For Dimitri and Leah Bizoumis, finding their dream home in Rolling Hills, just outside Los Angeles, was a matter of both fate and persistence. “It’s funny—for years I would drive by and look at this place with Leah and think, ‘I hope this becomes available one day.’ It was such a beautiful house and a lifestyle that everyone aspires to achieving,’” says Dimitri, a pediatric dentist who teaches part-time at his alma mater, USC. “I admired it for years. I guess things happen for a reason and it was serendipity, because it finally became available. We were so lucky to get it.”
The home, originally built in 1968 and owned by acclaimed Southern California developer Ernest W. Hahn (who designed numerous shopping malls and centers nationwide including The Promenade on the Peninsula, formerly The Courtyard in Rolling Hills Estates), was not decorated in their style and needed new landscaping.
“There was no landscape to speak of, and it was completely overgrown with ivy,” recalls Dimitri of the home filled with carpet and wallpaper. “The house had good backbones and a solid foundation with steel doors, and it was a very smart house for the time. It’s a California midcentury surrounded by large glass windows. Through the use of his windows, if you’re in the backyard by the pool, you can see the city lights and the coastline. So he designed the house very well.”
To make it their own and reflect a love of art and their Greek heritage (they were both born in Athens, Greece), they did a first remodel in 2000, followed by a second remodel with the help of friend and designer Vincent Jacquard of eponymous Beverly Hills–based firm—who also designed their apartment in New York. “We didn’t want to have a house where we would have to say, ‘Don’t touch this,’ and ‘Don’t go near this,’” says Leah, president of Athena Alexander and Callisto of California. “He made it 100% livable without worry.”
The bucolic, 6,000-square-foot residence is replete with a swimming pool, a vineyard consisting of pinot noir and chardonnay, more than 70 olive trees (they bottle 300 liters of olive oil per year and have a wine and olive oil partnership with nearby Terranea Resort), and approximately 120 fruit trees yielding everything from apples and apricots to blood oranges, pistachios and figs.
You can read more about this beautiful home here.
