Some of the best things in life are the ones you create together: a hand-built pergola, a picnic table for family get-togethers, or in Lisa “Jack” Akey and Blake Steury’s case, the 1916 Craftsman home they remodeled together.
Akey, 59, a recipe developer, stylist and photographer, and Steury, 63, a former roadie for Radiohead and Jay-Z who manages the LED screen department for Fuse Tech Group, are the kind of couple who wake up at the crack of dawn to beat the Los Angeles heat so they can lay down a brick pathway in their backyard.
“I come up with the crazy ideas, and Blake says, ‘Yeah!’” Akey says, smiling at her partner’s can-do attitude. “I love that he always says yes to my ideas and then figures out how to make them happen.”
“There’s no crazy idea that she’s ever had that I don’t like,” Steury says, standing in their Atwater Village living room next to a wooden console with a hidden TV lift he designed and built himself.
“What about the dresser in our bedroom?” Akey says jokingly, referring to the massive wardrobe they created by pairing an IKEA dresser with a hutch they found on Facebook Marketplace. With theatrical flair, Akey, a former actor and dancer, chose a vibrant shade of chartreuse for the wardrobe that she was “obsessed” with.
“At first, I thought the color was too much, but now I love it,” says Steury. “It just takes me a little longer to catch up with you.”
When the couple toured the three-bedroom, 1,300-square-foot Craftsman in 2024, they lived in a five-bedroom, five-bathroom, 4,000-square-foot house on 1.3 acres in Canyon Country with a three-car garage and a swimming pool. They bought the house in 2019 to accommodate the divorcees’ combined four children, now ages 21 to 24. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the extra bedrooms came in handy as all four kids attended online classes from their rooms.
A few years later, after their children moved out, the couple decided to move back to Los Angeles. Steury had a tough hourlong commute each way from L.A. to Canyon Country, and both felt disconnected from the neighborhoods where they had raised their kids: Hollywood for Akey and Studio City for Steury.
They searched in those neighborhoods, but when they found the three-bedroom Craftsman with an ADU above the garage in Atwater Village, they saw its potential right away. “The vibe and the front of the house matched the way that I feel inside,” Akey says, describing the lush, enclosed front yard with drought-tolerant plants and mature fruit trees like pomegranates, avocados and guavas. Plus, it had a welcoming front porch.
Although the bungalow had less space and fewer features such as a pool or workshop for Steury, Akey says that now that they are in their 50s and 60s, they care more about community than having extra space.
“We wanted to live somewhere walkable,” she says, referring to Glendale Boulevard in Atwater Village, which is lined with shops, restaurants, a post office, a public library and a popular Sunday farmers market.
“Blake is now just four minutes from his office,” Akey says. “We love the neighborhood, and the mature fruit trees are a big bonus. People have come to my door offering to buy pomegranates, but I just give them away. Recently, I did a trade for some Asian pears a neighbor gave me.”
They ultimately paid about $200,000 more for their $1.7-million Craftsman than the five-bedroom house they sold, but they’re not complaining. The charming neighborhood has “paid us back tenfold,” Akey says, noting that she enjoys walking to Proof Bakery, FitMix Pilates studio, Hail Mary Pizza and McCall’s Butcher from her tree-lined street.
As self-described “theater nerds,” they wanted to set the stage for a welcoming environment. “In our efforts to create this home together, it was all about ‘How does it make you feel?’” Akey says, her voice catching. “We spent a lot of time looking at angles, moving doorways and walls. I wanted to be able to sit in my bathtub, look through French doors and see our backyard.”
“And that’s what we did,” Steury says. “We designed it so she could do that.”
In some ways, their Craftsman home is a study in contrasts. The living and dining rooms still have original 1916 Craftsman features: Douglas fir built-in cabinets, beams, room dividers, a built-in desk and a brick fireplace with a wood mantel. They also kept the original pink sink and bathtub in the hallway bathroom. The interiors feel fresh, though, with new Spoonflower and Perigold wallpaper in the bathrooms, comfortable modern furniture, museum-quality art and a sunny new bathroom off the main bedroom, made from one of the three small bedrooms.
When they bought the house, the kitchen was completely white, from the cabinets and walls to the sink and countertops. They kept the cabinets around the sink and added new green ones that they sourced from BWC Cabinets and Amazon. Steury built the ends and the connecting pieces by hand, and they put it together “like a jigsaw puzzle,” Akey says, since houses from 1916 are rarely level. They took a sample to Jill’s Paint, their local paint store, which matched the green perfectly, and then they sprayed the rest for a glossy, professional finish.
Instead of a sterile all-white kitchen, it is now bursting with personality. Steury built custom hickory countertops that add warmth and texture, and they added a vintage wardrobe from DeKor — also in the neighborhood — and filled it with rosewood bowls and rolling pins Steury turned by hand on a lathe.
There’s a Fortuny silk pendant lamp in the coffee corner overlooking the backyard, custom green ceramic tile, new crown molding and the original wood floors, which Akey painted in a Harlequin pattern. “I spend most of my time in there puttering, baking, doing science experiments and general mischief-making,” says Akey, who also owns RedHeaded Chicken, a small-batch jalapeño jelly and sweets company.
When they work together, Akey says she relies on her intuition. “I knew how it was supposed to be, and more importantly, how I wanted it to make me feel,” she says. “I wanted to be able to sit in the front room and look through the house and see that wee brass lamp at the back of the house, across that checkerboard floor, over those evergreen cabinets and see the cast of the Fortuny lamp casting its light just so.”
They paid just as much attention to detail outside, from the pergola roof and the size of the hand-hewn rafters to the view when you stand in the doorway or sit on the steps. As always, Akey shared her ideas with Steury, who brought them to life.
While some couples fight or disagree over home improvement projects, the couple has found something that brings them closer together, something that isn’t lost on their children.
“It’s so amazing watching my parents work together,” Akey’s oldest child, Willow Holiday, 24, said in a voicemail message. “They complement each other so well, and just watching them work together has instilled in me this feeling that nothing is too hard or too complicated or too big to learn how to do and to figure out.”
Adds their younger sibling, Django Garrison, in a text: “My parents are at once a dialectical yet seamlessly bound pair. Meticulous and vibrant and full!”
“We’ve been together a long time,” Steury says, recalling meeting Akey at their kids’ karate class in 2012. “And it just keeps getting better.”
Just like their 110-year-old Craftsman.
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