Alicia Silverstone Recalls Living with 11 Rescue Dogs (and Some Rodents) After Buying Her First Home: 'A Mess'

The actress opened up about the not-so-glamorous early days of the home she's owned for 27 years — and has turned into an eco haven

Alicia Silverstone is a lifelong animal lover. But never again will she live with quite as many creatures as she did after she bought her Hollywood Hills home 27 years ago.

The actress and and activist opened the doors to her stylish and sustainable retreat in Los Angeles for PEOPLE's latest Hollywood at Home feature — and revealed its slightly less glamorous early days.

“When I first moved in, they told me I was going to need to redo all the plumbing, the floors,” she recalls. “But I was 19, so I was like, ‘I'm not doing the plumbing, whatever.’"

“I just didn't even keep it nice and that was easy. The whole house was a mess,” she recalls. At one point she had 11 rescue dogs living with her that did a number on the place, and even shared it with some rodent residents for a time: “There would be trails in the morning from the avocados in my kitchen to where they had come in. They had been living under the bathtub," she says. "That wasn't fun.”

Related: Inside Alicia Silverstone’s Sustainable L.A. Home She Bought at 19: ‘I Have No Reason to Leave’ (Exclusive)

The vibe was a bit of a bohemian, free-for-all and included pieces like a beloved giant purple couch brought over from the guest house she'd been renting behind the Chateau Marmont before buying this place. It's a far cry from the French farmhouse-inspired aesthetic the house has today.

Still, Silverstone says, she thinks of that free-wheeling time fondly. “When I was married [to musician Christopher Jarecki], my husband and I would come home from a late night and we'd end up sitting on the roof. That view was so pretty.”

Eventually, though, a renovation on the 1950s build was inevitable. The windows needed replacing, the floors had been sanded down so many times that they were splintering, and “the framing was just rotten city,” she recalls. The arrival of her son Bear in 2011 encouraged her to overhaul it. “He inspired me to take care of all the things that I needed to do, that I was supposed to do when I was 19,” she says.

These days she has just two rescue dogs, Pinto Bean and Tiny, and there are no rats in residence, though there still are a few woodpeckers hammering holes in the house that she's been battling for years, and the very welcome bees that live in her backyard hive.

“I’m extremely conscious of the choices I make, so that my impact is as little as possible and I tread as lightly on the earth as I can. I take a lot of pride in that,” she says. “It just really makes me happy knowing that I don't have to sacrifice beauty here. I don’t have to have things not be lovely” in order to be green.

Read the full feature and see more photos in this week's issue of PEOPLE.

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