A TASTE FOR RENOVATION
The master bedroom has a wall of custom cabinets and shelving, with an aFire ethanol fireplace with a steel surround. StudioLAB designed the bedside tables with leftover pieces of marble from the kitchen; One wall of the living room has folding and sliding doors that open to reveal the television, a bar and bookshelves.
exactly what they wanted.
“It was a positive for us to come into a space that needed to be fixed,” Hanh said. “We didn’t want a place that somebody had already renovated.”
Livingston sharpened his pencils and engaged StudioLAB to lead the project once again, but with plenty of collaborative effort. “I was looking to be part of designing every square foot,” he said. Hanh and Kevin Livingston at home with their children (from left), Wyatt, Tanner, Holden and Keaton. Materials in the kitchen include cerused grey oak, white lacquer and polished statuary marble.
together a plan for a complete gut renovation that would create a four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom apartment with an open living, dining and kitchen area, and extensive custom millwork, including folding and sliding doors that would conceal a television and bar in the living room. One of the bedrooms would also serve as a combination playroom and guest room, with a wall of built-in storage to conceal toys and a Murphy bed.
Miller suggested buying a small portion of the shared hallway from the building to create a more gracious foyer. Livingston suggested taking some space from a large bathroom to create a “garage” for sports equipment with its own door from the shared hallway.
The Livingstons also spent days researching materials. “It was such an education, which I didn’t realise would be so fun,” Hanh said. “Matt explained wood flooring to us, and the difference between rift-sawn versus quarter-sawn, and character versus no character. We learnt about veneer. We went to look at stone and pick out slabs.”
But it wasn’t all smiles and smooth sailing. One of the biggest points of contention between the Livingstons was the custom floor-to-ceiling, steeland-glass
wine storage wall that Miller proposed building between the foyer and the kitchen.
“That wasn’t on the list of things we had asked for,” said Livingston, who nevertheless thought it would be a novel way to allow sunlight from the exterior windows to reach the foyer.
“I had strong feelings about that,” said Hanh, who lobbied for a larger kitchen pantry instead.
The wine wall stuck (though an aquarium might have been a better idea, a helpful doorman suggested to this reporter on a recent visit).
When construction began in November 2015, “Kevin came here once in the morning and once in the evening” — nearly every day — “to see what was going on,” Miller said.
And by the time the project was wrapping up in the summer of 2016, at a total cost of about $1.6 million, the homeowners had grown so fond of their architect that he was the first person they called with important family news: Livingston was pregnant with their fourth child, Keaton, who is now one.
“Matt knew before any of our family,” Livingston said. “We wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything he would do to change the design.”
NYT