Made to belong
What does it take to make a house that feels as if it were always there? For Chad Hackman and Allison Ochmanek, the answer was 18 months, monsoon rains, and the work of their own hands. Every material in their Topanga Canyon home tells the story of its making – reclaimed wood, found stone, windows that open to the view. This proved an ideal setting for our newest arrivals, pieces that, wherever they live, feel like a natural fit.
Bring it home. Make it yours.
Nordic Knots
Handmade by skilled artisans in Bhadohi, India, Nordic Knots 100% New Zealand wool rugs are often a collaboration with leading creatives – including architect Giancarlo Valle, whose Loops Rug draws from the hand-painted furniture of his family home in Guatemala.
Contour Stool
"Chairs and stools are mostly seen from the back," says Hallgeir Homstvedt, who, alongside Jonah Takagi, designed the Contour Stool for DWR. Its broad, gracefully upholstered back panel meets a sculpted solid wood frame meant to be noticed from every angle – with nothing to hide.
Traverse Collection
Erwan Bouroullec looked to the public benches of 19th-century Paris to design the Traverse Collection for HAY. Its contoured aluminum frame and heat-treated ash wood slats are built to patina beautifully and entertain anywhere – from urban balconies to courtyards with canyon views.
Keen Shelving System
This modular shelving system from GUBI was designed to go anywhere and do more than store. Seven core modules configure as wall-mounted shelves, freestanding units, or room dividers – expanding vertically, horizontally, and across rooms as needs change.
Labor of love
By Karen Day
Topanga Canyon sits in its own topography – one where creeks become 15-foot waterfalls during monsoon rains and close-knit residents respond to what the hills ask of it, together. Half an hour from Los Angeles yet entirely elsewhere, it's here that Chad Hackman and Allison Ochmanek spent 18 months renovating a house almost entirely by hand. They call it the Egg House.
The name began as shorthand for the couple’s all-consuming preoccupation – their first project together, their baby. But as they labored on, it took deeper meaning. “The creation process starts with an idea, and then it evolves into something tangible,” says Hackman. “Coming back here, it's like you're coming back to the shell, the origin of where your creation starts.”
Their collaboration began with the house as it was – a modest two-story in a vague 1980s Spanish register. What they wanted to make of it was something entirely different: handcrafted, wabi-sabi in sensibility, its palette drawn from the wilderness outside. “We really wanted to lean into the environment and fold that in,” says Ochmanek. “That’s so much of what living here is – feeling connected to the outdoors.”
One of the first surfaces they tackled was the fir ceiling, which had been painted white. Hackman – a woodworker and sculptor – pulled down every board, withdrew every nail, ran each plank through a planer, and put it all back up. Ochmanek followed on scaffolding, stain in hand.
“A lot of people assume Chad built everything and I designed it,” adds Ochmanek, an interior designer who’s run her own studio since 2018. “But we designed and built it together. Equal say in everything.”
The home reflects their shared passion for natural materials. The kitchen cabinets are made of walnut that was finely sanded but not completely stripped of its bandsaw marks, the evidence of its making preserved in the finished surface. A cork bark accent wall lines the walnut staircase. Built-ins on the second level are crafted from reclaimed mushroom wood, hemlock boards previously used for fungiculture. “It’s pretty gnarly because you’re not getting it at its finished state,” Hackman notes. They smoothed it out but “kept it pretty rustic.”
The couple also repurposed found materials: Closet door handles are made from stones collected on the beach, while reclaimed telephone poles front the cantilevered pergola at the entrance, where a wooden egg-shaped sculpture greets guests. Hackman carved it from the base of a tree that fell in his sister’s yard.
“When you look out the windows, it’s sort of the same color palette as what’s inside,” says Ochmanek. Those same windows weren’t yet in place when epic rains came. Mudslides shut down Topanga Canyon Boulevard and turned their commute from Venice into a three-hour journey in each direction.
On two occasions, they drove in the middle of the night to check on their labor of love. Hackman had to spend hours outside in 40-mile-an-hour winds hanging plywood over the openings 12 feet up, while Ochmanek was inside with a shop vacuum pulling water from the floor. “That was the time I felt like we were really tested,” he says.
The road remained closed, but their project continued. They installed microcement floors on the first level – allowing for the look of polished concrete without the risk of cracking. Applying it meant four full passes from one end of the house to the other, on their hands and knees for 10 hours at a time without stopping, for fear of leaving a visible line.
Their 3,350-square-foot home doesn’t end at its walls. The open floor plan flows into an outdoor space, overlooking a large orchard where they grow fruits, berries, and wildflowers. It runs on irrigation fed by a well drawing from 350 feet underground – rainwater that falls on the canyon, filters into the earth, and returns to the surface in a closed loop. “A regenerative system,” says Hackman, “one we really love.”
“It’s such an experience being inside here,” says Ochmanek. “It’s more than a beautiful house. Every corner is a new detail to discover, and it just invites you to interact with it, to feel it, to see it.”
Eighteen months after they began, the canyon had what it asked for: a house made entirely by its makers, settled into the hillside as if it had always been there.
