Kitchen Remodeling in Lake Balboa, CA

Lake Balboa is 1950s tract housing built in one push: single-story ranches of 1,200–1,700 sq ft on flat 6,000–7,500 sq ft lots, each with a small closed kitchen on the back wall, a service porch beside it and a detached garage at the end of the driveway. The kitchen is usually 90–120 sq ft, so the first decision in nearly every Lake Balboa project is the wall between the kitchen and the living room: take it out on an engineered beam and the house becomes the open plan it never had.

Two jobs hide inside every Lake Balboa kitchen remodel. The first is the finishes: cabinetry, stone or quartz counters, tile, lighting and appliances. The second is the house underneath. The electrical here is typically 60- to 100-amp panels from the 1950s; a 200-amp LADWP upgrade is usually part of a full kitchen. The plumbing is typically galvanized supply lines and original cast-iron drains in the 1950s houses, slab floors on most blocks, and the galvanized lines are replaced with copper or PEX while the walls are open. Opening the wall to the next room means an engineered beam and a structural permit, and the new lighting has to meet Title 24.

Our office is in Valley Glen, about 10–15 minutes away, and the project lead who does your estimate runs the build. On these streets logistics are simple: a small dumpster on the driveway, deliveries staged in the garage, and the site cleaned every evening. Most Lake Balboa families stay in the home for the 5–8 weeks on site, with a temporary kitchen set up and the dust contained to the work area.

Lake Balboa is the west side of the old Van Nuys grid, from Victory Boulevard north to Sherman Way between the Sepulveda Basin and Reseda, with Anthony C. Beilenson Park and the lake itself at Balboa and Victory, Birmingham Community Charter High School on Haynes Street, and the Metro G Line busway station on Balboa Boulevard. Our office is in Valley Glen, about five miles east along Victory or Sherman Way, a 10–15 minute drive, and the LADBS counter that reviews every Lake Balboa permit is the Van Nuys Development Services Center on Van Nuys Boulevard, between the two.

The kitchens are the same floor plan with different decades of patching: near the park and along Victory the houses have had owners' worth of cabinets screwed over the originals, and the tracts toward Sherman Way often still have the 1950s plywood boxes. Either way the win is a wall out, a peninsula or small island, a window enlarged over the sink and the service porch folded into the kitchen as a pantry or laundry. Everything is permitted through LADBS at the Van Nuys counter, ten minutes from the house.

Lake Balboa is City of Los Angeles, so the kitchen is permitted through LADBS (City of Los Angeles) at the Van Nuys Development Services Center. The electrical and plumbing permits are pulled before demolition, inspections are scheduled around the framing and rough-in stages, and the permit is closed at final so the work shows as permitted when you sell.