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The Insider: Attic ‘Cabin’ in Fort Greene
Welcome to The Insider, here every Thursday at 11:30AM. It’s written and produced by Cara Greenberg, as is The Outsider, Brownstoner’s new garden series, every Sunday at 8AM. ALWAYS SEEKING LEADS TO WORTHY INTERIOR DESIGN AND GARDEN PROJECTS!!! Please contact caramia447@gmail.com
THIS MULTI-FUNCTIONAL SPACE at the top of a five-story brownstone was once “a weird scenario,” says Manhattan-based architect Ole Sondresen, who renovated the entire building for a pair of artists with two college-age children — a utilitarian attic, 22′x60′, divided up into “six or seven little storage spaces.” Now it’s a destination for the family, used for movie nights, games, and music-making. “It’s meant to be almost a cabin at the top of the house,” Sondresen says. “A getaway in one’s own space.”
Enhancing the cabin feeling is the unorthodox use of wood, wrapping around the entire ceiling and down the wall to become a bench under the windows. “We saw it as an upside-down space,” the Norwegian-born Sondresen says. “While the rest of the house has wood floors and plaster ceilings, this space has white painted oak floors and the warmth of wood as the ceiling.”
The contractor was William Dorvillier.
More photos and details of the attic loft, as well as the new kitchen on the parlor level, after the jump.
Photos: Ole Sondresen
05/24/2012 11:30 AM
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Design*Sponge Goes Inside a Greenpoint Loft
Yesterday was a fun day, despite all the rain. We went out to Roberta’s, which in addition to being one of the best restaurants in town also houses an Internet radio station, to be interviewed by Design*Sponge founder Grace Bonney. You can hear the session here. Something else you might want to check out: This post on Design*Sponge yesterday about the Greenpoint loft of brother-design team Evan and Oliver Haslegrave. There’s one above and another of the bathroom on the jump. Check out the Design*Sponge post for lots more…
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05/22/2012 11:01 AM
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The Insider: Gentle Reno in Prospect Heights
WELCOME TO THE INSIDER, our weekly in-depth look at a recent interior design/renovation project, here every Thursday at 11:30AM. Like The Outsider, Brownstoner’s new garden series on Sundays at 8AM, The Insider is written and produced by Cara Greenberg.
IT TOOK TERI BRAJEWSKI of TWB Design a full year of apartment-hunting to settle on what she calls a “petite three-bedroom” in an eight-unit building from the 1890s. It wasn’t just the intact woodwork and other Victorian niceties, including a fretwork archway, bay window, and tiled mantelpiece, that sold her on the ground floor unit, or even the private backyard. “It was one of the few I looked at and didn’t think, ‘If only I could tear this wall out…’”recalls Brajewski, an interior designer and co-owner of Interior Provisions, an online and by-appointment home goods shop in Nolita.
In fact, the long, narrow, 1,100-square-foot floor plan functioned so well for her family — she’s a single mom of two — that all the walls stayed right where they were. Brajewski lost no time gutting and replacing a full and a half bath; that’s been the major work to date. Other sprucing up includes floor refinishing, new lighting throughout, new furniture, and a carefully considered paint job with Benjamin Moore’s Natura line of no-VOC paints.
Brajewski is a LEED AP (accredited professional). She incorporated some sustainability principles, a water-saving toilet and the use of locally-made and vintage furnishings among them. Contemporary and mid-20th century pieces look magically at home in their surroundings. “The gracious scale of mid-century furniture works very well against a Victorian backdrop,” she says.
For now, Brajewski is living with the existing kitchen, though she bought a new dishwasher and washer/dryer, and the garden remains a frontier yet to be conquered. Brajewski “called in a ton of favors and got a lot of trade discounts” but estimates the cost of her improvements, including new furnishings, at about $100,000 for a civilian. The contractor was Jim Savio.
Above: The apartment’s front room is divided by an archway into areas Brajewski uses as a living room and a home office. The made-in-USA sofas are contemporary, from Thayer Coggin, but with a ’50s/’60s look. The vintage coffee table is from a shop in Hudson, NY; the rug from a sample sale. Cafe curtains were made by Angel Threads of Brooklyn.
Photos: Ofer Wolberger
See more, including a complete list of paint colors, after the jump.
05/17/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Nordic Edge in Park Slope
This is The Insider, Brownstoner’s every-Thursday look at a recent interior design/renovation project in the borough of Brooklyn. It’s written and produced by design journalist/blogger Cara Greenberg. who also writes The Outsider, Brownstoner’s new garden series, Sundays at 8AM.
SOMETIMES IT TAKES a view from the other side of the world to shake things up a little. In Brooklyn, with our wealth of historic architecture, interior design often veers toward the [yawn] traditional. In this 5-bedroom triplex, created from two apartments in a modern building, native Norwegians Anna Cappelen and Nina Wolff, founders of the SoHo-based design firm Curious Yellow, have introduced “a rock’n'roll aesthetic” to the proceedings, says Victoria Arnan-Fretheim, a designer in the four-woman shop. (The company’s name comes from a 1967 Swedish film that broke ground for its sexual candor.)
Their trademark blend of unusual materials, rich textures, and wide-ranging styles is evident. Romantic elements bump up against hard-edged ’70s, graphic patterns against all-white Scandinavian practicality. “We like to mix it up, cross borders, balance eras and idioms,” says Victoria Arnan-Fretheim, a designer in the four-woman shop (the fourth member of the team is Chloe Pollack-Robbins).
The architectural design, including a breakfast area with angled plywood walls, a mudroom fitted out with storage, and all other built-ins throughout, are the work of architect Ole Sondresen.
See and read more after the jump.
Photos: Margrethe Myhrer
05/10/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Beautiful Basement in Prospect Lefferts
Welcome to The Insider, a design and renovation column appearing on Brownstoner every Thursday at 11:30AM. It’s written and produced by Cara Greenberg, who also contributes The Outsider, Brownstoner’s new garden column, Sundays at 8AM.
HERE’S WHAT PROFESSIONAL DESIGN can do: turn a miserable subterranean space under a 1915 Tudor-style row house in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, formerly used for laundry and junk storage, into a serene and lovely 800-square-foot office suite for two psychotherapists, with a waiting room clients have been known to come early just to relax in.
Jennifer Katz and Maria Gonzalo hired Manhattan-based interior designer Caroline Beaupère for the job. “We gutted everything,” Beaupère says. “It was major work.” Windows were unblocked, and a concrete slab floor removed and ceiling beams exposed to gain additional height in a space whose original ceiling height was barely 7 feet. “We gained about a foot by removing the ceiling and building a new slab as low as we could.”
Colors, materials, and furnishings, including earthy wood pieces, a whitewashed oak floor, and linen window shades, were all chosen, Beaupère says, to create a “soothing, Zen environment.”
See more, including ‘befores,’ after the jump.
Photos: Matthew Arnold
05/03/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Uber-Stylish Townhouse in Prospect Heights
The Insider is Brownstoner’s weekly interior design and renovation column. It’s written by Cara Greenberg, also a contributing editor at the newly launched New York Cottages & Gardens, from which this post is adapted. Find it here every Thursday at 11:30AM.
SO MANY BELOVED SHELTER MAGAZINES have folded in the past few years that it’s especially heartening when a new title arrives on the scene. This spring marks the inaugural issue of New York Cottages & Gardens, a sibling of the existing Hamptons Cottages & Gardens and Connecticut Cottages & Gardens (you can pick up a copy at the Brooklyn stores listed at the end of this post, or subscribe by clicking here).
If you’re wondering what constitutes a New York “cottage,” editor-in-chief Kendell Cronstrom lays it out in his introductory letter: “Our brand’s notion of the term champions an overall contentment and satisfaction with where one lives,” he writes. Any housing type can qualify, “as long as the décor is good.”
Certainly that describes the sophisticated 1870s brownstone belonging to Mariza Scotch, an accessories designer; Diery Prudent, a fitness trainer; and their 12-year-old daughter. Converted with meticulous attention to detail by Murdock Solon Architects from a 3-family to a single-family home, the house is sparely but stylishly furnished with pieces individually sourced from mostly local artisans and suppliers.
Highlights include a professional-style cook’s kitchen and a backyard with a fitness system, designed by Prudent, that can be disassembled and stored away when garden parties are planned. The renovation contractor was Amaro Construction of Staten Island.
See the house in all its chic glory after the jump.
Photos: Tria Giovan
04/26/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Fresh Take in Park Slope
The Insider is Brownstoner’s weekly series on interior design and renovation in the borough of Brooklyn. It’s written and produced by Cara Greenberg, who blogs at casaCARA: Old Houses for Fun and Profit. Find it here every Thursday at 11:30AM.
FROM A BEACH HOUSE in Santa Monica to a landmarked 1886 brownstone in Brooklyn: that’s the leap the owners of this one-family townhouse made, and many of their furnishings made it with them. “Making the house’s original detail and the clients’ cheerful graphic furnishings all work together was a blast,” says designer Lyndsay Caleo, who pulled together existing pieces with new paint colors, wall coverings, and other finishing touches.
Caleo is a partner in The Brooklyn Home Company, whose unique approach to development begins with the purchase and renovation of townhouse properties (they’ve done some dozen to date, and have a couple of new-construction projects in the works). The jobs generally include custom built-ins and cabinetry by Fitzhugh Karol, a sculptor, and often do not end until the home is furnished and decorated to the last detail by Caleo, TBHCo‘s in-house designer.
Here, there was just one major layout change, on the second floor. It had been chopped into four rooms and now consists of a master bedroom and new bath, two double closets, and a hot pink sitting room. The floors were mismatched throughout the house; TBHCo dyed them black and sealed them with a dark sealant to yield a rich chocolate brown.
The homeowners, he in the music business and she in fashion, wanted existing moldings and woodwork preserved, including a great deal of what Caleo calls ‘cake molding,’ the raised plaster detail on stairwell walls and ceiling friezes. “The fun challenge,” she says, “was bringing breath and lightness to a house that had been painted heavy maroon and gold, and making it feel relevant and contemporary.”
See and read more after the jump.
Photos: Emily Gilbert (more…)
04/12/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Speedy Reno in Williamsburg
Join us here every Thursday at 11:30AM for The Insider, Brownstoner’s weekly in-depth look at interior design and renovation in the borough of Brooklyn. It’s written and produced by Cara Greenberg, who blogs at casaCARA: Old Houses for Fun & Profit.
THERE’S A NEW ONLINE MATCH-UP SERVICE in town, but this one is strictly business. Instead of potential romantic partners, theSweeten.com helps homeowners find architects, designers, and contractors for their home-improvement projects, from large (whole-house renovations) to small (a wall of bookshelves).
Launched last year by Jean Brownhill Lauer, a Bed-Stuy resident who trained as an architect, theSweeten vets and pre-approves all professionals, thoroughly checking their references and quality of work so you don’t have to. She conducts face-to-face interviews, checks licensing and certificates, and monitors client feedback before inviting them to join the network. Design professionals pay for membership; homeowners pay nothing.
One such member is Sarah Zames of General Assembly, an architect who’s just wrapping up a Brooklyn Heights studio renovation she contracted through theSweeten. Her previous project, the subject of this post, was her calling card: a little bit of suburbia in Williamsburg. The home is a 1950s brick single-family across from Cooper Park, with front and rear yards and a parking alley, as well as air rights to build upwards in the future.
The current homeowners, a couple in the arts with a small daughter, hired General Assembly in January 2011, shortly after they bought the house. It had been unoccupied for three years. “It was a disaster,” recalls Zames. “It would definitely have scared most people off. The entire thing had to be completely gutted, re-plumbed, and re-wired, and the HVAC system replaced.” After a lightning-quick four-month renovation, the new owners had a completely remodeled home with a newly efficient floor plan, and were able to move in by Memorial Day.
The house is essentially a split-level, with a ground-floor living room/dining area/kitchen measuring just 300 square feet. Steps lead down to a guest room/art studio on the lower level. There are two bedrooms and a bath on the second floor.
The general contractor was Trevo Contracting, with millwork by Tribeca Design Build. Total cost of the job: under $250K. The house was staged for photography by Sarah Zames.
See lots more photos and read all about it after the jump.
Photos: Joe Fletcher (1st and 2nd floors); Paul Clemence (studio)
04/05/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Carroll Gardens Mini-House
Join us here every Thursday at 11:30AM for The Insider, Brownstoner’s weekly in-depth look at interior design and renovation in the borough of Brooklyn. It’s written and produced by Cara Greenberg, who blogs at casaCARA: Old Houses for Fun & Profit.
LET’S GET one thing straight right off the bat. “No period detail was harmed in this renovation,” declares architect Jeff Sherman of DUMBO-based Delson or Sherman. The interior of the stoop-less, three-story, c.1900 brick row house, he says, “had the feeling of a 1970s ski lodge, made mostly of plywood.”
The house has some very special features, including an entry wall of stained glass discs, above, by Lexington, KY glass artist Frank Close. A new cherry staircase has wide lower steps that create the illusion of a grand stair, leading up to a skylit top floor with a stone-walled meditation room. There’s a new custom kitchen with an orange-and-brown color scheme and two new baths, one with teak flooring and woodwork.
With only a 22′x29′ footprint to work with, the architects decided early on to enlarge the house by linking it to the outdoors. On the ground level, Delson or Sherman (the “or” goes back to the firm’s founding in the separate apartments of Sherman and his partner, Perla Delson) replaced the rear wall with storefront glass and took steps to “treat the backyard like a room.”
The general contractor was Brooklyn-based Hamilton Renovation. Cost of construction: $1.1million.
Read on after the jump.
Photos: Catherine Tighe (interiors); Tyler Horsley (garden)
03/29/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Vertical Loft House in Park Slope
Join us here every Thursday at 11:30AM for The Insider, Brownstoner’s weekly in-depth look at interior design and renovation in the borough of Brooklyn. It’s written and produced by Cara Greenberg, who blogs at casaCARA: Old Houses for Fun & Profit.
THIS RADICAL RE-THINKING of a late-Victorian brownstone interior began with architect Eric Liftin of DUMBO-based MESH Architectures facing all the usual problems presented by an 18-foot-wide row house: a dark central core, cramped corridors, small rooms, an awkwardly placed kitchen.
His clients, Laura Lau and Chris Kentis, a pair of filmmakers with one child, had originally been looking for a loft, but fell in love with the central Park Slope location of this house. They asked Liftin to open up the triplex to space and light (the garden floor is a rental apartment). “They wanted the kind of family living that’s inherent in a loft — open and informal, rather than feeling everyone is isolated on different floors and cut off from each other,” says the architect.
Liftin and his team removed walls on the parlor floor to create one loftlike space, and opened up the central core of the house. “The central stair was very tight and dark, with narrow stairs and corridors,” says Liftin. “We stripped away plaster and sheetrock to show the old structure.” The original mahogany staircase remains, its elaborate carving a striking decorative feature on the parlor level. In the halls and landings on the two upper floors, flooring was replaced with translucent glass to allow light from an enormous new skylight to suffuse the entire house.
MESH re-purposed some materials from the old structure that was cut away, using salvaged studs from parlor floor walls to construct new walls on the upper floors. Ceiling beams were left exposed in the central zone, with lights made of plumbing pipe nestled among the joists. “At night, the whole vertical space is illuminated with a warm glow,” Liftin says.
The job also entailed re-plumbing, re-wiring, and cleaning up the heating and central air systems. Great Will Construction was the general contractor.
Photos: Frank Oudeman; MESH
Lots more photos, including ‘Befores,’ after the jump.
03/22/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Kid Stuff in Boerum Hill
Join us here every Thursday at 11:30AM for The Insider, Brownstoner’s weekly in-depth look at interior design in the borough of Brooklyn. It’s written and produced by Cara Greenberg, who blogs at casaCARA: Old Houses for Fun & Profit.
THE STORY of this relaxed, unpretentious home is a bit different from many of those featured in The Insider of late. First of all, the homeowners did zero renovation. They bought their 1860s brick row house in near-perfect shape in 2005 and have had to do remarkably little in the owner duplex beyond paint. (They did put new kitchens in two rental apartments upstairs.) Second, they furnished the place themselves — no architects or designers involved.
That initial paint job was crucial, though. The house’s previous inhabitants had been fans of dark color; the front parlor was a deep gold, the back room navy. “We wanted to lighten the space and highlight the plasterwork,” says one of the homeowners, referring to the Italianate arches and stately window moldings typical of the Historic District block. They painted the plasterwork white and the walls of the main living space a pale mint green.
Furnishings — some purchased new, some passed down from family members, and a couple of street finds — are colorful, casual, and above all, kid-friendly. The couple’s sixth-grader and her friends more or less have the run of the place. The front parlor has been set up for gymnastics, with furniture pushed semi-permanently out of the way; mats and a balance beam are stashed under the sofa. “We want an active house,” says her mom. “The kids love that they can tumble around. They’re allowed to do anything in the house, except throw balls.”
Their daughter’s artwork is prominently displayed, along with quirky collectibles and heirlooms. It’s an eclectic, easy-going approach, which the homeowner defines as “things we’ve picked up along the way, that make us smile, that have good memories.”
See and read more after the jump.
Photos: Cara Greenberg
03/15/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Super-Modern Addition in Brooklyn Heights
JOIN US HERE every Thursday at 11:30AM for The Insider, Brownstoner’s weekly in-depth look at a recent renovation/interior design project here in Brooklyn. It’s written and produced by Cara Greenberg, who blogs at casaCARA: Old Houses for Fun and Profit.
TO MAKE A LATE 19th CENTURY ROW HOUSE work for an early 21st century family, Brooklyn-based Platt Dana Architects conceived an extension running the full 25-foot width of the building, over two floors. With a new family room on the garden level and a new kitchen above, it replaces an 8′x12′ kitchen in a now-demolished ‘dog-leg’ extension that jutted into the backyard and was accessed only by one small door.
The homeowners – a couple with four boys — had lived with that situation for some 15 years before deciding they could stand it no longer. “They spent a lot of time in that kitchen, and they were used to falling over each other because space was so tight, ” says architect Hope Dana. “So they were very open to the idea of big spaces with little obstruction.”
Another consideration: pre-renovation, the boys would hang out with friends on the garden level, while their parents upstairs felt disconnected from what was happening. They wanted the new spaces linked for a feeling of greater openness and connection. This was accomplished by inserting a striking floating staircase, unconfined by walls, with wood treads and a tempered glass rail.
“The clients were totally on board to have a very modern aesthetic in back. They were not interested in having the addition look like a restoration,” Dana says. What they got is essentially a triple parlor configuration – living room at the front of the parlor floor, dining room in the middle, kitchen at the back. “This triple parlor idea plays very well,” says Dana. “The aesthetic is so strong that having a very modern back piece is not that crazy.”
Uniform Teamwork (718/898-1315) was the general contractor.
Photos: Karen Cipolla
03/08/2012 11:35 AM
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A New Look for a Kensington Co-op’s Lobby
Local architect Ula Bochinska sent word of a project she worked on that was recently finished, the redesign of 227 Ocean Parkway’s lobby. The co-op asked her to improve the lobby’s layout, seating area and lighting. Here’s the description of how it turned out: “The newly completed lobby features an improved layout with built-in seating area, dramatic lighting effects, large-scale porcelain tile, wood paneling, window plantings and a light box with photographs of historical Brooklyn.” Bochinska says the job cost approximately $160,000. A couple other before and after shots on the jump.
Brooklyn Lobby Renovation [Urszula Bochinska Architect] (more…)
03/06/2012 11:00 AM
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The Insider: Pretty Parlor Floor in Fort Greene
This is The Insider, Brownstoner’s weekly report on a recent renovation/interior design project in the borough of Brooklyn. It’s written and produced by Cara Greenberg, who blogs at casaCARA: Old Houses for Fun and Profit. Find it here every Thursday at 11:30AM.
WILLIAM CALEO’S BUSINESS is doing what he loves to do: renovate vintage townhouses. A former actor, he bought and refurbished his own Park Slope brownstone in 2004, later founding the Brooklyn Home Company with several partners. To date, most of TBHCo’s dozen or so projects have been traditional brownstones converted to floor-through apartments and sold as condominiums. There are two new-construction projects in the planning stages, including an 11-story building on Bergen Street between Third and Fourth Avenues.
The Brooklyn Home Company is a one-stop shop with an artistic bent — a real-estate development company with its own in-house construction firm, architects, and design team, all the way up to sales and marketing. Caleo’s sister Lyndsay is the creative force behind the company’s interiors. When a project is ready for market, TBHCo will fully stage one unit per building with furnishings custom-designed for that unit, often by Fitzhugh Karol, a sculptor and furniture designer.
Each unit in a TBHCo building is treated entirely separately — no cookie-cutter design here. “Every space has a certain spirit to it,” Lyndsay says, even when it’s little more than a shell. She sees her task as “getting the details right while respecting what’s already there,” re-using old brick and wood wherever possible. “They have a beautiful patina that took 100 years to acquire.”
The parlor floor of this classic 1870s brownstone — a 20′x80′ building with lots of existing detail and an extension dating back almost to the time of its original construction — was part of the company’s first project. “I poured my guts into it,” Caleo says, even painstakingly going over the wide plank floors “probably ten or twelve times” with low-grit sandpaper. They sold the apartment to Lesley Townsend, who runs Manhattan Cocktail Classic, an annual cocktail festival. Lesley selected the paint finishes and furnishings, choosing to keep some of Fitzhugh’s imaginative pieces.
Much more on the jump…
Photos: Emily Gilbert www.emilygilbertphotography.com
03/01/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Letting in Light in Prospect Heights
The Insider is Brownstoner’s weekly in-depth look at a recent renovation/interior design project here in the borough of Brooklyn. It’s written and produced by design writer and blogger Cara Greenberg. You’ll find it here every Thursday at 11:30AM.
IT’S NOT AN UNCOMMON COMPLAINT among owners of Brooklyn row houses, especially narrow ones like this 16-footer that hadn’t been renovated “in a million years.” “The clients’ main concern was how dark it was,” says architectural designer Elizabeth Roberts, who re-thought the 1890s building — an owners’ triplex with a rental apartment below — in its entirety. “We spent a lot of time figuring out how to lighten up and open up the space.”
“The house was just dripping with detailed woodwork and it wasn’t the clients’ taste,” Roberts says. “We made careful choices of what would stay and what would be removed.”
Among the major changes: taking down walls on the parlor floor to create one flowing space; replacing damaged wood flooring on the parlor level with poured concrete plaster; an all-new kitchen incorporating original detail; and a new ‘bathing room’ that doubles as creative workspace for one of the homeowners, who is a sculptor and textile designer.
The renovation budget of $750,000 also included all new mechanicals, central air, a high-efficiency gas boiler, and a revamped cellar with an art studio, cedar-lined closet, and wine cellar. On the garden level, there’s a one-bedroom rental apartment, plus a powder room accessible only to the owners.
Read on after the jump…
Photos: Sean Slattery (more…)
02/23/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Pre-War Gut in Brooklyn Heights
The Insider is Brownstoner’s weekly, in-depth look at a recent renovation and interior design project here in the borough of Brooklyn. It’s written and produced by Cara Greenberg, a local blogger and design writer. Find it here every Thursday at 11:30AM.
IT’S ALWAYS ILLUMINATING to get a glimpse into architects’ own homes. This one, a 2,700-square-foot, 4-bedroom, 3-bath in a venerable 1920s building, is home to Hope Dana of Platt Dana Architects and her family.
They bought the bright, sprawling apartment in 2008 and “basically gutted the whole thing,” Dana says. The contractor was Jeffrey Wong of Uniform Teamwork.
The floor plan didn’t change radically. “It was a series of little rooms, and it’s still a series of rooms, but we raised all the openings to make them feel more connected to one another,” says Dana. Between the living and dining rooms, for example, a wide space formerly filled with French doors, above, now reaches to the ceiling instead of stopping two feet short of it — a simple change that dramatically increased the sense of openness and modernity.
Furnishings are mostly classic modernist designs, sparely deployed. “It’s less about decor and more about letting light in,” Dana says. “I don’t like clutter.”
More, including ‘befores,’ on the jump. (more…)
02/16/2012 11:30 AM
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Inside the New(ish) Brooklyn Bridge Park Offices
After a couple of years of camping out in a construction trailer, the folks in charge of building and operating Brooklyn Bridge Park finally moved into new offices in the old Building 50 at the corner of Furman and Joralemon Streets last November. Our poor photography skills probably don’t do it justice, but the million-dollar renovation of the 7,500-square-foot ground floor (which the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation shares with the Conservancy) created a really beautiful workspace–high ceilings, clean lines, modern but inviting at the same time. The two upper floors remain for the time being in their original state. We’ve provided lots o’ photos on the jump because the offices are not open to the public.
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02/08/2012 10:32 AM
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The Insider: Green Agenda in Carroll Gardens
The Insider is Brownstoner’s weekly look at the state of interior design and renovation in the borough of Brooklyn. It’s written by Cara Greenberg, a design journalist who blogs at casaCARA: Old Houses for Fun & Profit. Find The Insider here every Thursday at 11:30AM.
THIS c.1900 ROW HOUSE is about as green as you can get without being LEED-certified. “Our clients had a very strong green agenda, but a normal budget,” says Jeff Sherman of the DUMBO architecture firm Delson or Sherman, which took on the job of converting a three-unit house that had had the same owner for 50 years into a single-family residence for a couple with two kids.
“LEED certification winds up being a surprisingly expensive process,” Sherman explains, citing the paperwork involved in documenting sources and the required follow-up inspections. Instead, Sherman and his partner Perla Delson, who are accredited to do LEED projects, strove for maximum impact at minimum cost. The result is a project that still has “strong green credentials,” as Sherman puts it. The contractor was the Brooklyn-based Square Indigo.
The 20′x44′ four-story building is chock full of sustainable strategies, including radiant heat flooring, solar water heating, spray foam insulation, a high-efficiency boiler, and a whole-house fan (a rainwater collection system and photovoltaic panels are yet to be implemented). Daylight is maximized by enormous skylights, as well as the replacement of one-third of the back wall with expanses of glass. Materials were re-purposed whenever possible, even the little ‘Juliet’ balconies at the rear of the house, which are segments of the original fire escape.
Now sleek and utterly modern, the house had some old doors, mantels, pressed tin, and bathroom fixtures, all of which were salvaged, though not for use in this project. “The owners worked Craigslist and Build It Green to make sure any possible thing that could be used by somebody, was,” Sherman says. “The house was picked clean by the time we started.”
Photos: Seong Kwon
Much more after the jump.
02/02/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Working with Woodwork in Park Slope
Every Thursday at 11:30AM, The Insider takes an in-depth look at a recent design and/or renovation project in the borough of Brooklyn. The series is written and produced by Cara Greenberg, a longtime design journalist who blogs at casaCARA: Old Houses for Fun and Profit.
WORKING AROUND elaborate woodwork in a Brooklyn brownstone can be a challenge. We prize 19th century houses for their original detail, but when we want to put a 21st century kitchen on the parlor floor, well, there’s no natural place for the Sub-Zero, the Viking, and the Bosch.
The owners of this c.1890 Park Slope brownstone, a triplex with a garden rental beneath, inherited a second-floor kitchen when they bought the house in 2001. They lived with it for a decade, spending most of their time on the two upper floors. “The parlor floor was a big, beautiful, underutilized space,” says Kimberly Neuhaus of Neuhaus Design Architecture (NDA), who was hired to create a new parlor-level kitchen and two new baths. The project, which also entailed updating plumbing and electrical throughout the house, was contracted to Manhattan-based Infinity Construction.
“Our goal was to keep every bit of detail we could,” says one of the homeowners. “Kimberly managed to incorporate and maintain almost all the original woodwork.”
Lots more, including ‘Before’ photos, after the jump.
Photos: Courtesy Neuhaus Design Architecture
01/26/2012 11:30 AM
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The Insider: Built-Ins for Brownstones
The Insider, Brownstoner’s weekly in-depth look at interior design and renovation in Brooklyn, is written and produced by Cara Greenberg. Find it here every Thursday at 11:30.
BROOKLYN HOUSES are often woefully short on closets, so creating storage is high on many people’s to-do lists. But where to go for built-in cabinetry that is well-designed, well-built, good value, in keeping with existing architecture, and capacious enough to accommodate all the spoils of our material culture?
Enter Nastasi Vail, a Brooklyn-based design team who’ve made a specialty of custom built-ins. Their unique cabinetwork is designed to meld with a 19th century home’s character, while providing ample storage space for books, dishes, wine, and what-have-you, along with all the media, electronics, and other toys the Victorians never had.
In this post, there are three examples of Nastasi Vail’s clutter-banishing built-ins, all in Cobble Hill and all constructed by Alex Luchynskyi of A Royal Builder (201/694-8907, aroyalbuilder@yahoo.com).
- A pair of dining room cabinets on the parlor floor of a brownstone, with striking red interiors, above
- A wall in the entry foyer of a prewar apartment, with drop-down desk fronts and yellow interior
- A dining room piece in a one-family row house, with furniture-like details
David Nastasi’s and Kate Vail’s design fee is $135/hour; construction costs run $1,100-1,500 per linear foot (assuming an 8-9’ ceiling), depending on the level of complexity. Their built-ins are made of solid hardwood and MDF (medium-density fibreboard), with wood moldings.
See it all after the jump.
Photos: Ken Hild
01/19/2012 11:30 AM
Comment
adam_dahill
May 21, 2012 | 02:16 PM