When Giovanni Botta and Amanda Pinegar began planning the renovation of the home they purchased in Brooklyn's Prospect Lefferts Gardens, they knew one thing for sure. That means the kitchen has to be pink.
Pinegar, 44, a potter, said, “I had decided on a pink refrigerator.'' “And we wanted a kitchen that would enhance that.”
We also considered a number of other bright colors to complement our pink kitchen.
“Amanda wanted a really bold plan,” said Botta, 42, a software engineer at Alphabet's self-driving car company Waymo. This was nothing new. In my previous home, I painted my bedroom yellow and pink.
The couple bought the townhouse for $1.6 million in November 2021, at the height of the pandemic, as they struggled to live comfortably with their now 7-year-old twin daughters.
“Honestly, I thought we were leaving New York,” Pinegar said. “But after renting a house for a year, we realized it wasn't New York that we were tired of. We were living in a 900-square-foot apartment with twins.”
Their new townhouse was two stories, approximately 2,100 square feet, and included a finished basement, giving them quite a bit of space. However, it needed work, as he had been disassembled into three units and the finish was also outdated.
The family moved in temporarily and began interviewing architects, but many did not share their enthusiasm for the creative use of color or their confidence that the renovation was possible on a budget of about $400,000. I understand.
But when he met Luki Anderson of Brooklyn-based Studio Officina, they hit it off. “I love color, so it was an easy sell,” Anderson said. “They were a really great client, and it was a really fun project.”
Anderson removed many of the interior walls and transformed the townhouse into an airy single-family home. On her parlor level, she designed a living room in front of her, an expanded kitchen and dining area in the back, and a library in between.
Bottas and Pinegar wanted a lot of ceramic tiles, so Anderson suggested Mutina's Nathalie du Pasquier collection, which had different patterns that worked together. They used tiles to create a long hallway that runs from the front door to the kitchen at the back of the house.
Upstairs, Ms. Anderson designed a new primary suite, three additional bedrooms, and one bathroom. In the basement, she envisioned an informal family room with marmoleum floors, a powder room, and a music room for Mr. Bottas.
In the fall of 2021, Anderson requested preliminary prices from several contractors and assured them they could complete the renovations on budget. “It seemed like it could be tough but possible if you went with the right people,” she said.
But in 2022, a problem arose. It took several months to finalize design details and obtain building permits, by which time inflation had driven up costs. The couple also discovered that the wooden structure had extensive termite damage and needed repairs.
Mr Botta said the new bid was “successful for more than twice the amount expected”. Some contractors put a price tag of $1 million on the job.
They decided to postpone most of their plans for the top floor, rather than look for cheaper options to replace the materials they were looking forward to, such as using Mutina tiles or new oak flooring instead of old bamboo. Ta.
Then they doubled down at the parlor level. To make sure the color scheme was exactly what they wanted, the couple scheduled a virtual consultation with London-based color curator Joa Studholme of Farrow & Ball, at Anderson's suggestion. .
To keep the home bright, Studholm suggested neutral hues, such as oatmeal-colored Stilaabout and cool strong white, for most walls. But she chose bright colors for the window and door trim, including yellowcake, bright green Danish grass, and warm red bamboozle. To introduce more color into the tiled hallway, she suggested a bold dish blue painted from the floor to the height of the chair rails, and instructed the couple to apply the paint in straight lines across the doors and trim. did. They agreed on Cinder Rose as the ideal pink kitchen.
“It was all about listening to the customer's wishes and creating a plan that would appeal not only to young children but also to those who are young at heart,” Ms Studholm said.
In the end, the couple did a few things on the second floor, including tearing out the old kitchen, renovating the bathroom, and installing Tetris-inspired tiles in eight colors (each family member chose two colors). ).
Although the total cost of the renovation completed by Emiliano Construction rose to $538,000, Bottas and Pinegar were so pleased with the results that they had to postpone plans for the second floor. I almost forgot.
“We didn't think about it for a while,” Pinegar said. “If we really wanted less things, we probably could have done this whole place. But we really wanted those things.”
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