Inside Jennifer Garner’s Farm-Style L.A. Home

AD, Hello.

Come on in.

It's the cleanest it'll ever be.

[upbeat music]

So this is the biggest room in the house,

it's the living room.

And I wanted it to feel really expansive,

so somebody could be playing Rummikub over there,

that's really the Rummikub table.

And people could be sitting around the fire here.

You know how you just imagine it

and then someday you have a perfect moment

where it actually comes true,

that is like a, kinda moment.

Steve and Brooke Giannetti and I

have worked together for a long time

and I sat down with them one time and said,

Okay, I know exactly the house I wanna build.

And I described it to him.

Steve sent me a watercolor of it.

And that is exactly the house we built.

We so didn't change much,

that I started panicking in the middle of the build.

And I thought, I never even made a Pinterest board.

I never even showed him pictures from a magazine.

I just told him what I wanted and he did it.

And what if I hate it?

But it turns out I'm really, really happy.

The paintings are both by Rainer Andreesen,

he's Victor Garber's husband.

And in that one, there's a little photograph

of Victor and me painted into the painting.

And so it's extra special dear to me.

This is by Reed Bradley at Judson Studios.

He is the son of a friend of mine, Marla Frazee,

she's my favorite children's book author.

I wanted it to be evocative of spring in West Virginia.

And you see, like, the morning glories coming down

and a little bit of the mountains in the distance.

A special feature, especially in the summer,

is having these doors all the way wide open.

Here we have it, indoor, outdoor.

This isn't California, I don't know what is.

The only problem is, if my kids are having their class

pool party here or something,

it's very hard to keep wet kids out of the house.

I have to really just stand guard and say, Get away.

I'll look over and there'll be two wet teenagers

playing the piano and I'm just like,

Okay, don't look, don't look.

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I'm so excited to show you my kitchen because,

since the day I moved in,

this is the first time ever that the counter's been clean.

Look, it's never gonna look like this again.

Please, memorialize this.

I love a wood kitchen.

So the house really is like being inside a tree house.

Here alone, with my kids, on a weekend,

I cannot tell you how often I make something

and I'm just feeding them as it comes off the stove

'cause I'm not very good at things coming out of the oven

or off the stove at the same time.

So it is just like, have your vegetables,

now have your this, now have your that.

It's all outta order but, they don't seem to mind.

So I knew when I imagined my favorite kitchen ever,

in my mind, that it would have an area dedicated to baking.

It just makes it so much easier to have it all in one place

and to know where your different flours are

and your chocolate chips.

Chocolate chips are the most

important thing in the whole house.

And I could tell you where they are.

All of my fireplace grates are done by Wallace Metal Works.

Usually there's a dog sleeping under here.

It just adds so much coziness,

it's unbelievable how nice it is to have a little bit of

fire, going in your kitchen.

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This is the dining room.

When I first moved to LA,

I made friends with a photographer,

her name's Lara Porzak.

And she's turned into this incredible

fine arts photographer.

Clearly I'm a fan of her stuff

because this is all Porzak.

Brooke Giannetti and I had a blast

looking at light fixtures.

I can never figure out dining room lights.

But you know what, you live with the choices you make

and I think I'm good with it.

We really eat at home almost all the time.

And we eat in here, pretty regularly.

And I put doors on this room,

so that it could be a meeting room.

And actually, I have a lot of meetings in here.

I work from home, if I'm not on set.

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So the first room I described to Steve, I said,

I want a library that is a super awesome,

cozy up with everyone, TV room.

And I want it to be, like, a deep gray-blue.

This is what he did.

And I think he kinda nailed it.

When we were first envisioning the room,

I said, I know the couch I want but it's a BDDW couch.

And this is it.

And it's comfortable and I just like the look of it.

It's just pretty.

This is everyone's favorite place.

You just don't need some huge old screening room.

We're pretty happy just being right in here.

Feet go anywhere.

I am so not fussy.

There are feet, there are dogs, there are shoes.

If you're gonna build a house, you have to live in it.

If we were gonna have a library,

I wanted it to be, still light, so it opens all the way

and then it can go straight out to the garden.

Here's our fireplace.

And this is our clover.

Because it's supposed to be good for the earth.

It's so easy, we just threw down seeds

and I just think it's cheerful.

I have an owl box and I'm waiting for an owl to discover it.

Come on.

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Look!

My very first cherry, ever.

Oh my gosh.

This is my little orchard.

I love it so much.

We have apricots, figs and cherries, right here.

And then we have peaches, nectarines, apples.

And they are all fed by gray water

because water is hard to come by in California

and I don't wanna use more than my share.

So the gray water system, it's a big tank

and it collects all the water from the washing machine,

the dishwasher and filters it.

And water's very specifically what you tell it to water.

But there's a lot of phosphorus in gray water,

for some reason.

And I guess fruit trees thrive on it.

So we just said, Add more fruit trees.

I love that you can come out here

in the middle of the summer and find a snack.

Growing up the daughter of a farmer

and having such connections to my family farm,

it just truly thrills me.

So pretty much everything here is edible.

All of the bushes are blueberry bushes.

And actually, I'm gonna get you a blueberry, I see one.

Here you go.

You wanna see my vegetable house?

It's so cute.

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I'm all about herbs.

Mostly I want thyme.

I cannot grow enough.

My kids and I love kale chips,

so we always have a lotta kale.

It's tomato season, it's green bean season.

And then just natural flowers that pests don't like.

'Cause, you know, you gotta be organic.

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This is my favorite spot to sit.

Well, I have different favorite spots.

I sit in this little house behind us,

in the morning, with coffee.

Here, I'll act it out for you.

[footsteps]

Isn't it so nice?

And then, if it's nighttime and I have friends over,

I'll show you.

[footsteps]

This is where we like to be.

We turn heaters on, fire, blankets, cozy.

We do have a bird's nest

in the passion fruit vine, right here.

Oh, it got torn up.

Oh, RIP.

Okay, let's go upstairs.

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This is the landing at the top of the stairs.

We have here, some fish.

My kids, for Mother's Day,

many years ago, gave me an empty little fish tank,

which was basically their way of saying,

please go buy saltwater fish.

But you can just sit and watch their personalities forever.

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Kids need a spot to study.

You just need a place to spread out and do projects.

So that is this table.

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This reading nook is maybe my favorite space in the house.

You could peek in on the fish, it has all the kids books.

It has this awesome stained glass of a big old oak,

with three little owls and Birdie looking up at them.

And there was one magical night,

where exactly what I hoped for happened.

And all three kids were piled in here with me

and we pulled down all the books from when they were little

and we read them one after the other.

That's really all I could hope for.

All of us are readers.

And if you're building your own house,

you might as well offer people

as many great places to read as possible.

[upbeat music]

Welcome to my bedroom.

This is T Bear.

My dad gave him to me when I was three,

from the Sears catalog.

My mom made him some overalls.

I knew I just wanted something that felt tight, compact.

It was not a space that I needed a ton of room devoted to.

Do you like it T Bear?

Yeah, T Bear likes it.

I love that I can open these doors at night

and wake up to birds.

So I didn't need a huge bedroom.

I did want a large bathroom.

Because, so often we get ready for work at home

and it's always, you know, in your own bathroom

and you need space for everyone to be comfortable.

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I wanted my bathroom to be really neutral, really calming.

We wanted a kind of white that was

flattering to have light bounce off of.

I also wanted the house to look like

an old farmhouse, next to an old barn.

And this is obviously the barn part

'cause you can see the barn window.

So this is where I sit

and they turn me from one old gal, to another.

[Jennifer laughs]

This bathtub, I love being next to the window.

I love the quiet.

I love having a tree in my bathroom.

I'm very lucky.

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This is like a dream come true room for me.

Because, I love to have kids over for a slumber party

but I'm also a stickler about sleep.

Although, sometimes, there are kids, literally, everywhere.

I wanted built-in bunks,

where kids could cozy up all in one together,

which is usually what happens.

Late at night you'll see them all bent over something

that they're looking at together.

They're all in this bunk, watching something on TV.

I love that the beds all have their own,

just, like you're on a ship, a really nice ship.

I love having a spot that is just where kids can be kids.

I also keep all of their favorite,

favorite toys from when they were really little.

You want little kids who come over,

to feel welcome and excited.

And every now and then, the big kids will still pull out

the old toys and play.

You know, who doesn't wanna put the money in the piggy bank?

If you'd like me to ring up your groceries.

Oh, that's where Bananagrams is.

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We're big Harry Potter fans.

And what are you gonna do if you have a little cabinet

under the stairs?

You have to use it.

So it became my son's office.

Just a little spot for him to come in and dream.

Mostly, he hides from me and eats candy

but, I can't blame him, I would do the same.

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I'm such a private person about my home

and here I've just taken you through the entire house.

And really, it's for a couple of reasons.

I've never built anything all by myself before.

And I'm so proud of it.

I am filled with gratitude, every time I walk into my house.

That I get to live here.

That I'm so lucky to have my kids here.

So, it's unlike me

and yet, I'm so happy to have shared it with you.

[upbeat music]

I loved hanging with you today.

Bye, AD.

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