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Hope replaced the upper wood cabinets with open shelving and painted the lower cabinets a shade of gray-green. Beneath the linoleum were wood floors that the designer refinished.

The kitchen, kept in the same location, was opened up dramatically. Gray cabinets from IKEA are topped with honed granite countertops; an oil painting of the original cottage sits on one of the floating shelves.

The architects bought standard-size cabinets and played around with different configurations to make the layout feel bespoke at an affordable cost.

Storage had to be dialed in within the narrow footprint of the brownstone. The black core holds the pantry, while on the right, a bank of custom cabinetry hosts the command station, mop closet, and a concealed bar.-

Homeowners Izabel and Paul made a large open kitchen a top priority, insisting on counters at double the standard width.

When the Murphy bed unfolds, the office becomes a space for guests—and when it's closed, you hardly even know it's there.

When Rob and Mary Lubera started pulling threads to uncover the origins of their new home—the lone midcentury house amid rows of Tudor Revivals in suburban Detroit—not even architecture scholars could have anticipated what they would find. Theirs is the last surviving residence by Alexander Girard (1907–1993), a modernist visionary who made his name in textiles but tried his hand at virtually everything, architecture included. The shoji-like laminate screens, seen in the entryway, are characteristic of his Japanese-influenced work.

In Hanna Bui’s Sausalito houseboat, designed by architect Craig Steely, sea creatures seen through an enormous back window animate bay views.