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" When I was a kid, if someone asked me where my favorite place was, I would always answer: &amp;#039;California,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; recalls interior designer Bill Stewart, who grew up in West Palm Beach, Florida. Although he&amp;#039;s contentedly been the principal of his own Atlanta-based firm, William Stewart Designs, since 1985, Stewart drolly admits that this &amp;quot;nagging thing about California&amp;quot; continued. &amp;quot;I loved the weather. I loved the architecture. So about five years ago, I said, &amp;#039;I want a house in Palm Springs.&amp;#039;&amp;quot;   While Stewart spent holidays at the Orbit In, one of the area&amp;#039;s restored midcentury resorts, he began to look for a vacation home. Just a few blocks from town, set against the boulder-strewn foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains, he found a 1962 house for sale. It had been built by the Alexander Construction Company, a group of father-and-son real estate developers who put up more than 2,200 modernist tract homes in Palm Springs between 1947 and 1965. This one, however, had been altered beyond recognition.  &amp;quot;The house had been made to look Moorish, French\u2014anything other than what it was,&amp;quot; explains Stewart, &amp;quot;and the backyard was snake-infested, but you felt like you could touch the mountains, and there were 50 mature palm trees on the lot. I saw what it could be: the ideal Palm Springs house.&amp;quot; The designer resolved to restore the property to its original simplicity, work with era-appropriate materials and style the interiors with a sense of glamour and fun.  Stewart was unable to find working blueprints or early photographs of his property. &amp;quot;But because it was a tract home,&amp;quot; he explains, &amp;quot;four models of each design were built. Up the street, there&amp;#039;s the very same house, where the owner has lived for 40 years and nothing&amp;#039;s been changed.&amp;quot; Using that house as his model, Stewart stripped away layers of misguided home improvements. &amp;quot;It was like an archeological excavation,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I was digging to find out what 1962 looked like.&amp;quot;  The designer re-created a sunscreen at the front of the house, a cast-concrete wall filtering sunlight and street sounds. The entry hall was reopened and a wooden slatted screen was installed. Plasterboard walls were removed to reveal original wood, and an enclosed garage reverted to the original open carport. &amp;quot;I decided that anything that was attached to the house should be as it was in 1962,&amp;quot; says Stewart. &amp;quot;Everything else can be good design from other decades. This is popular modernism. It&amp;#039;s playful, a little flamboyant, like fashion\u2014amped up and of the moment.&amp;quot;  In the dining area, a Saarinen table and Tulip chairs (currently produced by Knoll) sit under a vintage Lightolier fixture inspired by 1957&amp;#039;s Sputnik, the first Soviet satellite. Keeping up the cosmic theme, Piero Fornasetti&amp;#039;s signature celestial bodies float across the sheer black-and-white Soli e Lune drapery fabric. Two Fornasetti side chairs stand sentry at either side of the kitchen door.  This place is just the way a simple house should be,&amp;quot; Stewart sighs appreciatively. &amp;quot;There is so much over-the-topness now. Everything has to be so big. I see closets as big as my bedroom.&amp;quot; Like all Alexander houses, this one was designed for a real working family to enjoy indoor/outdoor living, and the bedroom&amp;#039;s sliding glass doors open out directly to the backyard. The sheer drapes and quilted bedcover, a fresh splash of spring green and yellow flowers, were custom made; the fabric, Ambrosia, is a vintage David Hicks design produced by Lee Jofa.   When Stewart brought the house back to its original condition, he replaced all the doors and windows. By keeping the headers on the sliding glass doors at their original height (seven feet), the natural light remains well modulated and the interiors never feel either overexposed or cavelike.  &amp;quot;You have to remember that this house is a reflection of what an Easterner thinks Palm Springs should look like,&amp;quot; says Stewart, who has cheekily enlivened his serious art collection with a few paintings by Josh Agle, aka Shag\u2014jazzy cocktail scenes rendered in a sort of Pink Panther meets Breakfast at Tiffany&amp;#039;s style.  For Stewart, a house in the desert is the ideal place to realize the continuous flow of design eras and experience an inspired vision of modernism&amp;#039;s indoor/outdoor lifestyle. &amp;quot;I like when the inside and the outside are the same temperature,&amp;quot; he says. What the Pros Know  The interior of this two-bedroom/two-bath house measures 2,000 square feet. It&amp;#039;s not the smallest house in the country (it&amp;#039;s about 20 percent below average), but it&amp;#039;s true to its period and democratic purpose, and the rooms are typical of most American homes. The California climate, however, allows for expanding the living space by modulating the distinction between indoors and out. So Stewart could increase the sense of his home&amp;#039;s size without increasing its footprint. One of his strategies was to limit the number of materials and motifs he used. &amp;quot;When you use the same materials inside and out, the eye is drawn easily through the spaces.&amp;quot; On the living room wall, an aqua accent mimics the color of the swimming pool. When the pool was restored, its walls were redone with iridescent glass mosaic tiles; similar tiles were used for the shower in the master bathroom and for the fireplace surround in the living room. Stewart introduced grass cloth for wall coverings and a citrus-inspired palette throughout the house. Click here to see the resources. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elledecor.com/home-remodeling-renovating/a3883/restoring-midcentury-style-a-54556/>