Now You See it…Now You Don’t
I love well-designed cabinetry, which is why we pay so much attention to every storage and functional need when we design for our clients…and ourselves. In fact, we can make spaces work so well, our clients often don’t know how good they’ve really got it. Case in point: my new home.
My family just moved to the Boston area for a few years- basically until my youngest is off to college. Wait, what?! I know- it’s been hectic and this was a hard decision centered around my husband’s work, for which final details only recently fell into place, so please forgive me for not sharing much earlier! And not to be confusing, but my beloved postage stamp in Brooklyn is still ours, we’re just “sharing” part of it. I’ll be in NYC regularly for work, team time, client meetings, site visits, sourcing, and heck- I’m not giving up my irreplaceable colorist or hairstylist. Luckily, we were able to easily re-divide our house and we kept part for ourselves until we move back.
To answer your pressing questions- yes, my team is still based in NYC; I love my little office in Union Square and the best sourcing and vendors, hands down, are all in New York. We will still be everywhere our clients want us to be- no change. The lessons of Covid made us well-versed in a hybrid setup that, interestingly, work and the office were the easiest part of the move- and the projects we’ve been actively working on have brought me much solace and continuity when other aspects were up in the air. I’m sincerely grateful to have a business that need not drastically change when life hands you an opportunity to think anew.
But back to built-ins. We bought and moved into a 1910 craftsman charmer in Wellesley MA, sight unseen for me (I know- a different story for another time), and…whew. It’s got good bones, but even though it’s more square footage than Brooklyn, I am dying for storage. My husband, who has known me and my work for 26 years, (and who smartly handed us all a copy of the serenity prayer the day before the movers showed up) finally understands what most interior designers are super good at: organization. Adam suddenly realized he had no idea how we stored so much in Brooklyn, a home we gutted and rebuilt. What wasn’t apparent in that house was that I had thought through all the storage during the design until storage for everything worked. Our move in, then, was a relative breeze. Conversely, when we arrived in Wellesley, we could barely get the boxes organized in the cellar because there just aren’t the solutions in place to let us unpack upstairs. A most vexing scenario for anyone and for a designer, especially. You’d think that in the 113 years that the house existed, someone would have put in a coat closet but, alas, there is none, nor barely any other adequate storage. The silver lining of this literal mess was that Adam finally gets just how much the designer in me makes our family’s everyday life livable, and recognized it with a nicely timed toast at one of our first dinners out - just as I was sipping a much-needed heavy pour of wine. At that moment, I was quietly, jealously, imagining the ease with which our renters could settle into our old home with its ample storage and frankly, ingenious use of city space. His toast was kind, my spirit desperately needed that acknowledgment…. and now I just need to do it all again.
Built-ins are costly and take time. Through years of client work and personal work, designers know when to go with off-the-shelf, semi-custom, or custom storage solutions. Costs differ, but we rely heavily on custom because it’s usually worth it. Architects will get a baseline covered, but it’s the interior designer’s job to consider how you really live: how your young kids will be able to learn to hang up a coat on a hook if it’s low enough for them, think through how your tween’s shift from a baggy pants obsession to a dress obsession will need to be accommodated in the closet, find a good spot for the bulky suitcases vs. carry-ons, note that a family heirloom needs “x” inches of height to be displayed properly… never mind basics like your shoe collection needing however many linear feet of space today, with room for more (obviously). Developers know this scenario so well that they just deliver a blank dressing room or reach-in closet with barely a hanging rod, and the rest is assumed to happen after you’ve closed and been handed the keys and have hired one of us to make the CGI renderings come to life. Yes, some closet consultants are great- others never bother to take inventory of your stuff (I know, mind-blowing). And I love a great organizer, but they’re not going to build you a solution that solves the big problems- it just isn’t their job.
If you’re our client, you know we do all this. For the rest of the audience, may you always move into homes where someone before you did the built-ins and closets- real estate agents are you listening? Otherwise, when your friend who just bought some fab new apartment or house starts talking closets- do them a favor and tell them they need a designer ASAP. Move-in day is there before you know it and the biggest gift to oneself is not just knowing where the furniture goes, but also being able to hang up clothes, put away cleaning supplies, get books on shelves, and put pictures on the mantle, all so your new house feels like home. Designers do this every day and it’s the little gift we’re able to bring to the world. It’s time to do the same for my family.
While my summer was a whirlwind, I hope yours was golden, warm, and full of delicious memories made. I cannot wait for a relatively calm Fall season to kick in and am looking forward to plenty. This week, I’ll be part of WNWN 2023 at the NY Design Center, and we photographed our Gramercy Park project after it was renovated, then flooded, and was then rebuilt. My team and I will be watching a jaw-dropping-gorgeous kitchen in Brooklyn Heights come to fruition. In October we kick off a design refresh in Darien CT and I’ll be jetting to Mexico to geek out on all things design at the annual DLN conference. We’re all looking forward to seeing what this year’s designers at Kips Bay Dallas have on tap- being part of their alumni committee, I get sneak peeks and I already know it’ll be a great year! Site visits to a Sonoma Valley project are on the horizon and a gut renovation on the Upper East Side is coming up - we love what we’re doing in both! Refreshes in NYC, Greenwich, Rye, and New Canaan will be pulling together this winter and on Martha’s Vineyard, a 2-year part historic conservation, part new construction project hits the boards this fall. And of course, I am living through our own partial renovation so we’ll have that to watch, up close and personal, for better or worse. As usual, I’ll share our adventures over on IG, and I’m always happy to have you follow along!
Take care
~ Kathleen