renovation

Life Lesson on The Ordinary State of Affairs

During my recent week off to recover from moving house and getting repairs underway to my leak-damaged home, I continued the work of embracing a big life lesson…

2 Ideas To Evoke Charming Wabi-Sabi in Your Space

Tiny Japanese restaurant Davelle employs inspired tricks to create a “bright and thoughtful little world” and a lovely feeling of wabi-sabi.

Bathrooms Designed for Our Intellectual and Creative Selves

In their visionary bathroom, friends purposefully accommodate what most bathrooms do in an ad hoc way: reading material, a laptop, and art for their ever-creative selves.

This Cool Art Shelf Headboard Is Really a Plywood Box in Disguise

We’ve been collecting examples of shelf headboards that double as picture/object displays to inspire the one we are designing in our head. Looking closely we realize they are really only a plywood box…

Hide Water Damage with Distressed Ceilings and Walls

Living on the top floor of an apartment building, we are always under threat of leaks from the roof above. What if we did a purposely fresco-like distressed ceiling or wall that would just get better from leak stains?

Enduring Perfection of Black and White Tile Floors (Casa Helsinki)

We love seeing Casa Helsinki, an old house in the historic district of Alberdi, in Córdoba, Spain, renovated to become a guest house. Its vintage black and white floors off a simple, inexpensive lesson in design.

A Narrow Ledge Becomes a Picture Rail + Headboard

At Casa Helsinki, we spotted the ledge around the perimeter of a bedroom. It makes a natural display for pictures or other small objects and a terrific headboard. DIYable.

Pegboard Walls for Polka Dot Practicality (Martino Gamper)

Although pegboard is commonly used in kitchens and workspaces (think Julia Child), we realized we have rarely seen it to clad ENTIRE walls, as a design element unto itself.

Plywood Niche Set In Sheetrock Wall

We love this very practical, very stylish idea from Oink Studio: a plywood-lined niche set in a in sheetrock wall. Baltic Birch’s stripey uniform plies make for a pleasing natural edge that gives a crisp furniture feel with an organic edge. Here’s what you need to know…

Vintage Painted Brick Walls Etched with Swirls and Runes

At Chai Wali restaurant in Harlem, we saw a wonderful treatment for the old painted brick walls of the brownstone that that houses the restaurant. It was much more interesting than a plain stripped brick wall, and would be a fine technique to apply in a living or work space.

A Solution for Paint-Crusted Moldings and Doors

Recently I skyped with a colleague who just moved into a prewar rental in Brooklyn; she asked me to see if I could come up with solutions to the various challenges imposed by the wonderful but imperfect and not-hers-to-renovate space. So we did a video tour of her space. (I hope show some before and after’s…

How to Make a 5-foot Alcove Tub FEEL Like a Vintage One

Since I first wrote about the renovation of my 5-x-7-foot Harlem bathroom, a number of readers have written to ask just which five-foot alcove bathtub I bought that had the effect of the divinely comfortable vintage tub in my former space…and WHAT exactly was the trick I used to ensure that it would be a…

Workspace: A Cheap Stylish File Cabinet Strategy

While planning the office portion of the Laboratory’s renovation, I had to be lean and efficient, having spent some serious money on a sliding wall to make it all disappear. I happily used a strategy that had served me (and about a million designers) for years: a desk made of pedestal file cabinets and a…

More Signs + Blessings on Ephemeral Walls

We were walking by an empty storefront on Manhattan’s Upper East Side when we noticed that someone had written intriguing, inspiring, philosophical signs on the blank walls that were, no doubt, destined for renovation. Who had taken their marker and, with such bold strokes, written signs all over the place? We pressed our nose against…

Signs and Blessings Hidden In Floors or Walls

When you look at the image of the bathroom in Improvised Life’s budget renovation, you’d never guess what lies hidden under the tumbled marble floor tiles the contractor generously donated. While I was choosing just the right mix of tiles —marble itself is so varied, each tile was different — I thought of a slight addition I’d…

Inexpensive Urban Shelters Solve a Housing Crisis

As apartments in urban areas become prohibitively expensive, young people in Oakland, California have been developing innovative, grassroots strategies to provide homes for themselves, and for homeless people in their communities. The New York Times recently article and slideshow samples new ways of thinking about “home”, “a social experiment in stripping down to the basics.”

Hidden Art + Reminders on a Medicine Cabinet Door

When we installed a tall, narrow 13-inch-wide sliver medicine cabinet in our newly renovated and very minimalist bathroom, little did we know that it would do more than provide storage for essential toiletries. The mirror door is backed by white-glazed steel, a perfect “clean slate” to which we could affix signs, reminders and images that…

A Cheap Chic Hardwood Floor Solution

When we saw this Parisian flat in Design Milk, we were intrigued more by the floors than by the slanted shelves built into each “space” of the sprawling apartment. Short lengths of hardwood flooring are almost always less expensive than longer lengths, but, when laid out in the traditional, end-to-end pattern often LOOK cheap and…

A Rooftop Porch with Meadows in NYC (Green Roof Primer)

We were stunned by this image of David Puchkoff and Eileen Stukane’s porch and meadow on the roof of their six-story coop building in New York City. Puchkoff devised it as part of a plan to have the porch he always wanted, while creating a green roof. Plants insulate the building from heat in summer and cold in winter, and they reduce storm-water runoff by absorbing rain. The coziness and magic of a country porch IS possible in a city without having to keep a country house. Here’s how.

A Hidden Pocket Door Surprises with Color

Pocket doors largely lay hidden UNTIL they are pulled closed. We love the surprise of this yellow-painted door: an instant volume of color to shift a space. Pink perhaps or dark dark gray? The effect works best with a simple flat panel door. And then, of course, there are many possibilities for patterns and signs…

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