The Insider: Perfect Pied-à-Terre Emerges From Former Tailor Shop in Boerum Hill

Only 450 square feet is not a lot of living space no matter how you slice it, but a talented team of design pros made the most of them in the shipshape renovation of a diminutive one-story building that once served as a local tailor’s shop.

The client, an American expat living mostly in Amsterdam and planning to use the place as a second home, wasn’t daunted by the space limitations. “It’s essentially a studio apartment,” said architect Rachel Robinson, who partners with structural engineer Michael Dunham in Dunham Robinson, a comprehensive NYC-based architecture and interior design practice. “The only door inside the space is the bathroom door.”

Dunham Robinson embarked initially on an interior refresh. “As we peeled back the layers, we saw things in fundamental disrepair,” Robinson recalled. “It gave us the opportunity to future-proof the home and upgrade its bones.” Since they had to pull up the floor and install new joists, they ran underfloor heating, as well as new, concealed central air.

An enthusiastic cook looking forward to entertaining family and friends, the client wanted to center the kitchen and make it “feel like a place you can work in that’s not too precious,” Robinson said. Embracing a restaurant aesthetic, they found a local fabricator to custom-make a self-contained stainless steel kitchen. Offset against other materials in the space, including warm brick tile floors, butter-colored wall tiles, and custom cherry millwork, the stainless steel “doesn’t feel overly industrial.”

Along with a dining banquette that can seat eight, a bedroom separated from the public area by a frosted glass screen, a compact living room just big enough for a sofa, and a jewel-box bath, Dunham Robinson even snuck in a desk/vanity surface and a washer/dryer.

“The kitchen is the first thing that welcomes you” upon entering the street-level unit, Robinson said. “You can see everything all at once, but we still wanted it to feel like separate spaces.”

Since nearly the entire apartment can be taken in at a glance, it was important that the material palette be harmonious. Warm reddish-brown tile floors, handmade yellow wall tile with a reflective quality, and cherry wood millwork artfully balance the cool gleam of the stainless kitchen.

Dunham Robinson designed the kitchen for the space and found a venerable company, Osara New York, to fabricate it, island and stove hood included. “It’s a family business that did kitchens at the Waldorf-Astoria ages ago,” Robinson said.

Details like the sliver of a tiled coffee bar maximize the function of tight space.

The bedroom shares a triple window with the compact living room, divided from it by a frosted glass screen on a tiled plinth.

The custom channel-tufted black leather dining banquette, on a cherry wood base, surrounds a vintage table by German designer Rainer Daumiller found on 1stDibs. The accompanying Gubi chairs, a contemporary reissue of the same designer’s work, were sourced from Design Within Reach.

A stainless pendant from Kastholm & Fabricius hangs above.

“The millwork had to be carefully tucked in to maximize storage space” in the bedroom, Robinson said. Cherry wood was chosen to pick up on the color of the floors.

A washer/dryer hides in a closet next to the built-in desk/vanity with a top of Paperstone, a durable compressed paper product, at one end of the bedroom.

The apartment’s unified material palette continues into the bathroom. The round stainless sink basin sits atop a cherry vanity with a Paperstone top. The textured, reflective properties of the yellow wall tile and fluted glass divider give the shower an expansive feel.

[Photos by Hanna Grankvist]

Got a project to propose for The Insider? Contact Cara at caramia447 [at] gmail [dot] com

The Insider is Brownstoner’s weekly in-depth look at a notable interior design/renovation project, by design journalist Cara Greenberg. Find it here every Thursday morning.

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