Fort Greene Brownstone
Creation of a primary suite & children’s bedrooms in a Landmarked home
“When you have kids, you don’t really get a lot of time to yourself. We can now close the door and feel like we are somewhere else. Maybe there is chaos going on everywhere else, but you have this space where you can decompress.”
Laura & Kelly
When our clients originally bought their Fort Greene Italianate Brownstone, the top two floors felt dark and constrained, despite being closer to the sky and further above street level.
Confined to their home with their young twin children during the Pandemic, they began to wonder if the top floor could be re-imagined to create a new primary suite that could serve as their own tranquil refuge from day-to-day family life.
The original layout of this floor was cramped and disorganized and felt small despite its reasonable size. Despite having a couple of existing skylights, the overall space felt dark and dull. They had renovated their kitchen on the garden floor when they first bought the house, but felt that the top floors still needed more work in order to feel cozy and refreshed.
With these aims in mind, we re-configured the top floor to incorporate a large primary bedroom, a new primary bathroom and walk-through-closet, along with a small workout zone and a pair of hers-and-hers home offices.
We located the new primary bathroom at the center of the floor plan. To ensure it had adequate light, we installed a new large skylight that now floats above the free-standing tub.
We lined the entire room with bright floor-to-ceiling vertical white tile, combined with large format grey stone tile.
To offset this classic palette, we added two pairs of red-and-white traffic-light style lights: one horizontal set above the tub and a vertical pair between the vanity mirrors.
The overall palette of the top floor is likewise fairly classic and neutral: bright white walls and ceilings, wide and long white oak flooring and stainless steel door hardware.
To counterpoint this, we also carefully incorporated moments of color and custom details to add personality to the space.
The long hallway peels off at the other end of the floor to the workout “nook” (just big enough for a Peloton bike) and the matching hers-and-hers home offices.
Hand-blown pink glass and polished brass sconces adorn the hallway walls.
The home offices are almost a mirror image of each other, but each owner picked a favorite color and style of storage to distinguish her own desk: dark blue beadboard and open shelving in one room and deep green open floating box shelves in the other.
We also renovated the bedroom layouts on the floor below to allow the couple’s young twins to upgrade to their own bedroom each.
Overall, the new layout, use of skylights and custom detailing provide a calm and restful oasis within this young family’s home, thoughtfully catering to their daily needs and routine.