Built-ins: Part art and part machine
Get the storage space you dream of by tailoring it to your design tastes
Like a bespoke suit tailored to flatter your body, custom-made built-ins can provide your home with creative solutions to everyday problems and disguise unsightly features, such as exposed pipes or air ducts.
“If you do it right, the built-in becomes a hybrid of a work of art and a hard-working machine that should last a long time and be a sound investment,” said Robert Garneau, an architect in Brooklyn. Reimagine old storage: While working on a kitchen renovation, Kimberly Handler, an interior designer in Greenwich, Conn., spotted an opportunity to solve two problems with one existing built-in.
“The family had two dogs, and when I came into the project the dog crates were taking up a good deal of space in the kitchen,” Handler said. She noticed that a free-standing wall of built-ins had lower cabinets, so she suggested transforming them into built-in dog crates.
“We made the built-in function better for (the) client, and at the same time we gained space in their kitchen by eliminating the dog crates.”
Your daily routine: “Built-in storage should address your unique requirements and respond to your daily rituals,” Garneau said. “Ask yourself, ‘What space bothers me the most, where is there the most friction?’ ”
That might be the tangle of shoes and sports gear you keep tripping over near the door. Or it could be the need for an extra bedroom.
Last spring, Garneau created a built-in guest room in an 1,800square-foot loft for a family of five in Tribeca. The folding wall he designed has two large panels that pivot outward to create a sleeping area with a Murphy bed, shelving and night stands. An integrated closet provides room to unpack.
And after the guests leave, “it all folds up and away into a compact, inconspicuous blank wall, allowing the living space to be maximized,” Garneau said. The area can also be used as a playroom “by partially deploy- ing the walls to keep the mess out of sight.”
Take inventory: “Make a list of everything you want to store,” said Jess Cooney, a designer in Great Barrington, Mass. “Then you’ll know what kind of storage you’re in need of — and how much of it you need.”
It will also help you establish good habits. “I always tell my clients, ‘If your family has a place where something lives, then they can be accountable to keep it there,’ ” Cooney said.
Choose timeless materials: Garneau’s preference is for “natural” materials, such as oak or walnut. But whatever you choose, make sure you “invest wisely, by looking at all the available options,” he advised.
Turn flaws into features: That’s what happened when Christie Leu turned an attic space into a guest bedroom. Leu, an interior designer in Chevy Chase, Md., created a built-in desk and shelving unit along one wall, concealing ducts behind the lower cabinets. And she used the shelves as window frames: “We set them well outside the window,” she said, and added draperies “to create the illusion of a much larger window.”