Before & After: A Gut Remodel Corrects a Century of Quick Fixes in This Brooklyn Row House
Office of Architecture addresses sagging joists, crooked stairs, missing bricks, and exposed pipes to create a richly textured home for a family of four.
Office of Architecture addresses sagging joists, crooked stairs, missing bricks, and exposed pipes to create a richly textured home for a family of four.
Sometimes, quick fixes last a long time. Even too long—as was the case for the myriad slapdash solutions in Kwame Taylor-Hatford and Tamara Tribula’s Brooklyn row house. It was built in 1899, and by the time the couple bought it in 2016, original windows were bricked in, structural joists were removed, the stairs were crooked, and the floors bounced. The design-minded couple—he works in advertising and she in fashion—kicked off their ownership with a few small projects and an attempted kitchen remodel.
"We tried and failed," says Kwame with a laugh. "That was really tough. We had some issues with contractors, and just achieving the level of design and finish that we wanted." Afterwards, Kwame and Tamara decided to put any more remodeling projects on hold and save up to "hire a team that could properly help us redo it, and achieve what we had in our minds," says Kwame. "To be honest, we did a lot of reading on Dwell, looked at a lot of photos and projects, and started to figure out what we wanted aesthetically."
Before: Staircase
Before: When Kwame Taylor-Hatford and Tamara Tribula bought this 1899 rowhouse in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, it had seen over a century of slapdash interventions. "There were bumps going up the stairs," says one of the couple’s children of the old staircase.
Courtesy of Office of Architecture
After: Staircase
Kwame and Tamara worked with architect Aniket Shahane of Office of Architecture for a gut remodel of all three floors. The firm rebuilt the staircase to include an integrated railing, added a skylight for more natural light, and kept the existing wall niche.
Photo: Matthew Williams
As they researched, Kwame and Tamara assembled a collection of pieces they loved, from a rich green tile from Heath Ceramics, to a fabric chandelier by Pinch. By 2021, they were vetting architects, and they reached out to Aniket Shahane of Office of Architecture after seeing his own home on Dwell. "We kind of gave him a big list of problems to solve," says Tamara.
The tasks included creating comfortable guest quarters at the garden level, opening up the main level to connect the living spaces and bring in more natural light from front to back, and most importantly, instilling a consistent look between all the levels of the home. As Shahane says, the brief was to "holistically rethink the house." But first, they had to address the many interventions that had accumulated over the last century.
Before: Hallway
Before: The team removed the dividing wall between the staircase and living room, which tended to be dark.
Courtesy of Office of Architecture
See the full story on Dwell.com: Before & After: A Gut Remodel Corrects a Century of Quick Fixes in This Brooklyn Row House
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