Wanting more space for raising their four children and hosting extended family, doctors Paul-Louis and Elena Evrard found a mid-nineteenth century two-story home situated in Asnières-sur-Seine, a suburb about five miles from the center of Paris. With abundant space and a modest garden, it offered a serene context for family life without sacrificing city living, thanks to a seven-minute commuter train journey that provides quick access to Paris’s Grands Boulevards district and its belle époque charm.

Built in 1850, the semi-detached house—typical of weekend homes for the 19th-century Parisian bourgeoisie—was full of charming historical features, from delicate moldings and stained-glass windows to flowered floor tiles. Yet it was visibly time-worn; a trait that the couple saw as both a challenge and an opportunity.

“We love old buildings and the idea of bringing dated things back to life while personalizing them,” Elena notes. Having long admired the work of architect Pierre-Louis Gerlier for his fine balance between respecting a space’s original character while enhancing its functionality and aesthetic appeal, they engaged him to reconfigure and modernize their new home.

After a property investment of €1.3M, the renovation budget comprised €130,000 for the roughly 860-square-foot ground floor living area and €40,000 for the upper story spaces. Yet the discovery of severe structural issues, including a more than two-and-a-half inch discrepancy in floor height in the room destined to become the new kitchen, caught everyone off guard. “We hadn’t initially planned to touch the structure,” Gerlier notes, “but we had to replace some of the wooden beams and rebuild part of the foundations.”

€26,000 Wall Finishes	€4,400 Flooring	€8,800 Electrical
€5,500 Plumbing	€11,000 Kitchen & Bath Fixtures	€3,000 Lighting
€6,600 Countertops	€8,800 Windows & Glazing	€44,000 Millwork
€7,700 Tilework	€6,600 Furnishings & Decor	€16,500 Architect/Design Fee
€5,500 Demolition	€1,200 Waste/Debris Removal
Grand Total: €155,600

The electrical and plumbing, too, needed replacing, and had to be completed before the walls could be redone. Totaling €44,700, plus €6,700 for demolition and debris removal, the unexpected interventions for structural repair cut dramatically into the upper-story budget, so the decision was made to focus wholly on completing the ground floor and park the upper-story refresh for a later stage.

“Natural” and “aesthetically pleasing” were among the prompts in Paul-Louis and Elena’s brief, alongside accommodating the diverse needs of a large, young family. “We needed a space that could be open and closed at the same time—in other words, visually linked to each of the rooms while being isolated from noise,” Elena notes. “With four children, we also needed clear circulation areas, hard-wearing materials that were easy to maintain, and plenty of storage space.”

The couple had a particularly clear vision for the home’s central living areas. “For the kitchen, we wanted to be able to cook while keeping an eye on the living room, without turning our backs on the garden,” Elena continues. “We wanted to be able to live around the kitchen, with one of my children reading by the fire, my husband having a drink by the bar, and so on.” For the living room, the wish list included “one space for games and entertaining, and another that was more intimate, more cocooning—a space for reading, resting and watching films with the overhead projector,” adds Elena.

The notion of conviviality quickly formed the renovation’s guiding concept. Responding to his clients’ input, Gerlier says, “We had to create places of communion while allowing everyone to have their own space in the communal areas. The house was very partitioned. However, two rooms were very spacious: the living room with its old moldings and the dining room with its beautiful vaulted ceiling. So we were able to draw on these exceptional volumes, which needed to be separated while visually linking them and avoiding compartmentalization.”

The cause of the compartmentalization, at least in part, was an enclosed vestibule, “which took up a lot of space and was not used by guests,” says Gerlier. But it inspired something not altogether different. “We placed this room at the heart of the project by transforming it into a visual crossroads thanks to large curved glass walls that visually connect all the rooms. Using glass allowed us to perfectly meet the dual requirement of separate but linked spaces,” Gerlier explains.

Now it’s the home’s heart, a cozy dining room where friends and family gather around a custom cherry-red booth inspired by diverse references: the archetypal American diner, Edward Hopper’s melancholy-tinged paintings, and, closer to the home’s postal code, the pleasingly puffy forms of the Michelin Man.

The glass-encased vestibule creates a natural flow between the newly configured ground-floor spaces. “The view now flows freely even when the door is closed, just like the light that diffuses from one room to another, compensating for the loss of light from the pretty stained-glass windows with their small colored panes,” Gerlier notes.

Per the family’s wishes, an open lounge area is divided into two spaces linked by an openwork bookcase, also custom-designed by the architect. Bespoke cabinetry, including in the kitchen, totaled €3,000, a figure Gerlier kept in check for Paul-Louis and Elena by applying his skillset as a trained carpenter—a welcome value-add in light of the unexpected additional costs demanded by the structural interventions. Selecting and sourcing their furniture independently with a budget of €6,600, including from French home decor store Caravane and vintage shops in Paris, further helped stretch their budget.

As the two-part living room now occupies the space of the former kitchen—“which was enclosed in a corner and far too small,” per Elena—a new, generously proportioned kitchen was moved into a large area with ample room for all the family to come together. “You can gather around the person preparing the meals while enjoying the fire,” notes Elena.

“It’s a real living space, warm and inviting, where everyone can occupy themselves as they wish,” she adds. In other words, optimally geared toward the daily demands of modern family living: pragmatic, hard-wearing, and open to evolve, as it will when the time comes to take the renovation upstairs for the second stage.

More Budget Breakdown:

Budget Breakdown: A Work-From-Home Couple Reenvision a Loft for $291K. The Office Steals the Show

Budget Breakdown: This $81K Kitchen Upgrade Has the Same Siding as Some Dunkin’ Donuts

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Pierre-Louis Gerlier / @pierrelouisgerlier

Builder: Marc et Martin