Renovations

Originally designed by locally renowned architect Arthur Dallas Stenger, this 1960s home featured an unusual awning that was maintained during a 21st-century upgrade by architects Rick and Cindy Black. The architects partially reconfigured the interior layout, updated the kitchen, and added new doors to the porch, all the while making sure the adjustments to the house honored its midcentury provenance while still avoiding creating a time capsule.

“When you’re working on something inexpensive and then decide you don’t like it, fine. You’re not tearing down millions of kroners worth of work.” —Mette Lyng Hansen

A family in Hamburg, Germany, turned a kitschy turn-of-the-century villa into a high-design home with a few exterior tricks, including sheathing the exterior in one-dimensional, murdered-out black.

Berkus has gone through over 1,000 renovations in his career and has learned some key design lessons along the way. “I have such a passion for discovering and reusing vintage building materials and architectural savage,” Berkus says. “In my last home in New York, I found a set of four doorknobs with locks from Belgium in the 1940s and I had iron glass doors installed to work around them. I knew myself to know that the knobs I touched everyday would be something meaningful to me.” Pictured, an enclosed porch in a rundown rustic cabin in Big Bear, California, updated by Lukas Machnik. Photo courtesy NBC.

The entire house is painted in one color: Sherwin Williams' Ibis White.