Brooklyn browntone

Brooklyn Brownstone Project Updates

From this…to this!

You may recall some posts from last year about numerous projects I was working on in a Brooklyn brownstone, including this door restoration. While the house will be professionally photographed soon, I got to stop by this weekend so I can’t resist showing you some quick updates. The front door has been returned to its 19th century glory but as beautiful as the outside now is, the interior of the entryway may very well have become the favorite room in the house. The new front doors added significant space but it is the Farrow & Ball Ringwold wallpaper in green and the black and white marble floor that have dressed it up to scream elegant welcome.

The two are such divinely perfect partners that the young daughters of the house have taken to having tea parties in here – wouldn’t you? There is still an antique art deco iron coat rack to go in and while the marble is eminently durable and we don’t want to hide any of it, we need a simple entry mat for bad weather.

Some of you may be scratching your head recalling we had originally planned for encaustic tiles on the floor. In the end, the marble was more sensitive to the period and design of the house. I found a better use for the encaustic tiles anyway, as you can see below!

The kitchen renovation at the brownstone is almost finished and looking stunning. If you recall the Sheila Bridges kitchen, shown below, that served as the original inspiration, we are very close, but the dark woods and rich colors elsewhere in the house demanded some pattern and color complexity be added to all the white. Enter encaustic tile backsplash!

Final painting and window treatments still to come, but the counter-depth refrigerator, farmhouse sink and paneled dishwasher make all the difference. Peek back here to compare. Other final choices included white macoubas quartzite for the counters (which is reading gray in these photos although it is white in person), the single lever Perrin & Rowe faucet, with sprayer and water filter, which really is easy to use and a budget choice with the Barclays fireclay sink. Links to the original posts on these decisions can be found at the bottom of the post.

Speaking of Sheila Bridges, be sure to check out another luminescent brownstone she has designed in Harlem in the new June issue of Elle Decor.

And on the wallpaper front, my client has generously offered to give me the leftover F & B Ringwold to line the back of my china cabinet at the beach. It would look great, or I might use this roll of Osborne & Little wallpaper, recently discovered in my stash from a project from almost 20 years ago. Trellis and quatrefoils – two of my favorite things still – on a soft blue-green background.

Sorry for the general quietness these last weeks. Between the launch of the new blog format, the Great.ly launch – don’t forget to check over there regularly as I am adding to my boutique all the time – and this whirlwind trip to the USA, I have been utterly exhausted. Next week I’ll be giving you an update on my settling in here in Doha, including some of the decorating challenges we expats face. But I am super pumped to be headed to the beach in just 10 days!

Jun 5, 2014 By tokyojinja in Architecture, Interior Design, Kitchens Tags: Brooklyn, Brooklyn browntone, brownstone kitchen, doors, Farrow & Ball, kitchen, kitchen remodel, kitchen renovation, Sheila Bridges, wallpaper

Late Night Design Epiphanies

Just a quick post on a middle-of-the-night eureka moment I had not that long ago. About a month ago I wrote a post about using cement tiles in the entryway of the Brooklyn brownstone I’ve been working on again recently. Most of the examples I included were green in color, as that is what we had been thinking. But for some reason, I just couldn’t help including this set of robins egg blue tiles from Tierra Y Fuego. Something about them just felt right for the house!

The main project I am working on in the house is a full kitchen redo, which I have written about extensively here (more links below too). We have been planning on a white kitchen, which the homeowner has long dreamed of. But as these weeks have ticked away, it has been weighing on my mind that the kitchen is too white for the house, and doesn’t balance with the lovely dining area opposite.

Cue the epiphany now – using the tiles for a kitchen backsplash! I prepared my battle plan argument for my client – it goes something like this…The tiles would add so much in numerous ways. On one hand, they are very current (almost trendy) right now, while on the other they are a historic material perfect for the period of the house. The colors are ideal – the soft blue-green of the dining room, with a darker blue-teal to ground them and some cinnamon and white for contrast. They are neither too French, too Moroccan, nor too culturally specific. And for good measure, look back at the ceiling molding in the dining room photo – almost too perfect!

Needless to say, it didn’t take much convincing at all. We ordered a sample set of four tiles and they came promptly. But my client still needed to “see it” to “believe it” so she used an age old trick – the photocopier! She made copies of the tiles (only one set in color) and laid them out along the backsplash. Voilá! Instant visual!

Do you ever have late night design epiphanies?

May 3, 2013 By tokyojinja in Design Motif, Interior Design, Kitchens Tags: backsplash, Brooklyn browntone, cement tiles, encaustic tiles, kitchen renovation, Tierra Y Fuego

A New Entryway in Brooklyn…Door Change and Encaustic Tile

In an earlier life, the Brooklyn house I have been working on over the last few years was an SRO that was then lovingly restored by its previous owner. One thing they never got to was changing out the bad replacement front door that had been installed at some point in the past. The original grand double doors were long gone.

Most of the other houses on the street retain their original double doors in one form or another…

…so it was not at all difficult to get the Landmark Commission’s permission to change the door back to what it should be. You know me, there is nothing I like better than a little “oldating”! Like other typical brownstones, there is a secondary door inside, with a small entryway in between the two doors. Luckily for us, the inside doors remain, giving us an exact plan of what the outside doors should look like.

As the door is being moved forward to its original position, having been set back at some point years ago (you can see this in the very first photo), the marble slab in the entry way floor could not be re-used. Don’t worry, we are saving it for use in the garden, but some other floor covering needs to go into the vestibule between the two doors. It needs to be attractive, durable and period specific.

If you follow me on Instagram, you know I have been encaustic tile crazy lately, as is much of the design community.

I’ve heard them called all kinds of names – encaustic, cement, hydraulic, and cuban tiles – but the basic gist of it is they are tiles in which the pattern or figure on the surface is not made by the glaze but actually made of different colors of clay. I’m not going to split hairs over where and when they were invented (the typical cement ones are mid-19th century) or the exact differences in the processes and materials of making them as there are plenty of other sites that do (links at the bottom). Personally, I’ve seen them all over the world, from Argentina to Singapore to France and most recently in Vietnam, and I have always adored them.

At the same time they have become hugely popular, catching everyone’s eye in kitchens lately, for instance here and here. Numerous companies selling both original antique tiles and beautiful new ones based on old designs can be found in countries worldwide. The tiles I saw above in Hanoi are a classic pattern and readily available today.

They happen to also be perfectly age and style appropriate for entryways and were used extensively from the Victorian period onwards to a peak of popularity in the 1920s-30s. They are super practical as the pigment is not just on the surface but runs about one-quarter inch deep into the tile so chips in the surface show the same color underneath.

Cleanup is easy and hundred year old tile still looks amazing. One of our wedding gifts was a set of 16 antique tiles. I can remember some people thinking it was bizarre, but of course it was one of my absolute favorite presents! We set it into the center of our brick patio in our New York garden. I dug out this old photo and you can see the square of tiles in the center although you can’t actually see the pattern well.

While some antique ones would be divine…

…I don’t think the expense is necessary for this project as there are oodles of patterns being made in new tiles. While some tiles have complete patterns on each individual tile…

…most patterns are designed to be complete by grouping 4 tiles in a square to complete the actual pattern. This is called a tessellated pattern.

They remind me a bit of quilt squares that way.

I definitely prefer the four panel patterns to the individually patterned tiles.

There are also numerous border options and solid color coordinating tiles, so I foresee days of fun. Some sites have design tools that allow you to custom color your tiles, add borders and/or rotate them. In addition to all the Moroccan, French and Victorian styles out there, there are Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Modern and Contemporary patterns to be had. The possibilities are endless!

The US retailers that seem to be mentioned quite a bit include Mosaic House, Tierra y Fuego and Villa Lagoon, and I really liked the Australian site Jatana Interiors. All the tile examples in this post are from those sites. Ten minutes on the internet will bring a dozen sources and many patterns – I’m just starting to sift through them all. For more information, this link has a full history of the tiles around the world, links to global suppliers and all kinds of other videos and details. Link here for the difference between encaustic and cement tiles.

Apr 5, 2013 By tokyojinja in Design Motif, Interior Design Tags: Brooklyn browntone, cement tiles, cuban tiles, encaustic tiles, entryway tiles, renovation

Brownstone Kitchen Inspiration From Sheila Bridges

New York row houses or brownstones, as they are so commonly called (even when they are made of brick and not actually brownstones at all) have a basic standard shape. Usually 3-5 stories high and rectangular, being 16-25 feet wide (on average 20) and either double parlored (about 40 feet deep) or triple parlored (in the case of later deep ones), there are only so many ways to arrange the rooms inside them. This typical 1860-70s brick row house in Brooklyn is quite similar to the one I have been working on for the last few years and is about 20 feet wide and four stories tall. You’ll note the three windows across, with the parlor floor being the first floor up the steps and the “English basement” being the ground floor (most brownstone have even an additional lower level cellar or true basement for mechanicals and storage below).

One layout choice is to have the kitchen fill the back or the front of that ground floor, with the dining room in the opposite end and the double parlor floor above used as formal and casual living rooms, as shown below. (This house is actually Katherine Hepburn’s Turtle Bay brownstone)

Some people don’t like this arrangement and want kitchen/dining/living all on one floor especially as separate dining spaces can end up being totally unused these days. Modern people don’t have servants to do the cooking, so why spend most of your time on the ground floor which gets less light? Also it’s very common to have the English basement floor renovated as a distinct income earning apartment. So the kitchen is often tucked into one of the corners of the back room on the grander parlor floor, sharing the space with the dining table. Usually an island is added for extra workspace and as a room divider. (This is a very nice but unknown persons house in Park Slope, Brooklyn).

This is the current situation of the kitchen we are preparing to renovate and as major structural changes are out of the question, we won’t be expanding the square footage. Luckily a project by designer Sheila Bridges from the June 2011 Elle Decor has been the perfect visual aid to help us imagine what the space will look like. When both the home owner and I saw the issue, we were grabbed by how similar the two spaces were – the kitchen perhaps only in our mind’s eye – but certainly the dining area, in terms of layout, materials and overall feel.

I don’t have a perfect flat front view of my project’s kitchen, but you can see it is an L shaped kitchen with the sink under the back right window. The stove is in the middle of the side wall, with an island opposite. The middle window embrasure has become a door out onto the deck. The high ceiling creates space above the tops of the cabinets.

In the Sheila Bridges’ kitchen, the layout is very similar and I am assuming the fridge is on the right just out of view of the photos. There is a an island opposite the stove. This Manhattan brownstone is actually bigger than the Brooklyn one above – both wider and longer. Not only does it have a similar layout, but it has just about exactly the cabinets and fittings we want for our kitchen. Simple white inset door cabinets, with a few glass fronts, subway tile backsplash, polished nickel bin pulls, farmhouse sink, what looks to be a Perrin & Rowe bridge faucet, white marble? (more on that next post) and wood countertops.

In this photo taken facing the back of the house, you see the kitchen sink under the window and the dishwasher covered in a cabinet panel to the left. I believe the island hides the microwave in addition to storage. The center window is also a door out to a deck.

I don’t have such a nice long view camera, but you can see it is basically the same set-up. You can also see why a counter depth refrigerator is absolutely vital for this kitchen. I am thinking since the room is so small and exposed to a fairly formal dining area, both the refrigerator and most definitely the dishwasher will need to be covered with a seamless cabinet panel, like the one above, for visual calm.

In Sheila Bridges’ dining area the table is in front of the fireplace flanked by two antique vitrine cabinets opposite the main kitchen wall.

Our set up is incredibly similar. (Note the gorgeous ceiling details in both photos!)

Additional photos from Bridges’ portfolio show a wide-angle view of the entire dining and kitchen area. Make sure to notice that the table has been turned 90 degrees and pushed back from the way it was positioned in the Elle Decor photos.

Here’s a somewhat similar shot of the Brooklyn kitchen. The paint isn’t actually bright like this – more of a soft sea foam color with lots of grey in it. The Venetian mirror is 18th century and full of gorgeous patina (read dark spots and small breaks). The alabaster chandelier is from Eileen Lane Antiques. Who else out there besides us remembers the days of their shop on Thompson Street in Soho?

Here’s the wall opposite the main cabinet wall in the kitchen in the Sheila Bridges project. This is the photo that show how much bigger this house is, with its pair of matched three door vitrines on either side of an original marble fireplace and room for an armchair tucked in each corner. Again, back to the Elle Decor photos, I prefer the table turned this way, parallel to the fireplace.

We also have a pair of glass door display cabinets with solid bottoms on both sides of the original marble mantel and our table runs the same way in front of the fireplace. I should have gone to the trouble to style this photo a bit, but I was rushing and just wanted to be sure to get the layout details down. To see this table set beautifully for New Year’s Eve, just peek back here.

This room is wide enough that the table can be turned perpendicular to the cabinets. We can’t do that.

You can get a peek at some of the contents of the vitrines in this shot – glassware, Aesthetic Movement polychrome transferware, more of the Mottahedah Famille Verte from that New Year’s table and even a few Japanese pieces…Wonder who brought those?

Ironically, that very Elle Decor issue also featured another brownstone, this one in Brooklyn. Owned by actress Kerri Russell and her husband, it is just down the block and very similar to the house I am working on. The kitchen is extremely similar in size and layout (a mirror image), quite different in style, but I can’t help including it here.

I imagine this house long ago lost its marble fireplace and the two single windows have been expanded to make a wall of glass doors. There is also a glass doored cabinet tucked in the nook to the side of the fireplace. I’d love to know if she has a pair just like the two houses above.

And there is one other kitchen we have been turning to for inspiration, although it was not in that issue, nor is it New York, although it looks like it could be! It’s the kitchen of Dave DeMattei and Patrick Wade in an Edwardian house in San Francisco. The layout is just so similar to our brownstone kitchen. Of course I adore those open shelves, but this client family is just not cut for that kind of overt visual commitment. I’ll have to save that desire for my kitchen renovation at the beach.

The corner window is extra special and simple not possible in a row house. But the fireclay farm sink and the bridge faucet are there, as well as the super thick marble counter. Lots of transferware too, including vegetables piled in footed compotes…

…just much neater than back in Brooklyn.

Dealing with the clutter of these clients may need a post of its very own, because the truth is, you can’t change a dog’s spots. But hopefully I can give them “spots” to stash it!

My next post will be full of the “form versus function” conundrums we are facing on this project – including sink, faucet and countertop materials.

Image Credits: Sheila Bridges photos from Elle Decor June 2011, photo credit: Pieter Estersohn or via her portfolio, Kerri Russell photos from Elle Decor June 2011, photo credit: William Waldron, Dave DeMattei and Patrick Wade photos from San Francisco Chronicle April 1, 2010, photo credit: Peter DaSilva. All photos of my Brooklyn project taken by me and floorplans via real estate listings.

Jan 15, 2013 By tokyojinja in Interior Design, Kitchens Tags: Brooklyn browntone, brownstone, brownstone kitchen, Kerri Russell, kitchen, kitchen remodel, kitchen renovation, Sheila Bridges

Thoughts for 2013…Matisse at The Met, Comfort and Kitchens

We celebrated the New Year with a visit to that most holiest of temples, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we saw among many other things, the extraordinary Matisse: In Search of True Painting. The Japanese influence that started with the Impressionists is apparent in much of Matisse’s work, particularly his pared down and simplified paintings, which are flattened and rendered into line and color reminiscent of traditional woodblock prints. But much has been written about that elsewhere and is easy to google, so that is not what this post is about, even though you’ll notice it in all the paintings now that I have mentioned it. Walking through the exhibit ended up feeling incredibly personal and familiar and what struck me is how much color and pattern remain vitally important to me, whether it be in designing interiors or simply getting dressed in the morning.

Ironically, by the 20’s, Matisse was often seen as dated in his subject matter of still lifes and interiors, but they have always been my favorites. His anemone paintings, set against patterned tablecloths and papered folding screens make me feel so happy with their vibrancy. I can see how he wasn’t considered “modern” at that moment, but joy is in the beholding no matter the prevailing theory of the day. Modernity in all its forms has its good points, but there is something to be said for comfort, clutter and the classic things in life.

It’s a theory I have held to in the Brooklyn brownstone project I have been working on piecemeal for years. While not slavishly holding to period, we have filled it with beautiful antiques, rich colors and tactile textiles.

Here’s the New Years table, with hydrangea instead of anemone, laid on a giant vintage furoshiki (Japanese wrapping cloth) being used as the tablecloth. The bold scrolling karakusa pattern, mixed with Mottahedah Famille Verte, golden pumpkin soup and some dramatic blood orange Mimosas could be straight out of a painting. (Note the flattened Japanese angle to the photo too!)

Perhaps my favorite Matisse (ever?) but certainly in The Met’s exhibition is his 1948 Interior with an Egyptian Curtain. The curators focus is always on the quality of light and the incredible way Matisse “used black to create light” in his paintings, but I am completely hung up on the decorative use of that suzani hanging as a window curtain. I think the furoshiki above would look amazing used the same way.

Interior at Nice (Room at the Hôtel Beau-Rivage) has many of the details and furnishings of a turn of the century hotel room – all so infinitely pretty in the clear south of France light.

I have tried to keep a sense of soft and pretty in the brownstone living room, full of a collection of Biedermeier furniture we have put together over the years. The south facing windows create a spectacular kind of light in the room, filtered through soft sheers.

Since the owner has small children an American secretary is used as the bar now, in lieu of the drinks cart tucked in the corner. A comfy George Smith armchair (found at one of my favorite Brooklyn haunts, Fork & Pencil, to be featured in an upcoming “Shop Talk” post) anchors a spot her girls fight over for comfy reading. (Please do excuse the lack of styling post-Christmas tree and the bits of presents and other detritus found lurking in the corners of the photos. One of my main resolutions for 2013 is to get a very good camera, and more importantly, to work on my photography skills.)

While the main rooms are all close to being finished, the big upcoming task on this project is a full kitchen remodel. While not in any way egregious, the current kitchen, opposite the dining room in the back parlor, is open to the entire first floor and needs cabinets and surfaces more in keeping with the period of the house. Increased storage and updated appliances are needed too. I’ll have lots of questions for readers in the coming month about some of the popular products out there that we are thinking about using.

And while we are talking about kitchens in Brooklyn, I also plan to flesh out my own “cheap and cheerful” kitchen renovation at the beach house. After hemming and hawing about whether it is worth the effort if I plan to gut renovate it soon, I have come to the conclusion that soon may be quite far off in the future. That said, I find that hammering out my ideas in a post usually helps me clarify my own vision and I always look forward your to comments. I’ll be hoping for input from you all in an upcoming inspiration and planning post. To give you a sense of how bad the “before” is…

You can see I’ll have my work cut out for me!

Happy New Year!

Jan 6, 2013 By tokyojinja in Artist Spotlight, Color, Interior Design, Kitchens, Textiles Tags: Brooklyn browntone, kitchen remodel, kitchen renovation, Matisse