Construction Diary: With $293K, Two Designers Make a Rhode Island Victorian Their Own

Emily Lindberg and Wu Hanyen’s home seems so distinctively their own because, for the most part, they made it themselves. Emily, an interior and architectural designer with a firm in her name, and Wu, a sculpture professor and furniture maker with her own brand, called Work in Use, replaced the nondescript interior of an 1870s Victorian in a historic neighborhood in Providence, Rhode Island, with earthen finishes, eye-catching patterns, and patches of color that reflect the owners’ complementary aesthetics. The rounded wooden furniture is distinctively Wu, while the mix of historic and modern details is right up Emily’s alley. Beyond allowing for creative control, doing the renovation themselves brought down the cost of the project significantly. Working in short bursts while Wu was on breaks from teaching, they spent months living on a construction site, doing dishes in a bathtub and cooking out of an instant pot.

Though the hard stuff was done by Wu, Emily, and, occasionally, contractors, the couple also drew on their designer and artist friends to finish the house. Providence’s creative community was a large part of why Wu and Emily put down roots in Rhode Island. They met in New York, but after living in Brooklyn for several years, they moved to Providence so Wu could get an MFA in furniture design from Emily’s alma mater, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Now, eight years after the couple moved to the city, their local creative community has made its way into the design of their home.

Old + New

Emily Lindberg: We’re trying to honor the Victorian style, but we’re not trying to re-create the past. We consider ourselves contemporary designers, but there was something about the spirit of this house that we could feel. Even though it needed some love, I wanted to not go too far away from the [original] style. For the entry tile, I came up with my own pattern. It feels traditional, but the scale and the color bring it into a contemporary space. Another technique that I use is painting the trim and the walls the same color. It’s more modern because you don’t have the busyness of the contrast.