New Prospects

Sherman sits in front of his Prospect Heights home. The front door is made from etched Lexan bulletproof glass.

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In the living room Daphne the dog keeps company with a Case Study Day Bed from Modernica, a LCM chair by Charles and Ray Eames for Herman Miller, and a painting by the Brooklyn artist Joyce Kim.

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Sherman’s friend Anna Chang prepares tea in the kitchen. The range is by Wolf. Walls are coated with parging, a type of concrete made with sand instead of gravel—-more typically used in an industrial context.

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The dining area is bright and airy, thanks to the skylight-topped hole cut in the center of the structure. The ceiling is clad in cedar closet liner; the dining chairs and table base are from Ikea.

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The tin panels lining the stairs are original to the house.

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The copper-covered volume extends from the first floor, where it contains coat and shoe storage.

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Sherman chats with his neighbor Sakhawat Ullah, the mason who built his front stoop.

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The copper-covered volume proceeds to the second floor, where it forms a storage wall in Sherman’s home office

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Closet Case

To consolidate most appliances and food storage, keep his compact kitchen looking neat, and save money on cabinets, Sherman built a closet into the kitchen wall (“Cabinets are expensive but closets are cheap,” he offers). Inside is a countertop, blackboard surface, toaster oven, garbage cans, magnetic knife rack, and plenty of shelves. When the doors are closed, the unit recedes from view.

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Seeing Double

To cover up his shoe-storage shelves, Sherman bought bamboo bead curtains from the Callaloo Company emblazoned with an image of the Madonna. He separated out every other strand to create two curtains from one, resulting in twinned pixelated images. The resulting pattern is “like a Chuck Close that everyone can afford,” says Sherman.

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Green Thumb

Sherman’s back garden is a model of adaptive reuse: The path is made from rubble bricks and concrete dug up from the backyard and crushed, and the bench is made from reclaimed cast-iron panels and mahogany scraps left over from replacing the interior stair treads.

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Sheer Genius

The master bedroom wall that faces the light well is made from a double layer of corrugated-plastic panels, with a sheet of vinyl from Canal Plastics Center sandwiched between them for translucency. The wall lets sunlight and moonlight into the room while still maintaining privacy.

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Now You Cedar

To make sure the light well over the dining area read as “a hole, rather than just a bending of the Sheetrock plane,” Sherman clad the first-floor ceiling in inexpensive tongue-and-groove cedar closet liner from Home Depot. Bonus: “I like the smell of cedar,” says Sherman, and now the house carries a faintly woodsy scent.

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