Our first crack at a hotel, Lokal has six unique one- and two-bedroom units in a gorgeous 19th-century brick building, formerly home to a printer in Old City, Philadelphia. We got involved in the project way back before the previous owners had even vacated, and got to watch as everything was cleared out, gutted, and then built back up. We consulted on floor plans, selected all finishes and other design elements, hand-assembled the bathroom floor tile mosaics, plastered all the walls, and sourced and styled everything you see here.
This young house sits at the end of a long driveway that winds deep into the fields and trees of Rockport, Maine. In a whirlwind renovation with the help of the excellent Cold Mountain Builders, we added depth and character to the space through Shaker design influences and a muted color palette that make the house feel more timeless and older than its 25 years.
This 1887 Arts & Crafts home is owned by the dynamic duo behind Hayfield Catskills. Walking in for the first time was like stepping into a gorgeous time warp, and we instantly knew we wanted to be part of the house’s story. After the amazing guys at Lovell Kuhn Construction took care of the guts, we designed and styled with a light touch and tried to stay true to the space, with its original details and enduring details guiding us.
In a few short whirlwind weeks, we managed to give this breezy and bright flat in London a much needed facelift. The pink plaster obviously steals the show here, but you still can’t miss the gorgeous vintage pieces we found by scouring secondhand shops all over London and the south coast. We also built open pantry shelves out of old scaffolding planks, new leaves for the kitchen table, a new kitchen island from half a slab of marble and some reclaimed cheese boards, the list goes on.
Check out the full write-up on A Cup of Jo. We claim no responsibility for the red toile wallpaper!
A couple of lovely clients with a couple of lovely houses on the Kinderhook Creek, Ali and Scott let us stay in their beautifully converted barn while fixing up the old farmhouse you see here. (We ended up redoing the barn too, while we were at it!) Original exposed joists, wide plan floors, and old built-in cupboards in the living room made our job easy. We just had to make sure everything we put back in felt as cool as the bones of the house itself: from the vintage chairs, leather sofa, and master bedroom closets, to the custom dining table, dry bar, bed frames, concrete vanities, and porch furniture built right in the garage.
Our biggest project to date. A four bedroom, three bathroom house on the North Fork of Long Island. Gorgeous sea views and wood beams galore were the guiding force for this newly built house that was in need of a serious character injection.
Read more about how we turned things around on Remodelista.
A little spot just over a little hill from the Magic Egg farmhouse. The guest house was filled with spiders and piles (and piles) of books when we got there, but it was easy to see the promise of this space. We let the original floors and wood beams steer the style, and kept things simple and light. Textured linens, white plaster, brass accents, some hanging sage from the garden, and of course, some built in bunk beds. It’s the perfect sized weekend getaway.
A late-18th-century farmhouse tucked away in 167 acres of fields and forest, complete with a barn, pool, pond, and tennis court. Over its many years the house has seen plenty of renovations and, we can only imagine, has lived just as many lives. Its most recent iteration featured a rainbow’s array of wall colors and strange furniture choices. It was immediately clear that all that needed to go, and that we’d basically need to start from scratch, while keeping just a few old details like the wide-plank floors and rich chestnut paneling.
A kitchen decked out in orange granite countertops and other McMansion features is no place for Saveur’s Best Food Photography Blogger. Beth had pinned roughly a million images before we started working on the place, so we were really able to hit the ground running. We managed to keep the existing cabinet frames by altering them, making new doors, and giving everything a fresh coat of paint. We popped in a “new” old window and built a custom range hood, plus floating shelves from reclaimed late-19th-century factory beams, and an island and additional table from old barn siding. Beth went to Atlanta to pick out a slab of marble for the counters and had a beautiful Lacanche range delivered. Then we finished up with plastered walls (half polished, half hand combed), antique brass drawer pulls from Restore in Philadelphia, and a beautiful old French faucet Tara found on eBay.
We were super honored when Justine Hand, one of Remodelista’s editors, got in touch and wanted us to give her kitchen a quick facelift. Though a full renovation wasn’t in the cards quite yet, she’d lived with the orange cabinets and orange granite counters long enough. It was time for the orange to go. The base cabinets had nice lines, so we kept them and gave them a fresh coat of paint, but we tore out the wall cabinets and the countertops in favor of open wall shelving and butcher block countertops. We added shiplap behind the sink and a chair rail to the extremely large room to tie everything together, plus we swapped out all the old hardware, the faucet, and light fixtures. Voila!
Featured on Remodelista. (Though because we get so many emails about the so-called “Dream Kitchen for Under $3000,” I should mention here that that price tag was for materials only!)
This 19th-century Hudson Valley cottage will always hold a special place in our hearts as our first major job as homeless home designers. We’d been subletting for a few months in Fort Green while hunting for a permanent apartment; then all in a handful of days we found a place, signed a lease, started moving in, had a car towed, got this job offer, found someone to take over the freshly-signed lease, and moved operations north, to this tiny and (then) empty cottage about thirty minutes west of Hudson.
In classic Catskills fashion, the original house had seen one bad renovation after another over the years. It was our job to update everything and tie this disjointed place back together. So we did everything we could think of. We tore up ugly brown carpeting, refinished some floors and painted others, cobbled together a new banister from old pieces, made curtains and bed frames, redid the kitchen and the bathroom, and plastered everything in sight. Oh, and then Tara decorated beautifully in an up-to-the-minute scramble before the clients arrived for Christmas. Easier said than done. In all, we lived and breathed this house for about four months. Then we went to Hawaii for a month. Not a bad life!
A true labor of love. Percy bought this house way back in the pre-Tara days of 2009 and slowly started about renovating it all by himself. The previous owner had neglected a nasty roof leak in the back left corner for so long that the kitchen cabinets two floors below were rotted out. He had roofers scheduled to come the day after closing, so right after he signed all the paperwork, he and his dad headed over and tore up the dilapidated old roof deck. Then he set about gutting the kitchen, tearing up a ton of wall-to-wall carpeting (turns out the floors underneath had been painted over several times), refinishing the floors, and redoing the kitchen. He added a bathroom and plugged away at the other rooms one by one. Paneling the living room (with reclaimed base cap molding from an abandoned school in North Philly) was the most difficult by far, but it also paid off the most. Then it was finally time to start furnishing and decorating. And Tara came along at just the right time! They hit a ton of flea markets together and she worked her magic, whipping everything into shape and photographing it all.
