{"id":565594,"date":"2026-02-04T11:58:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T11:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/565594\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T11:58:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T11:58:19","slug":"tori-adams-upgraded-her-home-inside-a-rented-beverly-hills-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/565594\/","title":{"rendered":"Tori Adams upgraded her home inside a rented Beverly Hills space"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tori Adams has always loved Los Angeles real estate. As a little girl growing up in Burbank, she remembers asking her mom to take her to open houses she\u2019d find in the newspaper. She even has a tattoo of her childhood home, a one-story home with a flat midcentury roof in Burbank on the inside of her forearm. But as an adult, she found herself living in 12 spaces over 10 years, trying to find the perfect fit like a Los Angeles Goldilocks.<\/p>\n

It started in college \u2014 she went to UCLA with a major in history \u2014 where it was commonplace to move every year. Then, once she graduated and began working as a writer and editor at publications including Flaunt, the Hollywood Reporter and Playboy, she flip-flopped between places, racking up nearly 20 roommates from Westwood to North Hollywood. At one point she lived with her sister, who is a fan of what Adams calls \u201cmillennial gray.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Not <\/a> <\/p>\n

In this series, we spotlight L.A. rentals with style. From perfect gallery walls to temporary decor hacks, these renters get creative, even in small spaces. And Angelenos need the inspiration: Most are renters.<\/p>\n

By age 25, it became clear she needed to live alone. \u201cI wanted to find something unique and charming that felt like a home,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Adams has lived in her freestanding one-bedroom, one-bathroom bungalow for 2\u00bd years, a personal record. The bungalow is outfitted with a dishwasher and washer and dryer; Adams pays $2,340 in rent including utilities. The unit, estimated at around 500 square feet, feels homey and is situated in the garden of a classic Spanish home occupied by an elderly woman. Adams never planned to live in Beverly Hills, a city that even as a fourth-generation Angeleno, she knows holds stereotypes for being for the uber-wealthy only. <\/p>\n

In reality, she finds her rent fair for L.A. standards. The central location is convenient for her widespread friend group and she says she loves being able to walk to local businesses, including Lodge Bread Co., and to area pickleball and tennis courts.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The corner nook of Tori Adams\u2019 kitchen is illuminated by a warm lamp.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A gallery wall decorates the bathroom in Adams\u2019 home. <\/p>\n

Adams, 30, needed help getting the bungalow up to her colorful, eccentric standards. She was busy starting her own business as an editorial consultant and working about 15 hours per month to volunteer hosting grief workshops for nonprofit Our House<\/a>. She enlisted outside help in the form of an interior designer. But rather than spending tens of thousands furnishing and designing her space herself, she came across emerging interior designer Kiki Tolles<\/a> through her TikTok algorithm.<\/p>\n

Tolles, 24, positioned herself as an affordable and accessible option for renters, specializing in sourcing secondhand. Tolles, who was raised between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, is now studying commercial and residential interior design at KLC School of Design in London, working with clients remotely.<\/p>\n

Tolles was initially drawn to a secondhand-centric design approach after seeing the level of furniture waste every year when students moved out of their dorms at USC and left IKEA pieces on the street as trash.<\/p>\n

At the time Tolles and Adams connected, Tolles only had a few examples of past work, but Adams liked her style. The project was Tolles\u2019 most involved to date. \u201cShe has amazing taste, and I also love that she\u2019s self-taught. She\u2019s doing this because she loves it. Plus, she has a truck,\u201d Adams said. (The truck, a Chevy Suburban, is named Big Deborah.)<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The dining table area in Adams\u2019 space is decorated with an enchanted forest-themed wallpaper.<\/p>\n

\"The \"A \"A <\/p>\n

The living room of Adams\u2019 home consists of bright velvet pieces, a mirrored side table and white drapes. A tray from Facebook Marketplace sits in the entryway. A chest of drawers in Adams\u2019 bedroom. (Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times) <\/p>\n

To begin, Tolles conducted a survey to better understand Adams\u2019 goals, asking about color palettes and historical eras. It wasn\u2019t an easy answer for Adams, who doesn\u2019t think her \u201cwhimsical and unique\u201d style fits into certain design principles or time periods. They planned to tackle the living room, bedroom and bathroom with a goal of around $2,000 in furniture and supplies, allocating most of the budget to the living room. Both women had something to gain, Adams needed Tolles\u2019 eye and labor, Tolles needed more case studies for her social media and business website. Tolles\u2019 service fee, which has increased since her business has grown, ended up close to a $2,000 project rate.<\/p>\n

The only piece of furniture that anchored the living room was a pink velour couch from Sunbeam Vintage in Highland Park. Before sourcing furniture, Tolles had her work cut out for her. The back wall of the living room was lined with baby blue shiplap that Adams couldn\u2019t stand. So she created a painted wooden panel to cover the boards without damaging them.<\/p>\n

She lined the back wall of the living room with a warm wooden midcentury cabinet, sourced on Facebook Marketplace, though it required a custom wooden top to be usable. On the wall opposite the garden windows, Adams initially wanted a mural, but she and Tolles decided on a sheet of wallpaper featuring an outdoor scene with a flying swallow \u2014 one of the only pieces of new materials used in the redecoration. It serves as a chic Zoom backdrop for Adams\u2019 work-from-home setup, where Adams sits at a glossy black table on a built-in bench with pink and green cushions.<\/p>\n

Tolles crafted bespoke window treatments from secondhand materials: linen-like Roman blinds in the kitchen, white linen drapes on top of woven bamboo blinds on the patio doors and velvet drapes in the bedroom.<\/p>\n

\"Tori <\/p>\n

Tori Adams and her cat Cami sit in her bedroom.<\/p>\n

In the bedroom, rather than doing their best to brighten up the room, which is small and has only one window, Adams and Tolles leaned into the room\u2019s cavernous energy and painted it dark blue. A double bed was pushed against a wall in the room to create a daybed. \u201cIt felt riskier, kind of rebellious to do that, but it ended up looking great and feeling really good too for her,\u201d said Tolles about leaning into the room\u2019s darkness. Adams found the dresser on the side of the road near her apartment. <\/p>\n

She called Tolles, who promptly came to the rescue with her truck. The top of the dresser needed serious rehab: scrubbing, sanding and repainting to create a shiny finish. To finish off the room, on the primary wall of the bedroom, a Japanese-inspired vintage panel from Tolles\u2019 own collection is framed as a piece of art.<\/p>\n

In the bathroom, a chalkboard panel against the door invites visitors to vote for their favorite room via a tally system. (I added a tick for the bedroom, though the living room remains in the lead.) The bathroom isn\u2019t as transformed as the rest of the space. With off-white paint job and the brown tiled floor the room came with, Tolles crafted a skirt for the sink out of striped black-and-white fabric to transform the pedestal design into something that allowed for more storage.<\/p>\n

Throughout the rest of the house, including the open-plan kitchen and nooks and crannies across the living room, nearly every detail can be attributed to the women\u2019s collaboration, from each vase or set of vintage glassware displayed down to the updated lighting fixtures. A few additions are purely Adams including some of the photos she took and had framed and a set of modern chrome cat bowls.<\/p>\n

\"Adams' <\/p>\n

Adams\u2019 cat Maci climbs out of the window into her catio. <\/p>\n

About three years later, Adams has no plans to leave. The only downsides she says are \u201cthe critters\u201d (from ants and spiders to a rogue lizard that made its way in) that come with a building that\u2019s over 70 years old.<\/p>\n

Some of her family, lifelong Burbank residents, think her rent is extreme, but to her, it\u2019s a price she\u2019s happy to pay for her quality of life. Although homeownership is the goal for some of her 30-something peers, it isn\u2019t on Adams\u2019 shortlist of goals. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe older I get, especially right now in this season of life, the less I need,\u201d she said. \u201cIt feels really freeing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tori Adams has always loved Los Angeles real estate. As a little girl growing up in Burbank, she…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":565595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[194812,144537,1582,276,246551,246552,246550,42155,17819,246554,2961,118963,224,5337,246553,246548,246549,246547,40031,1628],"class_list":{"0":"post-565594","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-back-wall","9":"tag-bedroom","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-dream-space","13":"tag-elderly-woman","14":"tag-furniture-waste","15":"tag-goal","16":"tag-house","17":"tag-ikea-piece","18":"tag-la","19":"tag-living-room","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-losangeles","22":"tag-one-bathroom-bungalow","23":"tag-time-tolles","24":"tag-tolle","25":"tag-tori-adams","26":"tag-truck","27":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116012247903639732","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}