A little more than 20 years ago, Fauzia Khanani was seated next to Julie Kim in their first graduate school architecture class at Berkeley. “Our last names have the same first letter, and it was assigned seating,” Khanani recalls. After graduating, they both stayed on the West Coast for a while and then, for different reasons, moved east. “I went back to New York a couple of years later, and she and her family moved here during the pandemic, to be closer to her relatives,” she says.

By then, Julie had met and married Sean, who works as a software engineer, and they had two children, a boy and a girl. “Going from a single-family home in California that had a yard to a small apartment without one was a tough transition for their family,” says Khanani, who founded the firm Studio For. “They started looking for a second property upstate, and since my firm has done a lot of projects in the Hudson Valley, Julie called me to help.”

Before: Exterior

After: Exterior

Julie and Sean dreamed of a property with acreage where their in-laws and children could congregate for holidays, and they also sought an accessible home. Their daughter was born with developmental disabilities and she uses a wheelchair, so Julie and Sean wanted their vacation house to be set primarily on one level to give her as much independence as possible.

Eventually, they found a single-family ranch house in Saugerties that was built in 1975 and brimming with potential despite its age. “It was move-in ready, but it needed a lot of updates,” Khanani notes.

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen

“It has a basement, but the main living areas are all on the same floor,” Khanani says. “That was really appealing, based on the other homes they had seen. They also liked its level of privacy, and that it already had a swimming pool.”

Before: Living Room

After: Living Room

Julie and Sean purchased the property in the fall of 2020, and everyone gathered to discuss the renovation. “Julie is a professional writer now, but she has a background in design,” Khanani says. “She came to us with a lot of ideas on that front, and she was also a strong advocate for her daughter. We always ask clients questions like how they hope to live in their home, and for how long, but the impressive thing about this project was how specific those answers were.”

The firm and the clients worked together to balance accessibility with style in every aspect of the home’s design. The front entrance has stairs, but the family usually enters through the carport, which the firm rebuilt with a new ramp. The bathrooms were spacious, but they all had tubs—so Studio For swapped one for a walk-in shower with slip-resistant tiles.

They peeled back old carpets (a tough surface for wheelchairs to maneuver on) to reveal smooth wood floors, and they opened the kitchen to the living and dining area while ensuring that the existing steel columns left enough clearance for glides and turns.

“We totally gutted the kitchen to reconfigure it, and placed a peninsula on one end for bar seating,” Khanani says. “If you look closely, there’s a lower ledge—because Julie wanted to make sure her daughter could eat there, too.”

Before: Bedroom

After: Bedrooms

Along the way, the firm and clients carefully considered which details to preserve, and which to update. They kept the existing wood beams above the kitchen and the redbrick fireplace in the living area, which provides the perfect backdrop for the midcentury furniture Julie prefers. They replaced and added windows to bring in more light and create a stronger connection to the new, wider deck. And they took down the walls around the basement stairs and added a steel railing.

“One of the biggest shifts was that we converted an existing screened-in porch on one side of the house into a guest suite,” Khanani says. “This suite is on the ground floor, and it can be used by Julie’s parents, who she knew would visit often.”

Before: Swimming Pool

After: Swimming Pool

The project was completed at the end of 2022, and Khanani says that Julie has already hosted Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter, using her wide lawn to hide colorful eggs.

“We designed this home for a family, and we went through the usual process even if their requirements were more necessary than those of others,” Khanani says. “It’s rewarding to know that their home is exactly what they needed in so many different ways.”

More Before & After stories:

A Family of Four Gives a Derelict Catskills Farmhouse a Whimsical Revamp

Siblings Turn a Neglected Victorian Into a Dreamy Catskills Hotel

A Vibrant Revamp Gives a Cramped Brooklyn Brownstone Room to Breathe

Project Details:

Architect of Record: Scott N. Phillips

Design Team: Fauzia Khanani, Scott Phillips, Deena Darby, Studio For / @studioforny

Structural Engineer: Clapper Structural, Bryan Clapper

Civil Engineer: Christopher R. DiChario

Landscape Design: Aja Hudson

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Before & After: This Accessible Catskills Retreat Brings Together Three Generations of Family