In the cliffhanger to the first season of  "Hot in Cleveland," the TV Land sitcom beginning its second season Tuesday, the three L.A. transplants -- played by Wendie Malick (above, in blue), Valerie Bertinelli (in black) and Jane Leeves (in the tiara) -- take refuge from a tornado in a storm cellar with Elka (Betty White), the caretaker of their rented property. It turns out to be furnished with fine antiques and jewelry purloined by Elka's deceased husband. (Spoiler alert: Elka's next residence is the pokey.)

The three friends live more modestly in a late 19th century Queen Anne with a wide front porch and stained glass windows. It's based on an actual house in Cleveland and appears in the opening segment of each episode. In the pilot, the house was empty, but in Episode 2 furniture and decor were found in the basement and garage. "From this stash, our ladies decorated the house virtually overnight," production designer Michael Hynes said by e-mail.

In the second season, the characters have settled in Cleveland. The mandate was to update the interiors as a nod to all of their tastes, Hynes said, "while staying mindful of the fact that they are in Cleveland, not Hollywood." 

The pretty and feminine furnishings were chosen to reflect "women who want to celebrate their new life in a traditional city, but whose ideas about style have been shaped by a half a lifetime spent in a very design- and trend-conscious metropolis," set decorator Maralee Zediker said by e-mail.

The result, as shown in the dining room, right, is a nice illustration of how contemporary Hollywood glamour pieces -- the round mirror, a chandelier from H.D. Buttercup and two turquoise lamps with matching shades found at Marshalls -- can liven up a more traditional home.

As is so often the case in domestic sitcoms, much of the action takes place in the kitchen, below. Hynes explained the back story: The Victorian-era original had been updated with new appliances including an enameled Magic Chef oven in the 1930s, and then it got its Dishmaster sink faucet and a GE combination icebox in the 1950s. With its swing-out lazy Susan shelving, the GE was "referred to as the Cadillac of refrigerators," Zediker said.

Hynes said he looked at photos of old linoleum and composition tile and came up with a design in red, white and blue "to subtly suggest the a feeling of 'Americana' that people tend to associate with the Midwest." To make camera movements easier, however, the design is actually painted on the studio's concrete floor.

Keep reading to see more of the "Hot in Cleveland" house ...

Every Monday, we will be posting a new home whose design is presented in the builder's or designer's own words. This week:

Architect: Anthony Poon, Poon Design

Project manager: Bryan Bethem, Poon Design

General contractor: Alex Cage, (818) 261-9305

Landscape architect: Jim Matsuo, (818) 352-4779

Location: Encino

Architect's description: Our clients are an energetic, world-traveling couple. Jacob Stein and Yunna Barats came to Los Angeles in the mid-1980s separately. Jacob, originally from Moscow, and Yunna, originally from Riga, Latvia, met in Los Angeles and married shortly after. 

Prior to their California move, they lived in their respective 200-square-foot apartments in Stalinist buildings. They sought a house that was economically designed, environmentally sensitive and strategically created to give a sense of space, purity, luxury and Southern California indoor-outdoor lifestyle.

The architectural inspiration came from their eclectic interests, combining artwork and collectibles from their travels with the Zen-like simplicity of Japanese design and the warm modernism of 1930s Scandinavian design.

Their long search for home resulted in a great find: a 3,300-square-foot midcentury home, neglected but with good bones. The property is set at the end of a long private driveway off a cul-de-sac. Because entertaining with family and friends was important to the clients, the open floor plan was opened up even further.  Most of the walls in the public areas of the house were removed, connecting the living room, dining room, family room, kitchen and entry. 

Keep reading to see more photos and details on the house ...

We've listed select home and garden events below. Suggest your own via reader comments. Submissions must be fewer than 75 words and must be for one-time events with legitimate value to other readers. No store promotions and no frivolous links, please. L.A. at Home staff will determine which submissions will be made public, but we won't edit the text.

Monday: Dealers from around the world congregate for Photo L.A., which calls itself the largest photo-based art fair in the country. Programming include lectures and seminars on collecting. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. $20. Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, 1855 Main St., Santa Monica. (323) 937-5525.

Thursday: Yvonne Savio, manager of the University of California Cooperative Extension Common Ground Garden Program in Los Angeles County, discusses ways that household throwaways can be used as garden tools. Part of the Thursday Garden Talks With Lili Singer series. 9:30 a.m. to noon. Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden, 301 N. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia. $20. (626) 821-4623.

Thursday: Glen Creason, map librarian for the Los Angeles Public Library for 20 years, will discuss his new book, “Los Angeles in Maps,” a cartographic history. 6:45 to 7:45 p.m. Los Feliz Library, 1874 Hillhurst Ave., Los Angeles. Free. (323) 913-4710.

Thursday: George Hatfield will present the program “New Pendulous Cymbidiums” at the meeting of the San Gabriel Valley Orchid Hobbyists. 7:15 p. m. Event will include refreshments, a silent auction, a raffle of software based on orchid research database and a raffle of plants. Free. Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Gardens, 301 N. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia. (626) 335-6641.

Saturday: Horticulturist Barbara Eisenstein will discuss great native grasses that are easy to find, are easy to grow and mix well with other low-water plants 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Nopalito Native Plant Nursery, 4107 E. Main St., Ventura. $10. (805) 844-7449.

Saturday: Lora Hall of Full Circle Gardening will discuss how to prune a neglected or damaged tree in the winter. 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. $35 to $45. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. Registration: (626) 405-2128.

Saturday: Rachel Young, Descanso Gardens native plant horticulturist, leads the first session of this two-part class covering the basics of soil, plant selection, planting techniques, watering and container gardening. 10 a.m. Part 2 of the class is March 5. $10 to $20 for both classes. Descanso Gardens, 1418 Descanso Drive, La Cañada Flintridge. (818) 949-4200;.

Saturday: Landscape architects Anna Armstrong and Richard Walker will discuss topography and drainage issues, sun and shade conditions, soils, existing trees and plants, climate zones and more. Bring location photos and, if possible, a plan. 1:30 to  3:30 p.m. $20 to $30. Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants, 10459 Tuxford St., Sun Valley. (818) 768-1802.

Sunday: "A Marriage of Craft and Design: The Work of Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman" includes examples of ceramics, tile mosaics, wood carvings, textiles and other crafts from the Culver City couple. (That's Evelyn Ackerman's work pictured at top.) Craft and Folk Art Museum, 5814 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. (323) 937-4230.

Our latest home profile: Jolino Beserra is a master mosaic artist. David Edward Byrd created posters for Jimi Hendrix, the Who, the Grateful Dead and the Woodstock music festival. Together they recently finished turning a jumble of broken ceramics, found objects and personal treasures into a mosaic of a home that's at once beautiful and entertaining. A collection of 1930s and '40s salt and pepper shakers is embedded in the fireplace. Monkeys hear, see and speak no evil from the kitchen backsplash. Ceramic fish fly out of an outdoor shower. Read the whole story in the L.A. Times print edition Saturday, or click through R. Daniel Foster's 15-image photo gallery.

Photo credit: R. Daniel Foster

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Emily Green, who blogs "The Dry Garden" for us every Friday, recently wrote about the imaginative low-water landscape at the Valley Performing Arts Center at Cal State Northridge. Photographer Anne Cusack took some additional photos, which we've combined with Green's to create a photo gallery of landscape architect Stephen Billings' creation.

Photo Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

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L.A. County is looking for thousands of volunteers to help count homeless people on the streets and in shelters and other institutions.

Los Angeles is considered to have the highest street homeless population in the country, with as many as 50,000 people on any given night, according to the county Homeless Services Authority. A more accurate accounting helps officials figure out how to apportion resources and how factors such as the difficult economy affect the population.

The count, which is mandated every two years by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, takes place Jan. 25 to Jan. 27 in Los Angeles, the San Gabriel Valley, east L. A. County, the South Bay and the Antelope Valley.

Volunteers -- 4,000 are needed -- are trained before they are deployed, said Calvin Fortenberry, communications director for the homeless authority. The website provides information about exactly what volunteers can do to help and how to sign up.

-- Mary MacVean

Photo: Outside the Charles Cobb Apartments on San Pedro Street in downtown Los Angeles. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times.

The former librarian at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden doesn't remember exactly when the visitor wandered into her office and let drop that he was a descendant of George Engelmann. What Joan De Fato does remember is telling him that there was a grove of rare oaks on the site that had been named for his ancestor.

You don't have to be a descendant of one of the fathers of American botany to share in what De Fato recalls as his pleasure and amazement. The arboretum's grove of Quercus engelmannii, pictured above, is one of the last local stands of a native tree once so common to the foothills that an alternate common name is the Pasadena oak.

The first thing that strikes you upon reaching this group of roughly 200 trees is how much more animated it is by birds, butterflies and scampering lizards than the more cultivated parts of the garden.

The second is that it is drop-dead beautiful.

Better than beautiful. Engelmanns are the oak lover's oak. At least this is the case with Bart O'Brien, plantsman at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont, who has long argued that the arboretum's stand deserves special status.

Although other Engelmann groves are in Riverside, San Diego and Los Angeles counties, according to O'Brien, molecular studies have shown that the arboretum's Engelmanns are clearly distinct. The stand is their largest expression, with trees that were probably once part of the population also found at Santa Anita Park and the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.

Our yearly lists of most popular home photo galleries and articles certainly contained some surprises. Before we race ahead into 2011, here's one final look at five photo galleries that you might have missed the first time around:

1. Bali high: A Santa Monica family builds their dream tropical retreat. The gallery just missed making our year-end list, getting edged out by a nose. Credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

2. Remade modern: An L.A. couple dive into the remodeling business. Project No. 1: Their own home, updated for a new era. This gallery premiered in August but continues to draw readers; had we given it one more month to collect clicks, it probably would have cracked our top 10 for the year. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

3. Hacienda style: An architect, interior designer and landscaping veteran revive a 1920s hacienda with sophistication and a few visual surprises. In rankings dominated by modern design, this house still managed to hold its own. Credit: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times

4. Popsicle-stick furniture: David Hrobowski builds tables, chairs, lamps and mirrors, stick by stick. See to believe. Credit: Ann Johansson / For The Times

5. Milan furniture fair: A photo gallery with our coverage from the world's premiere showcase of contemporary design ranked as our No.1 photo gallery of the year, excluding home tours. We'll be on the scene again in April (perhaps once again running into Philippe Starck, above). Follow our reporting from the 2011 show via our Milan Twitter feed. Credit: Franco Forci / For The Times

In case you've missed Jeff Spurrier's weekly dispatches from community gardens -- the people and the plantings, the experiments and the solutions -- let us help you catch up:

Dispatches No. 1 and 2: Our kickoff feature on dynamo Milli Macen-Moore and the follow-up on the Milagro Allegro garden's uplifting history

Dispatch No. 3: For those waiting for a plot, garden sharing proves to be a good alternative

Dispatch No. 4: The Main Street garden in Santa Monica, a pioneer in the movement

Dispatch No. 5: A smart design for wheelchairs at Park Drive in Santa Monica

Dispatch No. 6: At Solano Canyon, gardening in the shadow of Dodger Stadium

Dispatch No. 7: On Skid Row, ingeniously gardening by the bucket

Dispatches No. 8 and 9: Ocean View Farms, true to its name and composting like crazy

Dispatch No. 10: How raised beds have made the Rockdale garden in Eagle Rock

Dispatch No. 11: In Silver Lake, community garden as pocket park

Dispatch No. 12: Veteran seed savers at the Altadena Community Garden keep their harvests going, and going, and ...

Dispatches 13 and 14: At the Learning Garden in Venice, Spurrier checks out the Seed Library of Los Angeles and watches a grafting master in action

Stay tuned for new installments every Wednesday. Bookmark L.A. at Home and join us on Facebook, where we have a page dedicated to gardening in the West.

Photo: Eagle Rockdale Community Garden, better known as just Rockdale. Credit: Ann Summa

The online seed store Tomato Fest is extending its annual heirloom tomato sale, which had been scheduled to end Jan. 11 but is now running through Jan. 18.

More than 120 varieties from around the world -- yellow cherry tomatoes from eastern Germany, purple beefsteaks cultivated by a Cherokee tribe in Tennessee -- are discounted. Most seeds are nearly 50% off, at $2 per pack; others are discounted 30%.

All packs contain 30 seeds unless otherwise noted and are certified organic. Free seeds come with every order of at least $15, and seeds will last three to five years if stored properly.

-- Lisa Boone

Photo credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

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Don't we all snap photos of our pets on vintage midcentury modern furniture? (These adorable dogs apparently prefer fiberglass Eames chairs over an upholstered Marshmallow sofa.)

The animal lovers at Modernica want to see more -- from you.

The store is accepting entries for its Pets on Furniture contest through Jan. 31. Simply upload a photo of your beloved pet on a piece of modern furniture -- think Noguchi or Nelson -- and try to win votes from Modernica's blog readers. Cast your vote too. A winner will be named weekly; a grand prize winner will be announced Feb 14.

Prizes include an Isamu Noguchi coffee table ($695), a Noguchi dining table ($795), a Pierre Paulin easy chair ($1,170) and a George Nelson bubble lamp ($269).

"We're always trying to get people involved," Modernica co-owner Jay Novak says. "It proved to be really popular last year. I got so involved I actually voted last year. Our customers are directors and art directors and cinematographers, so some of the pictures that come in are really fabulous."

Photos must be of a pet on modern furniture -- make sure the furniture is recognizable -- and must be original.

-- Lisa Boone

Photos from Modernica

From the Los Angeles Times archives: West magazine, March 26, 1972

It wasn't 3D-ready. It wasn't even cable-ready. It wasn't Energy Star-qualified. No USB or HDMI connections. No six-color processor — no color at all (unless you were counting on buying the orange model). But this portable JVC Videosphere had one thing going for it in the '70s that none of the giant flat screens had last week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: It was cute as a bug.

And what might you be watching on that TV in 1972, back when most TV was free? "The Odd Couple," "Hawaii Five-0," "The Carol Burnett Show," "Gunsmoke," "The Bold Ones," "Mission: Impossible" and "The Mod Squad."

-- Joan Fantazia

Photo credit: Joan Fantazia. Archive source: Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens

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