips.
06:06So we always have a lot of kale.
06:08It's tomato season, it's green bean season
06:10and then just natural flowers that pests don't like
06:13because, you know, you got to be organic.
06:17This is my favorite spot to sit.
06:19Well, I have different favorite spots.
06:21I sit in this little house behind us in the morning with coffee.
06:26Here, I'll act it out for you.
06:30Isn't it so nice?
06:32And then if it's nighttime and I have friends over, I'll show you.
06:37This is where we like to be.
06:39We turn heaters on, fire, blankets, cozy.
06:44We do have a bird's nest in the passion fruit vine right here.
06:48Oh, it got torn up.
06:50Oh, R.I.P.
06:51Okay, let's go upstairs.
06:56This is the landing at the top of the stairs.
06:59We have here some fish.
07:01My kids for Mother's Day many years ago gave me an empty little fish tank,
07:06which was basically their way of saying,
07:08please go buy saltwater fish.
07:10But you can just sit and watch their personalities forever.
07:14Kids need a spot to study.
07:16You just need a place to spread out and do projects.
07:18So that is this table.
07:21This reading nook is maybe my favorite space in the house.
07:25You can peek in on the fish.
07:27It has all the kids books.
07:29It has this awesome stained glass of a big old oak with three little owls
07:34and Birdie looking up at them.
07:36And there was one magical night where exactly what I hoped for happened.
07:40And all three kids were piled in here with me
07:42and we pulled down all the books from when they were little
07:45and we read them one after the other.
07:47That's really awesome.
07:48We read them one after the other.
07:49That's really all I could hope for.
07:51All of us are readers and if you're building your own house,
07:54you might as well offer people as many great places to read as possible.
08:05Welcome to my bedroom.
08:06This is T-Bear.
08:07My dad gave him to me when I was three from the Sears catalog.
08:10My mom made him some overalls.
08:12I knew I just wanted something that felt tight, compact.
08:16It was not a space that I needed a ton of room devoted to.
08:19Do you like it, T-Bear?
08:20Yeah, T-Bear likes it.
08:21I love that I can open these doors at night and wake up to birds.
08:26So I didn't need a huge bedroom.
08:29I did want a large bathroom because so often we get ready for work at home
08:35and it's always, you know, in your own bathroom
08:38and you need space for everyone to be comfortable.
08:42I wanted my bathroom to be really neutral, really calming.
08:46We wanted a kind of white that was flattering to have light bounce off of.
08:51I also wanted the house to look like an old farmhouse next to an old barn.
08:57And this is obviously the barn part because you can see the barn window.
09:02So this is where I sit and they turn me from one old gal to another.
09:10This bathtub, I love being next to the window.
09:14I love the quiet.
09:16I love having a tree in my bathroom.
09:18I'm very lucky.
09:22This is like a dream come true room for me
09:25because I love to have kids over for a slumber party
09:30but I'm also a stickler about sleep.
09:32Although sometimes there are kids literally everywhere.
09:35I wanted built-in bunks where kids could cozy up all in one together
09:40which is usually what happens late at night.
09:42You'll see them all bent over something that they're looking at together.
09:46They're all in this bunk watching something on TV.
09:49I love that the beds all have their own.
09:54Just like you're on a ship, a really nice ship.
09:57I love having a spot that is just where kids can be kids.
10:01I also keep all of their favorite, favorite toys from when they were really little.
10:05You want little kids who come over to feel welcome and excited
10:09and every now and then the big kids will still pull out the old toys and play.
10:15You know, who doesn't want to put the money in the piggy bank?
10:18If you'd like me to ring up your groceries.
10:22Oh, that's where Banana Grahams is.
10:28We're big Harry Potter fans
10:29and what are you going to do if you have a little cabinet under the stairs?
10:32You have to use it.
10:33So it became my son's office.
10:36Just a little spot for him to come in and dream.
10:39Mostly he hides from me and eats candy, but I can't blame him.
10:42I would do the same.
10:47I'm such a private person about my home
10:49and here I've just taken you through the entire house.
10:52And really it's for a couple of reasons.
10:54I've never built anything all by myself before
10:57and I'm so proud of it.
10:59I'm filled with gratitude every time I walk into my house
11:02that I get to live here, that I'm so lucky to have my kids here.
11:06So it's unlike me and yet I'm so happy to have shared it with you.
11:11I loved hanging with you today. Bye, AD!