In Renovator’s Notebook, homeowners open up about the nitty-gritty of their remodels: How long it really took; how much it actually cost; what went horribly wrong; and what went wonderfully, serendipitously, it’s-all-worth-it-in-the-end right.  

The first time interior designer Shannon Tate-Giordano made over the powder room in her Massachusetts home, in 2017, she set out to spend the least amount of money that would make the biggest visual impact. She painted the builder-grade vanity black and tacked on some side cubbies for extra storage, painted the floor in a way that made it look tiled, and hung an extra-large round mirror. “I got supercrafty, and I was happy with it,” she says. But fast-forward six years and the inevitable (if you’re a designer, anyway) happened. It didn’t feel like her anymore: “I like things to be a little bit more refined now.”

This go-round, Tate-Giordano set out to spend a little more money on the project. She specifically had her heart set on hand-painted Moroccan floor tile. Her house, though, had other plans for her budget. As she began to prep the floors for reno 2.0, a valve burst, spewing water all over the bathroom floor and into the basement ceiling. As she and her plumber began pulling out the insulation downstairs to air it out, they discovered preexisting mold damage—a problem that came with a steep $30,000 price tag to fix. “It totally threw everything off,” recalls the designer. She moved forward with the powder room project, but with limited funds to dedicate to the space, she decided to go the DIY route once again.

The Receipts 

Tate-Giordano estimates that her original plan of installing Moroccan floor tile would have run her around $4,000 for materials and labor. By skipping that step and deciding to tackle the new vanity and Roman Clay walls herself, she suspects she shaved off nearly $9,500. The only jobs she hired out were to a plumber to do the sink hookup and to an electrician to install her pendant light in a new location. Her total cost came in just under $3,000, excluding a $680 pendant she received for free. 

Here’s a look at some of the materials she ended up purchasing along the way. 

• Anthropologie mirror: $398
• Rejuvenation drawer pulls x 4: $80
• Etsy faucet: $250
• Etsy sink drain: $70
• Portola Paints wall finish: from $28
• Bed Bath & Beyond sink: $148
• IKEA vanity: $350
• Hennepin Made light: gifted (usually $680)

Ahead, in her own words, she looks back at her budget-friendly revamp.

Fake the Look of Tile With Stencils

Because the existing floor is Marmoleum (a water-resistant and sustainable alternative to linoleum), I was able to dry it out enough so that I could glue it back down, sand it, and prime it for paint (it takes paint very well!). Then I cut a star-shaped stencil out of card stock with a razor blade. I used a Sharpie to outline the design and ended up eyeballing it because I have very little patience for a level—I think it looks pretty straight. I filled in the shapes with a mix of colors in Benjamin Moore’s Porch and Floor Paint Finish. It took a while…my back was killing me. 

Start With an IKEA Vanity Base

The old vanity was nothing to write home about, and the cabinet was impractical for storage. I definitely wanted to switch to having drawers. Not wanting to build something from scratch, I bought an IKEA Godmorgon vanity for the shell and custom-made the sides and the drawer fronts out of walnut-stained plywood with a solid wood trim. 

A local stone yard in western Massachusetts had three full slabs of this red travertine, and they told me they’d had it for nearly 15 years. Nobody wanted to buy it! The slabs were three-quarter-inch—the perfect thickness for my vanity. It was a total score.

Double-Check Your Drainage

I was looking on Pinterest and watching videos of how people turn bowls into sinks, and I was like, Yeah, I’ll do that. I went to HomeGoods and found a bowl that was the perfect color. (It was similar to a $500 concrete sink I was eyeing on Etsy.) I felt so smart and so accomplished; I even drilled it for the drain and had the plumber come in and hook everything up once the countertops were in. 

Then, an hour later, I tried it out. All the water was staying inside the bowl. I was so annoyed with myself. Of course, this wasn’t make any sense; why would it drain? The pitch wasn’t high enough. I thought maybe I’d just order the $500 sink, but then I found this hammered copper one at Bed Bath & Beyond and really liked the way it looked. I switched to that, and it was supereasy. I actually figured out how to change the plumbing and I didn’t have to hire someone twice to do it.

Amp Up the Wall Texture With Roman Clay

I had used this Portola Paints color, Rustic, on another project recently, and I thought it was a really nice combination with the warm red travertine counters. I prefer Roman Clay over limewash; it has this really smooth, buttery finish. I applied three coats with a metal trowel to make sure I couldn’t see any of the wall underneath, then added a sealer.

Find Balance by Going Off Symmetry

Hennepin Made reached out to me and offered its Lacuna globe pendant light. Because all of the plumbing is skewed to the left of the mirror, I thought it would be cool to hang the fixture to the right, to fill that void. It’s not a bathroom that I do my makeup in, so it didn’t have to be bright. I wanted it to feel more like a hotel.

I reused my existing art; I felt like it still fit. I started frequenting an antiques shop when we first moved here.  

In the end, I’m actually way happier with how these cost-saving measures look. I like them way more than my original plan, so it’s very satisfying.

Get the Look

Lacuna Globe Pendant, Hennepin Made ($680)

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Godmorgon Vanity, IKEA ($349)

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Ball Cabinet Knob, Rejuvenation ($20)

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Clara Mirror, Anthropologie ($398)

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The post An IKEA Vanity and Floor Stencil Kept My Powder Room Budget Under $4K appeared first on domino.

Designer and Spaces founder Hollie Velten has a knack for underutilized rooms. She proved as much to her Chatham, New Jersey–based client when she renovated her basement in the depths of the pandemic, turning the 1,000-square-foot area into a place where her family can watch TV, read, grab a snack, and do homework. Fast-forward a year or so, and that same homeowner wanted to do something similar to the space directly above the basement. She wanted to give her entryway purpose. 

“A lot of these northern New Jersey homes are center-hall Colonials with a foyer where most people just put a console table and mirror,” says Velten. “It’s wasted square footage.” The brief was to turn what was just passive space into something usable for the family and guests. Velten worked with Partello Renovations and Ale Wood and Design to integrate custom millwork where a bulky closet once stood, all while drawing inspiration from her client’s California upbringing and the history of Chatham. 

Don’t Let a Closet Cramp Your Style

After an architect greenlit the removal of the coat closet adjacent to the fireplace, Velten’s team took it out, which instantly made the room feel less claustrophobic. “The house was begging to have it removed,” she says.

Plus the tiny mudroom by the front door is now outfitted with two small cubbies, a shelf, and Shaker pegs for stashing outerwear. Taking the closet’s place? A built-in bench. 

Velten’s inspiration was a mashup of sources. She wanted the seating to be made out of a warm, organic wood that would remind her client of her 1970s California upbringing. Then the designer dug up old photos of the nearby Chatham train station and found pictures of corbels with ring motifs. A lightbulb went off: She turned to the furniture designs of Viennese secessionists, specifically Austrian architect and designer Josef Hoffmann, whose bentwood chairs from the 1940s featured circular cutouts. All of this culminated in a nook that has perforated details, shelves for books, and a curved arm. 

Stash Your Phone Away

While the homeowner imagined her kids reading in the corner by the fireplace, she knew, realistically, it would be a screen-time spot. “We can’t deny that we have cell phones and iPads,” says Velten. For practical reasons, she integrated a cubby within the wall where they can store devices and charge them (there’s an outlet in there). The compartment is hidden by a hole-filled panel attached with magnets. 

Make Decorating a Family Affair

To mark the room’s new function, Velten refreshed the fireplace with Delft-inspired tile from Etsy that shows scenes of children playing. “These homes can feel very, very serious,” she says of choosing a motif that felt equal parts playful and traditional. She finished it off with a hearth made of a limestone remnant. 

Velten was initially hoping to plop in Tiffany glass windows where the recessed niche is located in the stairwell. But no dice. Instead she swathed it in an Antoinette Poisson wallpaper and added narrow shelves for displaying little vases (or even Legos). “It’s something the kids can have a role in curating, too,” she explains. 

Go Back in Time

While thinking about how train travelers used to carry precious hatboxes and suitcases adorned with shiny zipper closures, Velten infused the powder room with the same glamorous energy. “I wanted it to be kind of industrial and a little precious,” she says. The designer translated her vision with a copper sink from Watermark Fixtures and red-brown zellige wall tile topped with honed Viola marble bullnose trim. 

Stay Open

Opposite from the fireplace, Velten dressed up the existing bay-window bench with vintage floral fabric and custom shades. She intentionally didn’t stick another sofa in the middle of the room, leaving it open so the client can host parties (or so that the kids can do cartwheels).

When they want to use the benches for conversational seating, the family can easily pull up an ottoman or side table. “The homeowner has been really expressive about how much she uses it now and how it was completely inactive before,” says the designer. Case in point: Shortly after the reno wrapped, the family threw a holiday party as an accordion player performed for guests on the staircase. 

The post How a Designer Reimagined the Wasted Square Footage in This Colonial’s Awkward Foyer appeared first on domino.

In Renovator’s Notebook, homeowners open up about the nitty-gritty of their remodels: How long it really took; how much it actually cost; what went horribly wrong; and what went wonderfully, serendipitously, it’s-all-worth-it-in-the-end right.  

Square footage: 210

Year built: Late 1800s

Top priority: Remove the micro-kitchen on the top floor of a Brooklyn brownstone in order to add a much needed primary bedroom.

For the first two years that Aubrey Ament and Will Glaser were living in their Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, brownstone, it was a “construction sandwich.” The couple, who run the design firm GLAM Studio, started revamping their garden level shortly after they moved in, with the goal of listing it as a short-term rental on Airbnb so they could secure some extra income and put it toward their mortgage. They treated the floor above that, the parlor, as their living room with the eventual goal of building out their dream kitchen. And until that could become a reality, the couple and their then-newborn son, Theo, holed up on the third floor, where they installed a micro-kitchen they bought at IKEA for $5,000, a dining area, and a shared bedroom. This setup made entertaining an intimate affair, to say the least. “We were cooking Christmas dinner, and my sister-in-law is sitting on the bed while the pork is roasting 8 feet away in the oven,” Ament recalls. 

Then things quickly changed. Airbnb made it more difficult to have a listing in New York City, and the pair realized traversing up and down all of those stairs was becoming a nuisance for their two arthritic senior dogs. So they pivoted: Last summer, they nixed their Airbnb and instead started renting out the space to brands for photo shoots—it was a huge hit. “In August, we booked five different shoots and made three times as much as we would have from Airbnb,” says Ament. 

Ultimately, it gave the couple the financial confidence to do something they never thought they could afford: They claimed their entire brownstone for themselves. This meant they could begin building a true cooking space on the parlor level and trade in their tiny kitchen for a proper—and, most important, private—primary bedroom.  

The Receipts 

Here’s a taste of what the designers spent (and gained!) as they transformed their old kitchen–slash–dining room into a bedroom, including newly purchased furniture and decor. 

• Gut and patch old kitchen: $900
• Fireplace mantel and cast-iron insert: $0 
• Salvaged hearthstone: $500
• Mantel repair and installation: $1,000
• Sin ceramics for the shelves: $290
• Hook and Loom area rug: $525
• IKEA nightstands: $119 x 2 = $238
• IKEA bedside table lamps: $55 x 2 = $110

Total: $3,563

Selling the kitchen on Facebook Marketplace: -$3,500

Final cost: $63

Listing Our Old Kitchen on Facebook Marketplace

Aubrey Ament: The ramping up of our production shoots has allowed us to spread out over all three floors, ditch the micro-kitchen on the top floor, and add a much needed primary bedroom (before, we were squished into a space with our toddler, Theo).

The kitchen was designed to be temporary but ended up very cute in the end. The cabinets are IKEA Sektion with Voxtorp matte white fronts with integrated pulls. The butcher block counter is from Facebook Marketplace and cut to fit. The sink and faucet are from Home Depot, and the oven is a discontinued 24-inch Smeg gas range I found on eBay. 

We thought, hey, maybe we can sell the whole kitchen on Facebook Marketplace and that’ll help pay for switching this room out.

Will Glaser: There are people who want a relatively new kitchen with relatively new appliances for half the price. A good rule of thumb is to list it for 65 to 70 percent of what the value is, especially if it’s only a couple years old. We had some inquiries right away, but they were either lowballs or, in some cases, they wanted just one part of it. It took about a month to find a buyer who was actually interested. I was pretty stoked to get $3,500 at the end of the day.

The IKEA kitchen is an easy “on and off” sort of system. There’s main support rails attached to the wall and the cabinets hook onto that. There’s legs that support it as well. But really, after you unscrew the cabinets, take off the doors, and take off the countertop, they just lift right off. A plumber had to come in to detach the appliances, and then the buyers came over with their van and moved everything out. 

A month later they called us and said, “Hey, we have some of your dishes.” We had accidentally left them in the dishwasher! It was a chaotic time, so the missing plates didn’t even register with us. They were really sweet and dropped them back off in a reusable grocery bag.

Gifting Backsplash Tile to Friends

Ament: We had our friends Sarah and Teddy over for pizza and wine, and we were showing them how we were taking apart the kitchen. We were like, “Hey, do you want these Block Shop x Fireclay tiles?” And they said, “Actually, yeah!”

Glaser: They were finishing out their basement and wanted a kitchenette. 

Glaser: We thought about chipping the tiles off the wall, but that seemed like a likely way to break a bunch of them. So we used a Sawzall to cut the tiles off with the drywall itself, because we knew we were going to have to replace the drywall anyway. We made four big panels of tile attached to drywall. 

Ament: Teddy came over a week later and grabbed them, and they ended up cutting the Sheetrock at their house to fit our tiled Sheetrock.

Restoring Our Neighbor’s Historic Mantels

Glaser: We were interested in the house next door because it had been abandoned for 25 years and it was an exact copy of our house. We were pretty sure that no renovations had ever been done on it, so we thought, maybe it has a bunch of original hardware.

A developer bought it and was demoing the entire place but told us we were welcome to look around and take things if we wanted them. We saw these gorgeous marble mantels on the parlor floor. The next day, we went over with chisels and full hazmat gear and carried them piece by piece into our backyard, where they lived for a couple of months until we were able to get them installed. 

To even buy a mantel new like that would be a couple thousand dollars, so even though it was $1,000 to repair and install each mantel (one is in our son’s room), you’re paying for two people to work a day and a half, matching up the pieces and gluing them in such a way that minimizes imperfections. 

Interestingly, there were no hearthstones in the neighbor’s house. The person who installed our mantels had a connection and was able to source those for us for $500 each. 

Keeping the Open Shelving (for Now)

Glaser: There was definitely a discussion around the most efficient way to have storage in a bedroom. Eventually, we want to build something out. But we thought the open shelves looked good, and we really don’t have a ton of budget left to do much more.

Creating a Haven for Our Toddler

Ament: The bedroom we had before was shared with our son, and we were tired of sneaking in at night and not being able to turn on the lights or make noise because we didn’t want to wake him up.

“Does a kid’s room really need a mantel?” We asked ourselves. But we are always keeping in mind our side business, and that’s a really big thing in New York: having multiple spaces where you can shoot. 

We took inspiration from other brownstone kids’ rooms and put the toddler bed to the right of the mantel, hung his mobile and some art above it, and got a full-size area rug that’s this really springy cotton that’s good for playrooms. This room can be a lot of things: You can fit a queen-size bed in here, you can turn the small alcove on the other side of the room into an exercise area or a sectioned-off bedroom for another kid. We are always down for flexibility.

The post The Final Cost of Our Kitchen-Turned-Bedroom Reno Was a Mere $63 appeared first on domino.

Sometimes it’s what’s on the outside that counts. In “Front of House,” we dig into all the elements that give a home “stop the car!” kind of curb appeal, from main character mailboxes to much–welcome yard transformations.

All Anastasia Casey really wanted when she was house shopping in Austin was a slice of history. But in her city, the old charm doesn’t come cheap. So when Anastasia, the founder of IDCO Studio, Design Camp, and the podcast Interior Collective, came across a Tudor-inspired house that was built in 1983, she told her husband, Quinn, “I can work with this.” It had the dark wood beams set in a stucco facade and the steep rooflines you’d expect to see from a Tudor, but it also had glass blocks and random arched windows. “It had been stripped of any bit of character (if there was even any there to begin with),” says Anastasia. 

But there were enough elements that Anastasia thought she could expand on. First off, the property was set on a half-acre lot and located only two blocks away from her office. Fifty-foot-tall trees dot the landscape, including heritage oaks that are common in Austin, but also a few tropical varieties. And there was a courtyard out front, marked by a sweet stone wall. “It was really cute, but I thought it could be a lot grander,” she says. Here’s how she turned back the clock on her Tudor’s front yard. 

Go All In on Gravel

The cracks in the concrete roundabout driveway were too big of an eyesore to ignore. Anastasia worked with Yardzen to help turn her outdoor remodel ideas into a reality: She laid out her vision and then they connected her with landscape construction company Urban Oasis Contracting and gave her a flat fee for all the work. The crew arrived with a tractor small enough to fit through the side gate and dug up the weathered driveway, ultimately replacing it with a crushed limestone gravel that not only looks more fitting with the architecture but was $7,500 less than repaving the path with new concrete.  

Make One Grand Entrance, Not Two

Anastasia is almost positive the existing front door had been there since 1983. Funny enough, the biggest issue she had with the double door was how it looked from the inside. “It cast this really gross green glare inside the entire house,” she says. “It was not historic or modern.” She swapped it for a single door with sidelights that she sourced from Austin’s Habitat for Humanity ReStore, where she’s learned she can score solid wood mahogany doors at a serious discount, and painted it Tate Olive by Benjamin Moore.

Match Up Your Windows

The bigger the window, the better, right? Not in this case. The large arched window formerly located to the left of the front door was disproportionate with the rest of the house, not to mention “it was the only arch window and didn’t make any sense,” she says. Many of the other windows on the front of the house felt confused, too, including the not-so-structurally-sound bay window to the right of the entry and the glass block window in the far left corner. She chose to smooth everything out by opting for new vinyl windows from Lowe’s that kept them on budget. 

Give Your New Plant Babies a Boost

Another perk of working with Yardzen: Its contractors guarantee their plants. This was a big plus for Anastasia and Quinn, who embarked on this project last summer in temperatures pushing 100 degrees. “They knew they were putting them in in August, and if the plants died, they replaced them,” shares Anastasia. Her favorite additions include the lavender, which was a big hit among the bees and butterflies this spring, and the white rosebushes that now stand 4 feet tall. “They add a little life and movement out front,” she says. “Anytime we’re getting out of our car or we’re in the front yard, people walk by and tell us how the landscaping has grown in so beautifully.”

Because it gets so hot in Austin, a drip irrigation system was nonnegotiable. Anastasia’s only regret is not incorporating sprinklers. Now they have to manually water the yard a few days per week in the summer.

Shop Your Last Renovation

“The courtyard didn’t feel like a true courtyard until there was a little gate,” says Anastasia. After getting a bid from a metalworker she discovered on Facebook Marketplace, she had the swinging doors constructed on-site. The landscaping team returned to lay down the patio, using leftover Alexander James tile from the Caseys’ kitchen renovation. It’s not unusual to find Anastasia or Quinn out there in the morning, sipping coffee at their Article dining table or tending to their potted plants. But step outside and you better be prepared to socialize. “We have a very friendly neighborhood. If we’re sitting out there, people absolutely walk up to chat with us,” says Anastasia. We don’t blame them for wanting a closer look.

Get the Look

Hudson Outdoor Wall Sconce, Shoppe Amber Interiors ($570)

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Emilia Raffia Dining Chair, One Kings Lane ($439)

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Tate Olive, Benjamin Moore

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Zander Outdoor Bench, Four Hands ($440)

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The post This Tudor Exterior Went From Being Stuck in the ’80s to the Buzz of the Neighborhood appeared first on domino.

For close to six years, photographer Susanna Howe dreamed of a new kitchen layout. When she and her family moved into their New Rochelle, New York, home in 2013, they were greeted by a kitchen crowded with flat slab cabinets and pinkish purple laminate counters. But the thing Howe took most issue with was the unnecessarily deep refrigerator. “The feng shui was terrible,” she recalls.

Not to mention, you could feel the frigid winter air coming through the drafty door leading to the outdoors. Howe and her family patiently saved up for the renovations and finally got to work in 2019. As she now prepares to part ways with the home she’s owned for more than a decade (it’s officially up for sale), she gives us a look behind the scenes of her clever IKEA-filled reno. 

The Stylish IKEA Cabinets

Howe is no stranger to IKEA’s kitchen line, having previously used the Swedish retailer’s cabinets in her Brooklyn home. The cabinets are famously easy to assemble and affordable (the ballpark cost for a 10-by-10-foot space is $3,000), so she decided to go for round two, this time opting for Nogsta stainless steel drawer fronts, which retail for $45 per door or $390 for a two-drawer arrangement that includes all the framework. 

When you hear “stainless steel kitchen,” you probably picture a restaurant, but Howe’s space is a reminder that metal cabinets can look surprisingly homey. To elevate the doors even more, she bought brass hardware from House of Antique Hardware (bin pulls for the top drawers; regular handles for the lowers). At 24 inches wide and 30 inches deep each, the new setup nixed the need for upper cabinet storage altogether. Plus Howe hung onto the existing pot rack—it’s still handy for super-bulky cookware. 

The Savvy Dishwasher Hack 

When you go through the effort of a gut renovation, the last thing you want is a shiny black or mixed-metal dishwasher ruining all your hard work. For a seamless look, Howe called up a couple who specializes in IKEA hacking to clad the appliance in a custom stainless steel panel that matched the base cabinets perfectly. They also built matching doors for the tricky corner cabinet.

The Game-Changing Move

Shifting plumbing, gas, and electric wasn’t initially in Howe’s budget, but she made an exception for swapping the placement of the refrigerator and the threshold. Now conveniently located near the range, her new 42-inch Café fridge is encased on one side in beadboard, further disguising the piece. 

The Classic Backsplash

In the same way that the steel cabinets let you know that serious cooking happens in this space, so does the square subway tile. Stretching to the ceiling, it’s like something you might see in a cool restaurant or an iconic 20th-century house. “There was a Bauhaus kitchen I saw once at MoMA that had white tile to the ceiling, and I never forgot it,” says Howe. One Home Depot run wouldn’t suffice—she had a very specific shade of white she wanted, so, getting scrappy, she bought the tile from all over and finished off the backdrop with a painting she sourced in the Alps.

The Do-It-All Island 

To maximize walking space, Howe stuck with a narrow island, constructing the hub out of more IKEA Nogsta cabinets. While the countertops around the perimeter of the room are made of a marble Howe found in Vermont, the island is topped with a green-tinged soapstone that extends into a small overhang so it can accommodate a single Shaker stool. 

On the outside, the sides of the island are clad in beadboard (painted in Farrow & Ball’s Studio Green). Inside, the drawers house all her plates, silverware, and bowls, and she integrated an exposed cubby for her cutting boards. Even better? “The drawers open directly across from the dishwasher, and there is just enough space to unload the whole thing without moving my feet!” she says. It’s the ultimate convenience.

The post This New York Kitchen Stars IKEA’s Most Underrated Cabinet Design appeared first on domino.

On Memorial Day weekend 2021, Arden Wray was driving to a brewery in the Catskills when she spotted a handwritten “For Sale” sign attached to someone’s mailbox. She turned to her husband, Matt, and asked: “I wonder if they mean the house?” She called the phone number on the posting and learned that it was in fact the entire property—not just the mailbox—they were looking to off-load. The place was only 900 square feet, but for the couple, it was a major upgrade from their current living conditions.

For almost a year, they had been shacking up in a windowless one-bedroom staff apartment at Foxfire Mountain House, a boutique hotel that Arden’s family owns and where Matt had recently taken a job as manager. Before that, the couple had been living in a similarly sized apartment in Toronto—they were used to cramped quarters. “Nine hundred square feet was plenty enough for us, and now us and the baby,” says Arden; the couple welcomed their first child, Lila, this January.

Arden had a fantasy of living in a quintessential Catskills cottage with mullioned windows, weathered ceiling beams, and paneled walls. “But we had absolutely none of that here,” she says. Instead she was met with vinyl floors, acoustic ceiling tiles, and a TV in every single room (including the bathroom). But the design challenge was a welcome one for Arden—she runs the design practice Byrd Studio alongside her mom, Eliza Clark. It became a “if we can’t find it, we’ll have to build it” type of renovation. Ahead, Arden reveals how she created charm out of nothing. 

Swap Your Doors and Windows for Something Salvaged

The Woodstock area has long attracted artists, woodworkers, and other creatives, so it’s not unusual to see whimsical details like round windows around town. Arden went on a hunt for one for the front entrance and was surprised to find a $250 option on Houzz. “I had no idea if it would be legit, but it was and it worked perfectly with the trim,” she says. “My contractor just popped it in.”

Almost all of the other windows and doors in the house have a similar story. The large industrial windows in the living room were salvaged finds that also ran her a mere $250. The frames required some sprucing up, but no one dared to touch the double-pane glass: There’s no drafty air getting through those things. “We installed them along the whole front of the house, and I think it got us a lot closer to that look that I love,” says Arden. She even tracked down antique doors (one now leads to the nursery, another to the primary bedroom) at a market in Hudson.

Maintain Defined Zones  

“I am a big believer in rooms,” says Arden. While most homeowners would be tempted to take down the walls inside the small house to create one big open layout, Arden says that having multiple rooms makes the home actually feel bigger when you’re in it. Still, some tweaks were necessary, like moving the primary bedroom door from the foyer to the living room to create a proper entryway. “Even though there’s hardly room for anything, having a tiny table and a closet gives a better impression versus walking right into a kitchen or living room,” she says. She made the foyer feel even more special by cladding the floors in salvaged thin brick tiles, finished with a hefty layer of white grout to give it an older look. 

Another important layout update was splitting up the home’s only bathroom into two. The previous setup consisted of a corner shower, pedestal sink, laundry, and a lot of wasted empty space in the middle. In the process of carving out the new primary bathroom, Arden installed a 24-inch-wide vintage door. The only problem was it was a hair too short, so she had her contractor extend it by tacking on a piece of wood and covering it in a sheet of brass so it looks like a toe-kick you might see in a kitchen. The new tub-shower combo features another hack of sorts: The stone bench at the end is actually a premade marble slab from Floor & Decor that’s sold as an insert for a shower shelf. “It filled that extra width and gave me a place where I can put a glass of wine or a book,” she says. 

Warm the Walls Up With Color and Texture

You won’t find many simple sheets of drywall in Arden’s home. Most of the walls are either covered in shiplap, beadboard, Roman Clay, or wallpaper. “I think that adds a lot of depth and warmth to the space,” she says. The floral wallpaper in the couple’s bedroom is from the John Derian x Pierre Frey collaboration; the closet door in the nursery is swathed in Farrow & Ball’s Light Blue; and even the ceiling in the kitchen is covered in beadboard.

Why no backsplash tile, though? Because “at that point, painting with satin paint, it’s very easily wipeable,” she explains. She also thought tile would feel too cold in the cozy galley space.  

Bring in Some Shimmer

When Arden bought IKEA’s affordable butcher block countertop, she didn’t realize at first that the material is actually a combination of veneer, laminate, and particleboard. So when her contractor cut out an opening for the farmhouse sink and she saw the raw board inside, she thought of a fix fast: brass carpet edging from Etsy. “It was the exact right dimension,” she says. Plus she likes to think of the touches of brass (including the marine lights on the ceiling) as jewelry for the space. 

Have Fun With the Scale of Your Lighting

Arden’s inspiration for her newborn’s room is just what you’d imagine for a nursery in a Catskills cottage: She wanted it to be a little bit whimsical but mostly very calm. Bringing in the oversize flush mount light from Crate & Barrel’s Athena Calderone collaboration set the scene. The piece is 40 inches wide and made out of breezy rattan. 

Look to Your Favorite Hotels for Ideas

To figure out how to fit a toilet, shower, and sink in the other roughly 6-by-6-foot bathroom, Arden turned to the Marlton Hotel in New York City, which has “the cutest bathroom I’ve ever seen,” she says. During a stay there, she whipped out her measuring tape and wrote down every single dimension so she could replicate a similar arrangement at home. The floating sink pad is clad in leftover tile from another Byrd Studio design project and topped with a sink from an Etsy vendor in Morocco. The shower saves space with a fixed panel of glass, and she was even able to squeeze a stacked washer and dryer in a closet opposite the toilet. Blowing out walls isn’t the only way to reno.

The post This Designer Reno’d Her Upstate Home to Keep 7 Defined Rooms, Even With Only 900 Square Feet appeared first on domino.

There’s only one place your eyes can go when you walk into this Toronto home. At the very end of a long and grand living area, there is a wall with exactly 34 windows, and they’re framed in an orange-hued wood that tells you exactly when they were added: the 1980s. They’re quirky, a little bit random, and there was no way Jaime Zimmerman, the founder of JPZ Interiors, was getting rid of them. Even when her contractor floated the idea of painting the windows, she shut it down. “If you look up close at them, you can see some are losing color, have faded here and there, but it really is what brings that natural feel and character to the house,” she says. “That makes it so special; that’s what I wanted to maintain.”

The outdoorsy homeowners also fell in love at first sight: They had a picture-perfect view of their backyard—what more could they ask for? The problem was that the great room and the surrounding areas (kitchen, mudroom, family room, and dining area) weren’t doing the windows justice. “Everything was really wonky,” recalls Zimmerman. Very few spaces were on the same level. The formal dining room was a few steps up, the entryway was a few steps down—really, there should have been bright yellow “Watch Your Step” signs hanging in every room. Here’s how Zimmerman found calm in the home’s chaotic layout. 

Reduce Tripping Hazards

Lowering the family and dining room level to be even with the rest of the ground floor would have been a construction nightmare, but Zimmerman wanted to at least address one glaring safety issue: the drop off on either side of the fireplace. “They have kids,” the designer points out. “You can’t have an open space here without a step.” She elongated the steps to the left of the thresholds and built them out of white-painted brick, which felt cohesive with some of the room’s existing white brick walls. 

Don’t Give the Neighbors Something to Talk About

In an effort to streamline the layout, Zimmerman opened up the existing peninsula even further so that the kitchen was truly one with the great room. She stayed true to her word on not touching the windows in this space either, even if it meant the owners would have very few upper cabinets. “I really needed to maximize storage as much as possible because the husband loves to cook,” she says. Zimmerman tasked the cabinetmaker with integrating custom organizers for his pots and pans in the drawers closest to the range.

The only thing obstructing the windows is the vent hood. Of course, Zimmerman couldn’t get rid of it, but she wanted to at least ensure it looked good from all angles by painting its boxy frame the same color of the new flat-slab cabinets. “I wanted it to just float there and not to be too impactful,” she says.

Pick Your Wood Tones Wisely

One of Zimmerman’s main challenges was navigating all the wood in the space. She wanted to update the flooring by replacing the terracotta tiles with engineered hardwood but “it was hard to find that perfect match,” she admits. She leaned toward a honey-hued option that exudes the same level of warmth as the existing orangey tones of the window frames and ceiling panels. 

She departed from the wood flooring in the new front entryway with a checkerboard tile and an oak coat closet. For wood furniture and built-ins, her rule of thumb was to opt for lighter stains and species so “they didn’t feel so heavy,” she says. You’d never know looking at the space today that it used to be part of the living room.

Pick Lighting That Doesn’t Shine Too Bright

While the wall of windows maximizes natural light in the house, there’s no getting around dreary winters in Toronto, where the sun goes down as early as 4:45 p.m. Zimmerman’s lighting plan had to be functional, but it couldn’t be too busy. The designer steered clear of grand chandeliers and introduced simple track lights over the central round dining table and mono-point flush mounts above the peninsula. She even lit the way to the family room with simple sconces marking the new arched thresholds and steps.

The formal dining room is the only place she opted for long-hanging fixtures, and even the pieces nearly blend into the backdrop with their textured white shells. “It’s a long and narrow [space], so I felt that adding a series of three was the right move,” she shares. “It played into the linear feel.”

Level the Playing Field

The old front entrance now functions as more of a mudroom. Zimmerman raised the floor so that it is fully level with the nearby kitchen and ditched the double door for a single opening with sidelight windows. Now the owners can pop in and out of the house with their stroller and not have to fuss over lifting it up.

The post How a Designer Worked With, Not Against, a Wall of 34 Windows appeared first on domino.

It’s not unusual for rental houses to turn over year after year in Bloomington, Indiana, the leafy city where Indiana University is located. Students rent for a while and then move out, and the usual wear and tear needs to be tended to. But when Aaron Denton was tasked as a subcontractor with refinishing the floors and painting the walls of a circa-1964 split-level, he didn’t expect it to be work he was doing on his own future home.

Near the end of the job, in summer 2015, the owner asked if Aaron, a graphic designer, and his now-wife, Anna, a photographer, wanted to move in and rent. Fast-forward five years, during the height of the pandemic, and their landlord came back with an even better offer: Did they want to buy it? “Since we had rented for five years, we knew exactly what we loved and didn’t love about the house,” Anna explains, noting that they immediately wanted to replace the entry’s dark wood paneling and update the bathroom. “And then, all of a sudden, we had the opportunity to do that,” she adds.

After seeing what architect Andrew Heathfield of MINOH did in another Bloomington home (for this Domino editor), they were enthusiastic to talk with him about their ideas. They also liked that he was a Midwesterner, based in Detroit. “It felt like he was really excited about our project and cared about our project. He made everything seem a little bit more possible,” Anna remembers of their video chat.

“For Anna and Aaron, MINOH focused on integrating segmented spaces, maximizing natural light, and enhancing functionality,” Andrew says. “The overall palette is clean and minimal, which really helped to highlight our tile selections, as well as the pair’s collection of art and photography. I think we created a space that is a reflection of them.” What came to be is a central hub of spaces that complement one another and suit the couple’s lifestyle, aesthetics, and, yes, their cats, too.

Plan for It to Take Longer Than You Think

As new home buyers, the Dentons held no illusions about the unfamiliar process they were about to dive into. But something they were sure of was that they didn’t want to do the project piecemeal or live in a construction zone. From that initial meeting with Heathfield in January 2021 to having a finished space in September 2022, the project took more than a year and a half. While that was partially due to the majority of it taking place during the pandemic, the tasks that took the longest were getting the drawings just right (remotely); finding a contractor who would take on their size of the job; and then the actual reconstruction of the kitchen, living room, entry, and bathroom. Ultimately, they ended up with exactly what they wanted: a fresh start with nuance that can grow with them as their lives evolve. 

There Will Be First-Time Renovation Hiccups

Something the Dentons didn’t expect was that their scale of renovation—not a full gut nor a one-room situation—made it difficult to source a contractor willing to take it on, especially because the couple was acting as project managers. They wanted to be the ones ordering and tracking the materials as well as storing them in their garage. “It became a matter of finding someone to do it,” Aaron says. “That took a while—reaching out to people, and people just being like, ‘No, this is too small. We don’t want to bid on this.’” Luckily, the home’s former owner recommended Chris Valliant, who was skilled in tile installation. Valliant then introduced the couple to Hewins Cabinet Company, which was an essential partner for the Dentons for the kitchen and bathroom.

It was smooth sailing until construction began. First, there was the hiccup of a long lead time for the custom Fireclay x Block Shop tile, and delivery held them up. Then a difficult-to-size cabinet panel for the dishwasher made trouble. Not to mention that once the bathroom vanity was made, it still had to be transported to the site. “Because we didn’t work with a full-build team, we didn’t have that person who is doing all the subcontracting and knowing what comes next in the process,” Aaron shares openly. “It was a lot of us just figuring things out as they needed to be figured out on a daily basis.”

Eschewing premade for custom cabinets was a big financial commitment, but it ended up saving them a huge headache when their measurements were oh-so-slightly off. “We were able to just smush it a little bit with a cabinet and make the fridge fit,” Aaron says.   

If It’s a Forever Kitchen, Consider Going Custom

Before the renovation, the kitchen’s horseshoe shape and dark wood paneling were both pain points for the couple, who love to host. “It was this very funny social experiment every time we had people over,” Anna says. “They’d walk in the house, get to the top of the stairs, and then have nowhere to go.” They knew they wanted to have a clear pass-through between the front door and back door. Now, instead of getting trapped by an L-shape, anyone can walk straight in and gather with the pair around the island, a focal point in the house. They can both be in front of the range at the same time, and beyond a new Bosch oven elevating their cooking, Aaron points out the little thrills. “I have a dishwasher for the first time in my life, which is amazing.”

The Dentons found that they appreciated their choice to go custom—in both the kitchen and bathroom—not only for the flexibility to make tweaks, but because they had exacting ideas of how they wanted everything to fit. In the design process, they mapped it out inch by inch, including where and how they would stash countertop appliances out of sight (on a pullout drawer behind closed doors) to detailed spice jar storage. “I appreciate that custom work every day,” Aaron says. “It became one of those moments where it’s like, let’s do this one time and get exactly what we want and then have it forever.”

Cats Need Privacy in the Bathroom, Too

“I personally feel like the bathroom is the most transformed,” Anna says, acknowledging how cramped and bland it was before. “It’s very weird to say the bathroom is a favorite room in the house, but it is the most beautiful.” First, by reclaiming an empty closet next to it, they doubled the size of the space.

By ripping out the tub and going with a walk-in shower clad in more custom Fireclay x Block Shop tile, they created extra depth, too. The frosted window, which looks out onto the screened-in porch, let’s in light but doesn’t require curtains as before, and a built-in cubby keeps products out of the corners and off the floors. Lastly, their cabinetmaker installed custom white oak cabinets that included an important addition: one sized exactly for their cats to have a little privacy in the loo, too. 

Add a Front Door You Actually Want to Enter Through

The back door had been the de facto front door for the Dentons ever since they moved in—and not because it was more convenient. The exterior and entryway came with a broken door, and dark wood paneling didn’t make them feel excited to walk in or out every day. After adding a layer of drywall, installing a new railing, laying down custom tile on the floor, and hanging a George Nelson Bubble lamp, things were starting to look sunnier.

Artwork by Dennis Foster and a brand-new door sealed the deal, and a fresh walkway and landscaping make it feel completely different. “I feel like we’ve made the front of our house a welcoming space again,” Anna says. 

Let Light in Every Which Way 

Prerenovation, wood paneling was prominent throughout the house, and while sometimes it can be a nice vintage touch, it wasn’t what the pair needed or wanted at this stage of their life. “We took that down and replaced it with drywall, which just made the space so much brighter and feel so much bigger,” Anna says. That new front door? It’s full-length frosted glass, and the new back door is transparent, too. Those changes, paired with the kitchen’s colossal picture window, also new, lets natural light pour in from multiple sources. 

Ask for What You Want

“We knew nothing going into this project—about renovating, about owning a home,” Anna says. “So when we started the process, so many things came about because we asked for what we wanted or asked questions of the experts to help us get there.” Case in point: the matte finish and taupe color of their Fireclay x Block Shop tile. “It comes in a glossy mint green, and that’s what we were going to go with,” Anna recalls. But then they happened to be on the phone with a Fireclay rep and inquired about a matte finish, which then led to the more muted brown hue they ended up with. Similarly, the budget that they had given Heathfield at the start began to feel limiting, so they decided to splurge on various pieces they hadn’t considered necessary, like a Smeg refrigerator, Schoolhouse lighting, and Boos kitchen countertops.

Each experience like this—whether that was specific cabinet placement, hand-selected vintage furniture, or spot-on pendant height—has made the end product so much more meaningful. “I know exactly where it came from and why it looks the way it is,” says Aaron. “It’s purposeful in a way that I’m not going to forget.” Those five years of renting gave them a head start on it all.

The post These First-Time Owners Traded Dark Paneling for a Breezy Central Kitchen in Their ’60s Split-Level appeared first on domino.

Cookbooks aren’t just for pulling recipes. If you are Victoria Sass of Prospect Refuge Studio, they can also inspire an entire remodel. At least, that’s how the renovation of this family’s Minneapolis home began, with a stack of six titles: Sunday Suppers at Lucques, The New Midwestern Table, Aloha Kitchen, Australian Food, Nothing Fancy, and Ottolenghi Simple. Some of the books reflected the homeowners’ travels, others spoke to their Midwestern roots, but the meals in each all shared one thing in common. They feature “daily specials,” according to Sass, or simple, thoughtful dishes that make regular events—baking on a Saturday morning, celebrating a birthday on a school night—feel a little more grand. Those are the kinds of moments Sass and her team, along with architect Sarah Nymo, wanted to design for. “It was all about taking ordinary things and adding a little sprinkle on top,” says Sass. 

So how do you translate the feeling of a cookbook library to a home? You do it through clever floor plan tweaks, nostalgic tile, happy paint colors, and splurge-worthy lighting. Ahead, Sass walks us through the feel-good updates they made to this kitchen, dining area, mudroom, and powder room. 

Search High and Low for Wiggle Room 

While flipping through the pages of Sunday Suppers, Sass noticed that all of the recipes were tailored to a party of six. Looking around her client’s home at that moment, she felt like their house had originally been designed to host that many people, too. But given the homeowners have two young kids, Sass wanted to expand the rooms ever so slightly so that they could comfortably host, say, another family of four or two other couples for dinner. She wanted to give them a house for hosting a party of eight. “We wanted just a little more breathing room, so you could pull up two more chairs at the dining table,” Sass says. 

It was a game of inches. Prospect Refuge shrunk the mudroom by a hair, widened all the doorways, bumped the sink zone out 6 inches, and tucked some of the cabinets underneath the adjacent staircase wall to make way for an island with seating. 

Cover Your Reno Tracks With Old-School Details

The aforementioned cabinets that got tucked underneath the staircase were a new addition, although looking at the millwork you’d never know it: The dark wood and semi-overlay doors seem antique. “Having that conversation with a cabinetmaker is always comical to me,” says Sass. “They’re like, ‘Oh, you want me to put that into a kitchen? But we’re taking that out of kitchens.’” Sneaking the cabinetry under the stairs was a clever move, but it was one that forced them to lower the ceiling over the nook. To make the soffit look more streamlined, Prospect Refuge mirrored it on the other side of the room, over the range hood and sink.

The marble trim that lines the vent hood and the walls around it also looks like it was added to the kitchen decades ago. Is it original to the house? Was it repurposed from a different room? Those are the exact type of questions the designer wants you to be asking when you step inside. “Maybe that marble existed before the tile or the tile came first; I love when you can’t tell the chronological order of things, even though all of this was added at the same time,” shares Sass.

Abstract Memories of Home Through Custom Tile

Prospect Refuge tasked custom tile designer Kristen Falkirk with crafting the backsplash. Her only real direction from Sass was to make squares with various shapes on them. Falkirk took it upon herself to open up a map and trace various corners and contours of Minnesota lakes. “It makes me so happy when we work with these people who aren’t just following orders, but are true artisans,” says Sass. The result is a collection of tiles that look organic and random but are each little reminders of home. 

Buy That Light That Impresses Guests, Morning and Night

With new paneling, hinges, and paint, Prospect Refuge beefed up the hutch in the dining room, making it feel more like a proper alcove rather than a series of flimsy shelves. Sass convinced her clients to spend half of their entire lighting budget for the house on the Atelier de Troupe chandelier over the dining table. Her argument: It’s the first thing you see when you walk in the front door and come down the stairs in the morning; it has to take your breath away.

Make the Drop Zone Flexible

The bee-themed Jennifer Shorto wallpaper in the mudroom is both a reference to one of the owner’s upbringing on a farm and also Sass’s cheeky nod to the space being a hive of activity. Prospect Refuge ensured the delicate paper’s longevity by adding paneling partway up the wall, keeping it out of reach of little fingers. 

While the large cabinet is prime for winter coats and boots, the drop zone right next to the door arguably works harder. The nook is outfitted with fully removable drawers that are perfectly sized for 8.5-by-11 inch pieces of paper, that way when it’s time to sort through old art projects and homework, each kid can grab their cubby and dump it out on the dining room table. Important pieces of paper can be tacked to the magnetic wood veneer wall.

Heart Your Renovation Forever

The powder room is a nostalgic whirlwind with its vintage-inspired Water Monopoly sink (there’s also a matching blue tankless toilet) and needlepoint-esque floor tile. The tiling detail felt crafty and therefore fittingly Midwestern, but look closely and you’ll also see four little hearts in the motif.

Each one represents the four family members. “I just have to pray that the couple doesn’t have anymore children,” Sass says jokingly. “It’s a snapshot in time of when they worked on this house, and I think that’s part of it, too.” 

The post There’s Hidden Meaning to the Custom Tiles in This Family’s Minneapolis Renovation appeared first on domino.

Joy Strom loves a galley kitchen. Hear her out: “Depending on the space, it can be incredibly functional for actually cooking,” says the Baltimore–based designer. Her key to designing a galley kitchen that doesn’t feel dungeonlike is striking a balance between doing enough and not doing too much. Exhibit A: This townhouse renovation. 

When a newly engaged couple came to Strom wanting their 100-square-foot builder-basic kitchen to feel cheerful and fitting with the rest of the 1915 architecture, the designer went funky on the floor, old school with the cabinets, simple with the counters, and practical with the appliances. “You could strip all the uppers away and put amazing artwork on the wall, but at the end of the day you need to maximize storage,” says Strom. Working alongside construction firm Montgomery Property Solutions, here’s how she transformed the narrow space. 

Clear the Way for a Seamless Prep Space

If you thought there’s no way to make a galley layout feel bigger without blowing out walls, think again. Simply rearranging the appliances can change the entire flow of a room. In this case, Strom saw an opportunity to flip the sink and the range, that way the basin would be situated within the long stretch of countertop, making meal prep a breeze. Not to mention, relegating the cooktop and vent hood to the other side of the room would make her plan for seamless millwork possible. “I wanted to have an uninterrupted line of cabinets above the sink as our main focal point,” says the designer. 

Let Your Vent Hood Shine

Fun fact: Strom hasn’t installed a gas range in a project in over two years. Everything’s moving toward induction and electric. “Honestly, the technology has gotten so sophisticated, my clients all end up loving their induction cooktops and ranges,” says Strom. While plenty of designers would have covered the vent hood with a drywall box, she let it be, as it allows more light to stream in from the window. Plus her clients simply don’t mind looking at the metal box. “They were like, we want the fridge to be the fridge and the range can be the range,” Strom adds.

Ask Your Backsplash to Work Hard, Too

Whenever the designer can find an opportunity to clear countertops of clutter, she takes it. That’s why she tacked on a small ledge to the Caesarstone backsplash—it’s a convenient spot to plop olive oil bottles and salt and pepper shakers. On the prep side of the kitchen, Strom opted for simple white square tile that reminded her of a utilitarian 1950s kitchen. “Not everything needs to have a voice,” she notes. 

Tie Bold Colors Together With Butter Yellow

In the adjacent dining area, the designer used the couple’s existing PH5 pendant light as a jumping-off point for the room’s palette. Previously the walls were a light white-gray, which made the bright orange piece look out of place. “I think a lot of people, when they are overwhelmed with picking colors, will automatically pick a bright white and build color around it. But in that space, it felt stark, and I wanted it to feel glowy and warm,” says the designer. She tied it all together by dousing the walls in Mood Lighting by Backdrop. 

Find Flooring That’s Fun and Historical 

The heavy, dark granite tile that was in the kitchen before was the furthest thing from the rest of the home’s original wood inlay floors. Strom wanted to create a more natural transition. She landed on a mix of tiles by Original Style Tile, laid out in a Victorian-inspired design. “I like blending vintage elements and making them new again, so that you can’t really tell which era things have come from,” says Strom. 

Have a Furniture Designer Weigh In on Your Cabinetry

To ensure the cabinets were full of personality, Strom went custom. “I think it’s one of the best investments you can consider for your kitchen and is especially key with tricky (smaller or awkward) spaces,” she shares. Crafted by Willard Kauffman, the slab doors were painted in Farrow & Ball’s Pointing, a creamy hue that is reminiscent of laminate from the ’60s and ’70s, and wrapped in oak siding. Not pictured: clever two-tier cutlery inserts, a cutting board–slash–cookie sheet pullout, spice drawer inserts, and trash and recycling pullouts.

When it came to adding the hardware, Strom switched up her craftspeople and called on furniture design/fine woodworking company Petr Studio to make elongated wood handles. “They were an important piece of that kitchen; they gave those cabinets so much personality,” says the designer. “Once they went on, it felt like the space really came together.”

The post This D.C. Galley Kitchen Packs All Its Personality Into Its Cabinet Handles appeared first on domino.