00:05This apartment is located on the Upper West Side Historic District in Manhattan.
00:11It was originally a hotel built between 1903 and 1905.
00:19Our clients for this project are a couple and they formerly lived in a two-bedroom apartment.
00:26They decided to downsize to a studio.
00:29What we wanted to do was help them feel like in that transition they hadn't lost any space.
00:36There's room for everything that you could have done before in a two-bedroom.
00:50This location is filled with a lot of buildings from the turn of the century.
00:56This one in particular is a Beaux-Arts style building.
01:01Our clients wanted to create a space where they could entertain their friends,
01:06cook together in an open kitchen, and still have space to work from home occasionally.
01:15When we first started this project, the apartment hadn't been touched probably since the 1960s.
01:25The biggest change that we made to the layout of this space was to bring the kitchen
01:30out into the living space and create one large living area that feels open and bright.
01:37We then separated the sleeping nook from the kitchen with a storage wall.
01:43There's no laundry inside this individual apartment. The laundry is on each floor,
01:50and the residents of that floor share it.
01:54In the entrance, we created an arched frame over the top of the door to make the space feel a
02:00little
02:01bit larger. We also carried that through to the closet doors, which go from floor to ceiling.
02:10It's a pair of double doors, so it feels like the space is a little bit more vertical.
02:18We also, in the entryway, repurposed some remnants from the kitchen countertop into two
02:25small shelves. The owners can use them for storing small objects.
02:32In the living room, what we wanted to do was create a nice open space for a seating group.
02:40We built this niche space that's an arched form to carry the rounded look through into the living room.
02:49That arched nook becomes the place where the TV goes, and also a space for three floating white oak
02:57shelves that match the white oak reclaimed floors.
03:03In the kitchen, we opted for a very neutral soft white for the kitchen cabinets. They're reflective,
03:10so they pick up the light from the window across the room. We also chose a very soft gray and
03:18white
03:19quartzite countertop, which carries over into the living room side as a waterfall edge.
03:28For the refrigerator, we opted for a panel-ready model that allowed us to make it the same visually
03:36as the cabinets adjacent to it, so that it blends into the space.
03:43The kitchen includes this stainless steel rail on the backsplash that you can use for a paper towel
03:51holder, a shelf. There's actually even an iPad attachment for it so that you can have recipes
03:58on hand when you're cooking.
04:02Between the kitchen and the living room, there really wasn't enough space for a full dining table,
04:08so we designed a custom table. We're calling it a Murphy table because it actually flips down from
04:16the wall. You put it down, attach a leg, and it can seat four people comfortably for dinner. When it's
04:23not
04:23in use, it appears like a piece of art on the wall. The artwork inside is actually a piece of
04:31wallpaper
04:31that the owners found. Since this is a functional piece, we didn't want it to be any artwork
04:38that was too precious, so the wallpaper was perfect.
04:43In the sleeping area, we created a wall-to-wall custom upholstered headboard that made the room feel
04:51as big as it could.
04:55We made sure to have space for a queen-size bed and two small nightstands on each side of the
05:02bed.
05:06On the opposite wall, we built in two storage closets, one of which actually has a deep storage niche
05:15that uses the corner of the kitchen that you can't really access from the kitchen side.
05:23We wanted to really bring the light from the bathroom window into the space as much as possible,
05:29so we also created an arched door with frosted glass inset into the door so that the light from the
05:37bathroom can filter into the space as well. We converted an existing tub into a shower.
05:46We selected a white subway tile in a vertical running bond orientation to help give the bathroom height.
05:57We opted for a wall-mounted toilet and a vanity that is up off of the floor on legs, which
06:06gives the
06:06whole room a feeling of added height and lightness and also makes it easy to clean.
06:15What I think is important in general with design, but especially in small spaces,
06:20is thinking about how the space will be used and using that as a starting point for everything else
06:27that follows. Living in a smaller space makes you realize that you don't need so many things
06:33and it makes you focus on the things that you do have and what's important about those.
06:39I think it's a much more sustainable approach to reuse the buildings that we have and repurpose them
06:47for contemporary life rather than take them down and build from scratch. It also helps maintain the
06:55historic fabric of the city. We get to keep the original architecture and preserve it but also update
07:02it for someone's current lifestyle.
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