The story
- Pool
Step through the Fleetwood pocket sliders and the living room simply becomes the garden. That is the tone of the house. Custom designed and built by its owners on one of the larger lots in Del Rey, 12851 Bonaparte is four bedrooms and four and a half baths of material done properly. Cucina Lube cabinetry from Italy. Marble sinks integrated as single seamless pieces, no rim, no joint. Engineered European oak floors laid throughout. A full Miele package in the kitchen, smart oven and microwave included, set into surfaces meant to be cooked on rather than photographed. Skylights and tall glass carry daylight deep into the plan, and a custom LED system shifts its warmth through the day to follow the sun, so the rooms feel the same at seven in the evening as they did at noon. Sonos plays through integrated Klipsch ceiling speakers in every room. Control4 quietly runs the rest. Outside, a saltwater pool finished in non-toxic plaster sits in a yard with real room around it, the kind of proportion that has become rare on the Westside. What separates this house from others at its price is what was built into it before the finishes ever went on. Water arrives filtered by whole-home reverse osmosis and softened for every shower, with dedicated three-stage drinking taps at the kitchen and bar. Air moves through UV-LED filtration on the HVAC. A 10.4kW solar array with two backup batteries takes the electric bill to nearly nothing and keeps the house lit when the block is not. A Stage 2 charger sits in a garage finished in polyurea with integrated storage and a silent motor. The security is genuinely institutional: fifteen 4K cameras with AI motion detection, full perimeter alarm, and DefenseLite forced-entry glass across the entire ground floor. Lock the door, fly to Europe, and think about it exactly never. Del Rey is the quiet center of the Westside. Playa Vista and the Silicon Beach campuses are minutes away, as are the harbor restaurants of Marina del Rey and the galleries and dining of downtown Culver City. Abbot Kinney and the sand at Venice are a short drive, and the Ballona Creek path runs to the ocean from the neighborhood. The 90 delivers the 405 and the 10 quickly, and LAX is close enough that a morning flight is a civilized affair. Homes like this are not assembled from a spec sheet. Land of this size in Del Rey rarely comes available, and the systems here, water, air, power, automation, security, are ones almost no builder installs because almost no buyer thinks to ask. These owners asked, and then built the answer.
