Childproofing in Venice & Mar Vista often means adding protection to a house an architect designed to feel open. Floating stairs, cable and glass railings, wall-sized sliders and roof decks are common in the remodels here, and families usually want them made safe without hiding what drew them to the house. Mar Vista adds a stock of mid-century homes with their own needs, and Venice adds walk streets and canal-side lots.
Homes in Venice & Mar Vista and what they need
Modern remodels and new builds on Venice’s small lots tend to go up rather than out. That gives you two or three stories on a narrow footprint, often with an open-riser staircase in the middle of the house and a roof deck on top. Open risers leave gaps a small child can fit through, and many railings use horizontal cables that work like a ladder. Those two details shape most of our plans here.
The walk streets bring a different pattern. Homes there face a shared pedestrian path instead of a road, with parking off the alley behind. The front door may open onto a small garden and a low gate, then straight onto a public walkway, so door latches and gate hardware get close attention on both sides of the lot. Along the Venice Canals, the water sits just past the front garden, which raises the stakes on those same doors.
Mar Vista’s best-known mid-century homes are in the Mar Vista Tract, Gregory Ain’s group of modernist houses completed in 1948, which in 2003 became the City of Los Angeles’s first postwar Historic Preservation Overlay Zone. The tract’s one-story houses were laid out with open, flexible floor plans and folding doors that could split one room into two. Mid-century homes elsewhere in Mar Vista often follow the same idea, with open living areas and sliding glass doors to the yard. Childproofing there is more about doors, glass, kitchens and furniture than stairs.
Common childproofing projects in Venice & Mar Vista
- Infill panels for open-riser stairs, cut to fit the gaps between treads.
- Clear railing guards over cable rails and wide-gap balusters on stairs, lofts and roof decks. Clear panels keep the view that a mesh net would block.
- Gates with mounting kits made for glass railings and steel posts, where a standard gate has nothing to screw into.
- Locks set high on large sliding and pocket doors, plus window film or decals on floor-to-ceiling glass so a running toddler sees it.
- Window safety for tall operable windows on upper floors, with stops that limit how far they open.
- TV and furniture anchoring, including the low media console under a wall-mounted TV that a climber uses as a step.
- Finger-pinch guards on folding and pocket doors, including the folding partitions in Mar Vista Tract floor plans.
- High latches on front doors and walk-street garden gates.
Earthquake, outdoor and pool safety in Venice & Mar Vista
In a house with this much glass, we plan earthquake safety around it. Tall shelves, mirrors and sculptural pieces are placed or anchored so they can’t fall toward a window wall, and anything heavy hung above a bed or crib gets secured. We also check the water heater, wherever the tank sits, against California Health and Safety Code §19211, which requires it to be braced, anchored or strapped. Our guide to earthquake-proofing a home with kids walks through the rest of the house.
Outdoors, roof decks get the same railing check as the indoor stairs, and the door up to the deck gets a lock set out of reach. Canal-side homes have water close by, so the doors that face it get high latches or alarms, and we can point out what else to raise with a fencing contractor.
Some homes in both neighborhoods have a pool or spa. At a single-family home, a permit for a new pool or spa, or for remodeling one, triggers the state’s pool safety law, as updated by SB 442, which asks for at least two of seven listed safety features meant to prevent drowning. Installing pool fences takes a specialty contractor license, so we leave that to others and use the assessment to point out pool-area risks.
What a visit looks like
Booking comes first, then a home safety assessment with you at the house. For a modern home we spend time on the details: the gap between treads, how the glass railing is fixed, what each slider locks with. The itemized plan that follows names each product and shows how it fits with the finishes.
After you approve the plan, installation is set for a day that suits you. Mounting points are chosen to hit framing and avoid marking plaster, steel or glass. We serve ZIP code 90291 in Venice and 90066 in Mar Vista.
Nearby areas we serve
Up the coast, we serve Santa Monica. Just south are Playa Vista & Marina del Rey, and to the east is Culver City, which borders Mar Vista.