In a city where real estate prices keep rising, sometimes the best option for better housing is the space you already have — but with a renovation. (If you have the funds, of course.)
Here, a selection of projects, from scrappy to extravagant, with some tips and techniques you’ll need to try it yourself.
Greenpoint
Mission: Transform a rundown Brooklyn two-bedroom into a cozy hideaway for a creative couple
Cost: $2,350 for the renovations, plus $10,000 for furnishing and décor
In late 2016, Greg Mihalko and Caroline Bauer discovered a rent-stabilized 900-square-foot apartment in Greenpoint via their broker, Capri Jet Realty. Delighted by the low monthly rent, which is less than $2,500, the couple struck a deal with their landlord. Mihalko and Bauer delivered a cozy facelift in exchange for two months of rent-free living in the dilapidated unit, harnessing their intrepid DIY skills and additional know-how gleaned from YouTube videos.
Mihalko, a 29-year-old interdisciplinary graphic designer whose father is a contractor, knew his way around tools and measurements. He headed straight to Ikea for Häggeby kitchen cabinets, to a friend’s woodshop for butcher block counters and to Home Depot for laminate flooring. Though they chose Ikea’s cheapest cabinets, which are $89 for the cabinet, base and doors, the couple splurged on higher-end hardware, replacing the drawer pulls with natural brass Edgecliff pulls from Schoolhouse Electric & Supply Co. ($44 for an 8-inch pull).
“It makes a huge difference to the overall look,” says Mihalko, who also built a dining table from recycled water tower wood he found at the Big Reuse in Queens (now closed, but there’s an open location in Gowanus).
Mihalko repainted the bathroom, installed a new medicine cabinet (also from Ikea) and replaced the “bad fake vinyl tile with crappy edges” with wood trim from Home Depot.
His big tip: rent tools. “It’s awful to do renovations with a nail and hammer and takes 10 times as long,” he adds. “You can rent a nail gun for $50 from Home Depot, and it saves so much time.”
Allotting a bit more budget for furniture, Mihalko and Bauer bought an $899 Eddy sofa in Shadow performance velvet from West Elm, and a Movie Birch sleeper sofa ($1,799) and ottoman ($649) from CB2 in Como dark gray. Bauer, a 30-year-old urban planner, scored two hand-loomed wool rugs at deep discount from the Web site RugsUSA.
More than a year into living there with their two cats — Olivia, 8, and Jimmy Carter, 4 — the couple says their domestic bliss has inspired their neighbors. “The landlord saw it and asked, ‘Can you do this in every other unit?’ ” Mihalko says.
Tribeca
Mission: Make a modernist married couple love their 30-year-old Tribeca loft
Cost: $1.65 million
Studio ID designer Christa Frey’s clients, a couple in their 40s, wanted a minimalist look for their 2,100-square-foot Tribeca loft.
“They had no kids or pets, so we had no worries about scratches or spills. It was a rare opportunity to do things in a highly architectural manner,” Frey says. “They even let me put in wide plank oak floors with a pristine ebonized finish. Many clients wouldn’t, because it requires more care and maintenance than a floor with more variation in tone and grain.”
Part of a landmarked 1866 warehouse building, the apartment had soaring 13-foot ceilings but hadn’t been renovated in more than 30 years. Frey gutted everything but the existing plumbing, creating a two-bedroom apartment with two offices, an immaculate kitchen and a master bathroom suite straight out of an Aman resort.
To emphasize the expansive hallway, she added LED lighting, running the length of the ceiling, hidden in a recess, and designed pocket doors to conceal the offices.
The apartment’s abrupt entry posed challenging. “There was less than a foot of threshold, so people would literally fall into the space,” Frey says. “We built a six-foot slab of Nero Marquina marble from Artistic Tile, lined it with LED bulbs and floated it out as an entry threshold. At night it glows.”
In the Poggenpohl kitchen, Frey built a concealed storage wall that includes recycling bins, a coat closet with shoe storage, utility closet for cleaning supplies and additional pantry shelving. More glamorously, she showcased the couple’s impressive wine collection via an oversized cooler framed in warm walnut, and wrapped the counters and backsplash in waterfall-style Caesarstone.
Milky white polished Bianco Dolomiti marble from Turkey covers the master bathroom’s walls and floors, with a mosaic version — to prevent slipping — in the 6-foot-wide steam shower. For a cool light cascade, Frey installed concealed dimmable LED lights in a linear recess above the tub, an homage to Yabu Pushelberg’s work at the Park Hyatt New York.
At $175,000 for design fees and expenses, Frey’s work didn’t come cheap. (That amount didn’t include furniture and materials.) For a bathroom refresh on a tighter budget, she recommends a white lacquered vanity from Blu Bathworks (starting at $2,500 for an integrated sink/counter surface), LED lights from Artemide ($485) and 13-by-40-inch crystal white porcelain tile from Porcelanosa . The latter provides the look of marble without the steep price tag.
Financial District
Mission: Turn a single dad’s soulless rental into a stylish, kid-friendly hangout
Cost: $10,000
Designer Joanna Lemle never actually set foot in the one-bedroom Financial District rental she turned into a chic nest for financial executive Charles, a single dad in his late 30s who has partial custody of his 3- and 6-year-old daughters.
“I needed it to be family-friendly, but also to be a space where I could entertain guests, so to balance those while achieving the look and feel I was visualizing was key,” says Charles, who lives in a building where one-bedrooms start at about $4,000 a month.
Turning to the online company Havenly, Charles took a quiz to gauge his style, uploaded his apartment dimensions and chose Lemle from a list of designers. The two spoke on the phone about his penchant for midcentury-modern lines and his budget, which was about $10,000.
“The most notable and unusual piece I found for the living room was a 1960s storage unit by Poul Cadovius, with integrated bookshelves. These kinds of pieces are fantastic for rentals because they mount to the wall, provide amazing storage and come right off when you move,” says Lemle, who now runs her own interior design firm, Hohm Collective. Saying it was a “decorator’s secret,” Lemle declined to say where she found it, but similar pieces are available on popular sites 1stdibs and Chairish.
At $1,995, the unit was expensive. But Havenly is known for mixing high and low pieces, so Lemle also selected furniture and accessories from Crate and Barrel and Anthropologie, using rendering software AutoCAD to make sure everything fit, and providing Charles with the program so he could rearrange the pieces himself.
“He didn’t want to do anything too involved,” Lemle says. “We didn’t change the stain on the flooring or the wall paint. The pillows, the sofa, the rug, the dining table, the storage unit, the orb accent piece on the storage unit, even some of the planters — we sourced all of it. The books are his own.”
Since it provides full decorating plans but does not do any structural overhauls like knocking down walls or moving plumbing, Havenly appeals to budget-conscious apartment owners looking to freshen or change their look — and to do it quickly, as most jobs are completed in a matter of weeks. Charles paid just $199 to Havenly; $50 of which was put toward his furniture costs (the vast majority of the total budget).
Upper East Side
Mission: Upgrade a dark, skinny 19th-century townhouse to an airy modern home fit for a family of four
Cost: $1.5 million
At just under 13 feet wide, the narrow nature of this brownstone limited furniture choices. But its thirtysomething owners were determined to make the 4,500-square-foot, five-bedroom townhouse — a five-story beauty that dates back to 1899 — work in modern times. Specifically, they wanted a suitable space for two toddler-age daughters and family members who drop in for extended visits.
So the couple enlisted Décor Aid’s CEO Sean Juneja to transform the slim abode into a midcentury-modern showstopper. It wasn’t cheap (the work totaled about $1.5 million) or fast (taking nearly two years to complete), but the renovation resulted in a highly functional, eminently photogenic home.
“The advice we always give is to start planning early, and to think about how you’ll use the space over five years,” Juneja says. “As the family grows, what’s the traffic? Where will the kids be? How often do you entertain? Where do you want to entertain? It’s essential to stick with a plan. If you start changing things, the timing and costs really start rising.”
To make the interiors glowing rather than gloomy, the designer used light wood and a neutral palette. Zoning laws limited work to the façade, so Juneja opened the space by adding a wall of windows in the back of the house.
Juneja’s changes ranged from subtle — narrowing the hallways by adding sleek built-in storage where the family stashes the kids’ toys — to major, rearranging the floor plan so that the kitchen and family room, previously on two different floors, were moved to the second floor, where they flow seamlessly into each other and overlook the yard.
Juneja saved money by sourcing Carrara marble, used in the kitchen and bathrooms, from a wholesale dealer in Miami, and tapping his network of 20 dealers to scour online auctions, consignment shops and vintage stores for original midcentury pieces like the Milo Baughman cocktail table (approximately $1,700) in the reception room and the living room’s Chamberlain Sofa (approximately $17,000), which he upholstered in grey crease-resistant Kravet fabric.
The kitchen, lined in warm walnut wood and white marble, includes a Saarinen round dining table ($2,000) from Design Within Reach.
As a final flourish, Juneja upgraded a trolley into a fully tricked-out walnut and stone bar between the reception and living room. “The owner likes to drink scotch,” he says. “It’s great for entertaining.”