Construction Diary: With $293K, Two Designers Make a Rhode Island Victorian Their Own

Emily Lindberg and Wu Hanyen’s home seems so distinctively their own because, for the most part, they made it themselves. Emily, an interior and architectural designer with a firm in her name, and Wu, a sculpture professor and furniture maker with her own brand, called Work in Use, replaced the nondescript interior of an 1870s Victorian in a historic neighborhood in Providence, Rhode Island, with earthen finishes, eye-catching patterns, and patches of color that reflect the owners’ complementary aesthetics. The rounded wooden furniture is distinctively Wu, while the mix of historic and modern details is right up Emily’s alley. Beyond allowing for creative control, doing the renovation themselves brought down the cost of the project significantly. Working in short bursts while Wu was on breaks from teaching, they spent months living on a construction site, doing dishes in a bathtub and cooking out of an instant pot.