Sometimes, quick fixes last a long time. Even too long—as was the case for the myriad slapdash solutions in Kwame Taylor-Hayford and Tamara Tribula’s Brooklyn row house. It was built in 1899, and by the time the couple bought it in 2016, original windows were bricked in, structural joists were removed, the stairs were crooked, and the floors bounced. The design-minded couple—he works in advertising and she in fashion—kicked off their ownership with a few small projects and an attempted kitchen remodel.

“We tried and failed,” says Kwame with a laugh. “That was really tough. We had some issues with contractors, and just achieving the level of design and finish that we wanted.” Afterwards, Kwame and Tamara decided to put any more remodeling projects on hold and save up to “hire a team that could properly help us redo it, and achieve what we had in our minds,” says Kwame. “To be honest, we did a lot of reading on Dwell, looked at a lot of photos and projects, and started to figure out what we wanted aesthetically.”

Before: Staircase

After: Staircase

As they researched, Kwame and Tamara assembled a collection of pieces they loved, from a rich green tile from Heath Ceramics, to a fabric chandelier by Pinch. By 2021, they were vetting architects, and they reached out to Aniket Shahane of Office of Architecture after seeing his own home on Dwell. “We kind of gave him a big list of problems to solve,” says Tamara.

The tasks included creating comfortable guest quarters at the garden level, opening up the main level to connect the living spaces and bring in more natural light from front to back, and most importantly, instilling a consistent look between all the levels of the home. As Shahane says, the brief was to “holistically rethink the house.” But first, they had to address the many interventions that had accumulated over the last century.

Before: Hallway

After: Living Room

“It just looked like a hodgepodge of quick fixes had been done over the last 120 years,” says Shahane of his first walk-through. “When we went in, it was a place that had a lot of potential, but we could see that there were all kinds of bump outs in the ceiling and in the walls, and pipes that were coming out, some obsolete, and some exposed. It was a little overwhelming for them to make all of these fixes come together into something that was cohesive.”

Before: Dining Room

After: Dining Room

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen

As the architect expected, demolition revealed cracked and rotted structural joists, sometimes with holes cut in them to run pipes through. “Some of the joists didn’t even go from wall to wall, so they were literally just hanging,” says Shahane. Bricks were missing from the walls, and the architect says “a bird’s nest of random two-by-fours” supported the stair.

These demo discoveries were not entirely a surprise for Tamara and Kwame, as they had researched the remodeling process for so long. “We’ve watched enough HGTV to know that we were signing up for a lot of uncertainty,” says Kwame. “So, I think we were pretty well prepared.”

Shahane’s redesign tackled each floor, designating the top for the couple’s primary suite, a children’s bedroom, a hall bathroom, and a study. The garden floor holds a guest suite for extended family, as both sets of parents visit often (one from Accra, Ghana, and one from Buffalo, New York), as well as the couple’s siblings and cousins on both sides.

There’s also a downstairs rec room where Kwame and Tamara watch TV, and the kids play inside and out, thanks to new glass doors that open to the backyard. The living spaces on the main level became “the communal gathering floor,” says Shahane, where everyone can meet in the middle.

Before: Garden Level

After: Garden Level

From the start, Shahane made sure to incorporate the pieces that Kwame and Tamara had already collected, and he devised architectural solutions that help them to stand out. In the dining room, a lowered ceiling defines the area and conceals HVAC components, while also drawing the eye to the fabric chandelier and BDDW table.

In the primary suite, the architect reworked the ceiling planes up to the skylight to bring in more light and make the small room feel larger, illuminating the rich Heath Ceramics tile on the walls. Pairing the tiles with textured limestone and a white oak vanity set the cornerstone for the rest of the material palette.

“We thought it’d be nice to do something where all the bedrooms and the living, dining, and kitchen areas are all quietly elegant spaces that hang back for all the furniture,” says Shahane. “Then the bathrooms themselves could be really rich.”

Before: Upstairs Hallway

After: Upstairs Hallway

When the staircase had to be rebuilt, Shahane was constrained by the available footprint, so he opted for an integrated millwork handrail that curves at the top. Then he added an oculus skylight and streamlined the existing wall niche for a more sculptural treatment.

Now, the home leans minimalist, especially without the visual clutter wrought by all those years of quick fixes, but it’s still a warm backdrop for the couple’s life with two children. “We wanted to keep a bit of character, we didn’t want it to be a white box,” says Kwame. “It felt important to us to make this feel like a home and not like a museum.”