Prospect Lefferts Gardens Townhouse
A brave & colorful renovation of a Landmarked Brooklyn Townhouse
“In hindsight, we embarked upon a very ambitious renovation project without having a lot of experience with renovations, project management and all the bureaucracy associated with it. Thankfully, Studio Officina was there to guide us every step of the way. Not only are they extremely knowledgeable on all technical aspects related to this process, they were constantly a few steps ahead, making sure we would get no surprises, or preparing us for any potential ones. We can't thank Studio Officina enough.”
Giovanni & Amanda
A young family approached our studio and asked us to help them gut-renovate a Landmarked townhouse they had recently purchased in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. Seemingly in decent condition, they hoped to update the top two floors and cellar level to create a bright, colorful and decorative home.
The house had previously been used as a 2-family building with a single apartment on each of the two upper levels.
The home’s fifty-foot length meant that the original layouts for each floor were a maze of rooms that fed into each other via an endless path of doorways. The spaces were also linked by an oddly meandering and angled corridor. There was no visual connection between the front and back of the parlor level, which made the house feel smaller and closed-off to the exterior.
As part of the renovation work, we decided to convert the building to a single-family residence, removing the second kitchen from the top floor.
Despite seeming sturdy and in good condition, early demolition work revealed large amounts of unforeseen termite damage to many structural elements. Tens of joists wound up needing to be replaced.
While we had also hoped to renovate all floors completely, the huge price increases that the construction industry underwent at the start of 2021 meant that we had to scale back our goals and undertake the project in two phases.
With this game-plan in mind, we elected to fully renovate the cellar and parlor levels, update the bathroom on the top floor and remove the kitchen on that level as well. The rest of the top floor remains intact for the time-being, but we ensured that the new plumbing risers going up to the second floor were correctly sized and located to enable a new primary bathroom to be added in a future second phase. We also fully re-wired and upgraded the electrical throughout to meet current codes.
Both clients love color and tile and these elements became a key part of the overall renovation project.
We selected a porcelain tile that is playful, fun and has a timeless aesthetic to use throughout the parlor floor. Named “Margherita”, the tile range was designed for the Italian tile company, Mutina, by well-known French designer, Nathalie Du Pasquier. The tile range is described by Du Pasquier as being “only for the brave”.
We had hoped to find and salvage the original mosaic tile below layers of newer flooring in the entry foyer. While we did find some fragments of the original tile, it was not sufficiently intact to be retained and reused.
We thus decided to use the “Margherita” tile in this area to create a fresh retake of the typical patterned tile you find in historic townhouse foyers.
In turn, we installed a checkerboard blue and white tile pattern all the way down the length of the parlor primary hallway, rather than the typical wood floor one normally sees.
Color plays a key role throughout the home and, in particular, on the parlor level. Door frames are painted in various bright shades, the primary hallway has a blue paint wainscot that wraps around into the mudroom zone, and the center living space (and future library) is painted a shade of deep green. We worked with British paint company, Farrow & Ball, to select and fine-tune the palette throughout.
The decorative tile unfolds into the new powder room below the staircase and wraps up the walls to create a whimsical wainscot.
A corner hand basin is paired with a simple custom mirror that is composed of two halves of a circle. Wedged into the corner, the split mirror makes this tiny room feel much larger.
One of the early requests the clients made during our design process together was for a pink kitchen.
After many design iterations, we decided to forgo heavy upper cabinets in lieu of floating white oak shelves. The white oak pairs nicely with the pink hue we selected, and is complemented by the full-height handmade Zellige rose-white tile we ran up the wall behind the kitchen.
A handy stone shelf behind the back counter provides a resting place for oils, vinegars, salt & pepper. Both the sink and the cooktop are located along the back wall to free up the island both visually and practically so that it can become a place to easily lay out food or bake with kids.
The black and white Mutina floor tile helps ground the overall color palette for the room. A pink glass fridge coordinates well with the custom pink cabinets.
A giant oversized magenta cabinet pull provides enough heft to open the pull-out pantry tucked beside the fridge.
The rest of the cabinet pulls are black and tie in nicely with the floor tile.
One of the clients is Italian and had grown up with a handy dish-draining rack above the kitchen sink. Both clients asked us to add one to their new kitchen, specifically for draining larger pots and pans that are usually washed by hand. We obliged and also added a handy brass mesh sliding screen so that the drying pots can be hidden from view when necessary.
Although there is lots of color used throughout the home, the brighter hues are carefully balanced with large areas of more neutral tones. The dining room is painted a bright white, offset with green window moldings that further amplify the view to the backyard greenery.
The existing (and ugly) bamboo floors on the parlor level were replaced with new white oak flooring.
We fully renovated the existing bathroom on the top floor, adding a new skylight above the shower and employing fun Tetris-like floor-to-ceiling wall tile throughout the room.
It’s a small bathroom, so we added a large, flush mirror above the long vanity. The porcelain light fixture scribed into the mirror was salvaged from another project of ours during demolition. It adds a quirky and unexpected detail to the renovated bathroom.
The new skylight above the shower floods the interior of the bathroom with natural light.
The skylight is located above an old air shaft whose volume was incorporated into the interior space of the house as part of the renovation.
The cellar was fully gutted to remove numerous old partition walls and rooms. A new concrete slab was laid, a properly-sized mechanical room and a new laundry area. The rest of the floor provides a large area for kids’ play and TV-watching. Existing windows on the front side provide a decent amount of natural light.
We replaced the existing staircase as it was steep and hard to navigate. We inserted a new wood screen and create a nook below for kids’ seating.
New Marmoleum floor tiles provide a fun and affordable floor finish throughout this floor, adding more color and pattern.
The top floor remains largely un-renovated, awaiting a future second phase of work that will provide a primary bathroom, additional bedroom and reworked layouts for closets and the stair landing.
In the meantime, the owners’ children are allowed to have fun decorating the walls of their playroom with paint and markers.
Exterior facade work was limited to waterproofing, a new glass door at the kitchen and re-painting the historic entry doors. The Landmarks Commission approved our choice of door color, amusingly called “Bamboozle”.
Overall, our aim was to create a fun family home that retains its historic qualities while celebrating the vibrant and exuberant personalities of our clients and their family. Using affordable materials such as tile and paint, we added a fresh face to the home and reworked the building to provide it with a new life and outlook that still celebrates its origins and past.