Rooms is an interiors column by Laura Reilly featuring room-by-room shopping, furniture and decor wishlists, and renovation projects at home in Brooklyn.
To everyone asking me “how’s the renovation going?” only for me to answer: “We haven’t even started yet!!!” That’s not entirely true. While our apartment is more or less identical to when we bought it two years and one month ago, we’ve been making improvements to the rest of the building—two upper floor apartments, including one we’ve only just finished redoing. The plan is that we’ll move into that one while the real renovation on our place is going down. In the meantime, we’ll furnish it as a guest apartment for when friends and family visit from out of town.
When we do finally finish our own project and move back home, the guest apartment will go back on the market, which means designing neutrally enough to accommodate whoever’s style, whatever their stuff. Not the time for accent wallpaper, but really good practice on making quick-succession look-and-feel decisions.
On the next Rooms, furniture, decor, filling in the gaps, and hopefully then, a finished guest apartment to debut.
Living + Dining
Building
The best part of homeownership is wall freedom. You can just get rid of them! We took down the wall separating the living room and an adjoining office, increasing the living area footprint and letting a whole bunch more light reach the common space. One of my favorite parts of the apartment now is walking in and seeing the arched stained glass of the church across the street perfectly framed in this newly revealed window.
Buying
The Louis Poulsen PH5 ceiling lamp that had been languishing since I assembled it myself at the brand’s outside-Copenhagen factory earlier this year finally found a permanent home in the freshly carved-out dining nook. It is perfect there. In the living area (and open kitchen), I had been imagining a pair of these Geo Sunset Pendants, but with delivery times and costs in mind, I settled for two of these more affordable West Elm dish style semi-flush mounts (currently en route).
Wishlisting
The furniture. That’s the next phase of the project. I have made progress getting a few items lined up for this part of the apartment—a Lulu and Georgia slipcover sofa, Four Hands daybed, a table and barrel chairs from my family home, and a Hollywood Regency shell table from an earlier Live Auctioneers phase I’ll bring up from our apartment downstairs. All of this will be in the next Rooms column about furnishing the space.
Whatever feelings you may have about AI, I will say, I have been using an app called Gendo to mock up various room layouts and think it’s pretty brilliant at adding in furniture exactly as it looks without altering the original room image—a money saver knowing ahead of time what works and what absolutely doesn’t.
Kitchen
Building
An entirely new kitchen. IKEA. We ripped the old corner one out, drew a square layout, and stretched out its perimeter, including an island to anchor it and pre-empt a storage crisis. Appliances all came with the house.
There was a whole foundation saga though: Our (otherwise great) contractor Mahmoud wanted the floor to be truly flat so that the appliances would sit properly, even though the rest of the apartment is leaning to the center. He poured leveler, laid the tile, and now that section sticks up on one side by about half an inch. He eventually admitted that we should have just built at an angle, but alas. Live and learn.
What else…We moved the ceiling light source to be centered with the newly expanded kitchen area. Installed under-cabinet lighting (pleasant!). Probably another thing!
Buying
A dryer to sit under the island, across from the washing machine. Can you imagine! We don’t even have those in our apartment. The other half of the West Elm dish pendant pair to mirror the living room.
Wishlisting
Pretty and practical things to make the kitchen make sense, but TBH those are too small and specific and behind cabinet doors to be thinking about when I’m all in on furniture until further notice.
Bed
Building
Another instance of chiseling away at the marble until you free the angel trapped inside (demolishing walls to make bigger rooms). This space, once two small bedrooms, is now an embarrassment of square footage by New York standards, a feeling that’s amplified by the wall-to-wall mirror-front closets. (IKEA Pax! Why reinvent everything!) Maximizing closet space was a priority, given that my entire wardrobe will be migrating up here soon…
Buying
A room-wide seafoam Nordic Knots rug has been waiting in the wings since we bought this place, truly our first acquisition when we imagined we’d be giving our unit the exact treatment we just exacted on this space (wall ruthlessness), but it’s since drifted to plans for a gut reno, as discussed in previous issues of Rooms. Osvaldo Borsani’s Villa Borsani is the moodboard for this room, our seafoam king. We just need to lug the thing up from the basement…these rugs are no joke.
Lighting is half renovation-half furniture, so as with the Louis Poulsen that made its way to the dining nook, a pair of Herman Miller Nelson Cigar Wall Sconces are already installed on either side of the eventual bed. Cuties.
Wishlisting
I’ve staged the room with the exact Thuma Signature Headboard Bed that’s in our own bedroom because it’s honestly just great. The upholstery gives it that round softness, and the oatmeal beige works well with the shades of teal. I’m also toying with this Flos Ariette 2 fabric ceiling lamp (not well represented by AI), or maybe another soft-construction pendant. Paper, perhaps.
Bath
Building
A whole new bathroom, down to the studs. I think the tile arrangement we landed on is quite elegant and effective while being no more expensive than regular degular tiling. A narrow trim of tile “molding” frames the shower and brings the wall away from the floor. IDK. It’s hard to photograph. It looks much better than before.
Buying
I had loooong wishlisted these fixtures from Maha Alavi’s Fauna series, but by the time I got them and went to install, I realized we’d never talked metal finishes—I’d gotten the polished nickel Maha Alavis, but Nir had purchased all chrome plumbing fixtures. I boxed them up and will be finding them a home in our bathroom downstairs instead. For here, I got a Zara Home towel shelf and CB2 roll holder.
The 60k lumen lamp seen here (just kidding—High Touch anyone?) is not the final fixture. A Murano caged glass pendant is on its way to set an era-appropriate mood for our Victorian. So’s this showerhead I just remembered I was tasked with ordering.
Wishlisting
Not a shower curtain, I’ll say that much! Another perk of homeownership is putting up (glass) walls.
Details
Building
Paint—the walls are Farrow & Ball Slipper Satin in a Modern Emulsion finish. Trim is Wimborne White in Estate Eggshell. We did a consultation with the brand a year ago, which I fully credit with how neat and inviting this looks. The times we’ve tried to guess-and-check have been disasters of proportions.
We sanded the pre-finished red oak planks for the first time in their lives and stained them (well, our floor guy did) in DuraSeal Rosewood.
Brass switch plates from Switch Hits. Ceiling medallions, baseboard trim, crown molding all Home Depot. Window boxes made by our handyman Slava. He did such beautiful work.
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