966 Chelham Way, Montecito

Chelham Way loops through the Cold Spring pocket of Montecito, two blocks from the schoolhouse that gives the district its name. The house at No. 966 went up in 1953 on the postwar tract recorded as Montecito Home Estates No. 2, and its latest renovation pulled the whole thing back to first principles: white plaster, painted roof trusses, marble, and pale oak.

The result reads more farmhouse than ranch. The kitchen runs under an open-beamed ceiling with a long farm table where an island would normally go, the living room keeps a plain fireplace and slipcovered furniture, and French doors in nearly every room give onto the garden, so the 2,209 square feet live considerably larger.

Three bedrooms and two baths sit on one level. The primary opens through French doors to the garden, the baths carry veined marble, and a den off the courtyard works as a guest room or a second sitting room.

The lot is a sixth of an acre that behaves like more: a gravel courtyard under mature olive trees, a long outdoor dining table beneath the branches, a spa in the planting, and white stucco walls that hold the last light of the day. Asking $3,495,000.

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