The 5 Lessons One Homeowner Learned Rebuilding After the Woolsey Fire

The idea of building a home from the ground up is a lifelong dream for many, fantasized about endlessly whether it comes to fruition or not. For some, though, it’s not a dream that leads them to building a home from scratch but a total nightmare. Homeowner Lisa Nugent experienced it for herself in November 2018 when the Woolsey Fires spread through Malibu, burning the home she’d lived in for the previous six years to the ground. 

“It was terrifying,” Nugent says. She’s referring not just to the fires themselves but the process of rebuilding. “I had never built a house. It was a horrible experience.” It might not be the voice of optimism that some homeowners faced with rebuilding look for, but Nugent’s brutal honesty is indeed representative of how daunting the prospect can be. 

“I went into this not knowing the differing roles and responsibilities of architect and the general contractor,” she says. “I knew I didn’t have a budget for an interior designer or lighting designer or landscape designer.” In the six years between the fire and her new home’s completion, Nugent learned more about designing a home than she had ever imagined, meticulously researching every detail she could. Now that it’s firmly in the rearview mirror, here’s what Nugent took away from the five year rebuilding process.

Honor the old in big ways…

Growing up, Nugent’s father—a landscape designer who worked on a Case Study Home—instilled a sense of appreciation for California’s midcentury architectural heritage. “My dad was always talking about landscaping and houses. He knew many of the architects and we would go out driving to see houses,” Nugent shares. “He had a really great appreciation for architects and that appreciation rubbed off on all of us.” 

Decades later, when her ’50s ranch home was lost in the Woolsey Fire, a piece of California’s architectural history was lost too. When it came time to design her new space, Nugent decided to create something evoking this history, if not exactly replicating it. The floor plan, along with its scale and several key details, like the wood-paneled ceilings and floor-to-ceiling glass windows, maintain the ranch feeling, but with a contemporary tinge.

…and honor it in small ways, too

When Nugent saw how much loss there was on her property, she thought to have the burned wood milled. She found a hobbyist who came to collect the logs after the trees had been felled, and he milled them into three-inch boards and dried them in a kiln before returning them to Nugent. “I didn’t know exactly how to incorporate the wood, but I thought I could always make a bench or a table or something,” Nugent explains. “When I saw the stone pine after it was milled, it had such a beautiful pattern to it. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that it was the heat and the fire that did something to the sap, so it just made it more colorful.” 

Seeing the distinctive pattern on the stone pine boards gave her the idea to use them for the front door. Employed for the extra large door at the front of the house, they make an impression on both the interior and exterior. They also stand as a powerful reclamation of the past, making something useful out of what would have otherwise been pure loss. (Another piece of salvaged wood—a massive 29-inch square log, to be specific—is used for the hearth just past those large entry doors.)