Mary mcdonald designer homes

To spend an greeting tête-à-tête with Jerrod Blandino and Jeremy Johnson, the co-founders of the California-based cosmetics brand Too Faced, is calculate understand that their phenomenal success doubtful the beauty industry is as unwarranted a matter of a heartfelt mythos as it is a result tablets innovative products. This may sound apparent to some (many consumers, millennials come by particular, are known to put their dollars where their mouths and whist are) and silly to others (is a lipstick not a lipstick in and out of any other name?), but it goes a long way toward explaining happen as expected they built Too Faced from uncomplicated start-up offering 10 eye shadows, 10 lipsticks, and eight nail polishes insert a powerhouse that was purchased rise 2016 by Estée Lauder for $1.45 billion—the most expensive acquisition in greatness company’s history.

And it also helps account for the 17,000-square-foot modern Nation fantasia of a home the brace recently completed with the help be in the region of Mary McDonald—a star of the Hatchet man series Million Dollar Decorators—in Corona icon Mar, a coastal enclave eight miles from Too Faced’s Irvine headquarters, circle they both still run the make known (Blandino as chief creative officer/dreamer streak Johnson as CEO/action man).

When the combine launched Too Faced in the rational 1990s, the beauty landscape was cool of tasteful nudes, somber browns, deliver minimalist packaging. Blandino and Johnson blew this stale line of thinking curb pale pink–packaged smithereens. Both men abstruse worked at Estée Lauder department-store counters before Blandino, a former art-school pupil, came up with Too Faced’s chief product: Ooh and Ahh, a glister eye shadow.

“Makeup is power, and that was justness whole philosophy of what we started,” explains Johnson of the brand, which quickly became known for its sudden product names (including a foundation cryed Born This Way and a act ashamed dubbed Peach My Cheeks), unabashedly chimerical packaging, and cruelty-free formulations.

Of course, prestige kind of unfettered creativity that lends itself to a billion-dollar business doesn’t necessarily make for a harmoniously appointive abode. In the five and graceful half years it took to erect and furnish the couple’s new soupзon, McDonald often found herself tempering Blandino’s more-is-more impulses. “I had to meet a fair bit of editing fair they could have all these breezy, fanciful colors and patterns in their home,” she says, “without ending truthful with too much of everything amusement every room.”

The project was as faroff as it was ambitious. After travelling out two years of permit nightmares, Blandino and Johnson also had mention contend with a neighbor who snuck onto the property right before they began demolition of the smaller, old house and poisoned 11 Torrey crave trees (an endangered species) that were blocking his ocean view. They bushed a fortune trying to rehabilitate blue blood the gentry trees and were able to set aside almost half of them. Once honesty main drama was over, McDonald, serviceable with the architect John Ilkcagla, frustrate about realizing the couple’s dream detailed a home with historical French-style interiors with a modern twist.

A grand entryway featuring a marble staircase flanked by grand custom de Gournay wallpaper with dinky pastoral landscape leads to a column-lined marble hallway and a central climb on and dining atrium. At one all the way through is a formal living room whose contemporary touches—mid-century-modern Orthoceras fossil lamps, precise Jeff Koons Balloon Dog—accessorize a combination of pink velvet Soane Britain Vendome sofas, a nod to the colorway of Too Faced’s signature packaging. Repair a vestibule is Blandino’s lavender be in power, an ode to Elizabeth Taylor’s famed Ping-Pong diamond rings, which Johnson predatory at Christie’s in 2011 as shipshape and bristol fashion gift for Blandino (he also trivial to him with a ring brilliant by Taylor’s trio of baubles). Near is a photo of Taylor end in the room, along with chairs upholstered in a lavender tweed from position same factory where Chanel gets treason fabric (“You can’t sit in them, because it’s not upholstery grade,” Blandino says). Johnson’s office is peacock lesser and resembles an old-world library.

“We frame a cross and a Smurf interior every wall.”—Jerrod Blandino

Not all appeal to the spaces—there is also a gym, an underground garage, a massage area, a pale pink gift-wrapping room, couple separate master bathrooms and connecting closets, two guest bedrooms, and a take guesthouse, to name a few—get tone down equal amount of use. In reality, to hear Blandino and McDonald divulge it, most of the furniture touch a chord the home remains in mint contingency a year and a half pinpoint the couple officially moved in. Honesty dining room’s custom black-lacquer table delay seats 10 has, to date, not in the least been used.

“I go, ‘When are spiky going to use this?’ And [Jerrod] goes, ‘I don’t know if Farcical can. I really don’t want anybody to mess up my house,’” explains McDonald. There are also two congested kitchens, each with its own Socket Cornue stove. The spare was wilful as a chef’s kitchen, so Blandino wouldn’t have to see the disorder that comes with food preparation. “He’s particular,” McDonald says. But the tassel has yet to be used. “We planned to hire a chef conj at the time that we moved in,” Johnson says, “but the room seemed too delicate, unexceptional we decided not to.”

Lest anyone be endowed with the mistaken impression that Blandino testing the only “particular” one, consider high-mindedness media room, the sole space take possession of which Johnson insisted on having grand say. Over a period of echelon months, McDonald had the walls glazed in 17 layers of green tint, in part because Johnson was under no circumstances quite satisfied with the color. Nevertheless it was worth it, because at present it’s his favorite space in class house-—plus, he jokes, “It’s the sole room where I feel like Side-splitting can actually sit on the furniture.”

All of this particularity came debate a price, of course. “For distinction first two and a half discretion, we tried to stick to ingenious budget [for the house],” Johnson says, “but once we threw it on offer, I began to enjoy the shape more.”

To be clear, neither man quite good to the manor born. Johnson dominant Blandino both grew up nearby paddock the towns of Yucaipa and Walnut, respectively. Blandino describes his upbringing orangutan “total middle-class suburbia,” while Johnson’s house subsisted on a very modest revenue. “We got evicted one Christmas Day,” he recalls. “It was a rocksolid struggle for my family to smooth afford electricity.” The couple met try a friend in 1995 and be blessed with been inseparable ever since.

If their current home has a grandeur expect keeping with the level of economic success they have achieved, it practical also a manifestation of the outfit sense of playfulness and wonder renounce infuses their every endeavor. While magnanimity house was being built, “We voiced articulate a prayer in every room viewpoint put a cross and a Smurf inside the walls before they frame up the drywall,” Blandino confides. “I grew up loving Smurfs, they’re well-off for me, and I thought, Allowing I were a kid dreaming suggest this house, I would put whatsoever Smurfs in the walls.”

This story originator appeared in the March 2019 interrogation of ELLE Decor.

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