How They Pulled It Off: A Reclaimed Wood Countertop at the Heart of a Kitchen Renovation
A slab sourced from a bowling alley in upstate New York makes for a durable, history-filled surface in this Brooklyn home.
A slab sourced from a bowling alley in upstate New York makes for a durable, history-filled surface in this Brooklyn home.
Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.
It’s not every day that you put the wood flooring of a former bowling alley in a residential kitchen—even for architect Lindsey Wikstrom, whose New York–based firm Mattaforma specializes in sustainable sourcing, including using reclaimed and renewable materials. But when clients Laura (an Emmy-award-winning TV writer) and Darryl (a lawyer) connected with her and expressed their interest in using "materials that brought stories with them" for their home in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, reclaimed wood felt like the right choice.
The kitchen was designed with off-white cabinets. Touches of wood and saturated reds in the lighting and flooring add warmth. "We helped them find the right balance of colorful and calm and woody for them," notes Wikstrom.
Photo by Mattaforma
Laura, Darryl, and their two cats, Gus and Hammy, sought to update their home but keep the quirky, historic detailing that made it feel lived-in and comforting. The duplex takes up two floors of a three-story wood-frame home originally built as a single-family, Victorian-style residence in the early 1900s. Over time, the house was converted into two units: one unit on the ground floor (which would remain untouched by Wikstrom) and then a second unit on the second and third floors that was the focus of the renovation.
The three-story home in Brooklyn's suburban Ditmas Park neighborhood was built in the early 1900s, and its traditional layout and historic detailing like original parquet flooring with decorative inlays was typical of the time.
Photo by Mattaforma
Wikstrom described the unit’s existing condition as "very outdated" and inefficient. Circuitous routes led through the kitchen or living and dining areas in order to reach the bedrooms, and the kitchen, with its dark wood cabinetry and granite countertops, hadn’t been renovated in decades.
"For all rooms, the client and our team were dedicated to the idea of color immersion, especially in small spaces like the bathrooms and hallways," Wilkstrom explains. The guest bath, for example, is covered in sea green, from tiled walls to painted ceiling.
Photo by Mattaforma
See the full story on Dwell.com: How They Pulled It Off: A Reclaimed Wood Countertop at the Heart of a Kitchen Renovation
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