Home Renovation Tip: Get an Understanding of What’s Already Around

Emilio Fuscaldo sits in the garden outside the brick house that he designed for himself and his partner, Anna Krien, on a small subdivided lot in Coburg, a suburb north of Melbourne, Australia. Photo by Nic Granleese.

Karen White, David MacNaughtan, and their sons, Griffin and Finlay, hang out on the front deckof their narrow home in Toronto’s leafy Roncesvalles neighborhood. A narrow modernist composition of glass panes and purple brick, the house slips like a bookmark between two older buildings, a bright three-story abode on a lot narrower than most suburban driveways. Photo by Dean Kaufman. Read more about the small house here.

At over 500 square feet, the house’s green roof may be its most powerful—and most expensive—environmental statement. It cost $8,000 to waterproof, and $7,000 to landscape. Water from the roof feeds the toilet and the garden’s watering system, and the garden itself insulates the house and keeps gas bills low in winter. Photo by Nic Granleese.

Since surrounding neighbors can overlook the one-story property, Thomson created a roof detail that is environmentally friendly and attractive: “the bio-diverse [green] roof is planted with indigenous species of flowers and grasses,” he says.

The cavernous living room takes advantage of its height with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

The open-plan home’s core is the towering chimney—clad in the same double-long, thin bricks that sheathe the Kolumba museum in Cologne, Germany. It holds three fireplaces, a conventional oven, and a pizza oven; all vent into three distinct flues, emerging from the chimney as their own kind of architectural statement. Inside, life revolves around the brick chimney, which the architect surrounded with a concrete counter that wraps from the kitchen to the living area. The stools are vintage.

If you're looking for the ultimate minimalist bed frame, a platform bed with edges that extend beyond the mattress allow it to double as a bedside table, eliminating the need for other furniture.

It's traditional among homes in the region to enter through their backdoor, seen here. The door leads directly to the living room.

The Brick screen by Eileen Gray for Aram Designs blocks off a small office from the dining room.

The Parisian flat that American-born architect Michael Herrman shares with his wife, Cécile, and their 2-year-old daughter, Rose, had been nearly untouched since the 1790s, when it was built. “But I wanted to try and reveal some of its age in a fresh new context,” Herrman said.

Subverting the traditional, conservatively cozy British barn conversion, Carl Turner created a getaway in rural Norfolk for himself and his friends to visit, repose, and consider the beauty of agrarian minimalism. Turner reclaimed most of the timber used for the flooring as he renovated buildings in London. He thought his stockpile was big enough for the Ochre Barn, but the scale of the place defeated him. The solution, surprisingly, was eBay, turning up an old mill’s worth of boards.

Viewed from above, the lower level’s brick floors establish a sense of continuity between the living spaces and the outer courtyard. Two-stories of glazing ensure that the lower levels never feel gloomy.

A brick fireplace feature creates a low window from the kitchen into the living room to keep a connection between the rooms without relying on a completely open floor plan. Energy-efficient MR16 halogen lights are recessed into the wood ceiling to further emphasize the clean lines throughout the interior spaces.

Blogger and stylist Annaleena Leino Karlsson has designed her 1950s farmhouse to have a mostly white interior. Her workspace is next to a rustic brick and stucco fireplace, which is adorned with cacti and decorative objects.

In the house’s front room Monkman relaxes on a stool from local retailer Andrew Richard Designs. A new window system draws in sunlight and views of the front courtyard designed by local landscape architect Terry McGlade, the building’s former owner.

The lower level is covered in traditional red brick, while the upper level consists of coil-coated aluminium sheet with large glass panes.

Fuscaldo and Krien found an old workbench and used the wood to create the counter around the kitchen sink. Photo by Nic Granleese.

The facade of a house in Belgium consists of "knitted bricks." “In this part of Belgium, 90 percent of the houses are built with brick,” says architect Tom Verschueren. “It’s a classic material that we tried to use in House BVA in a totally different way.”

The design team preserved one of the original brick walls, which dates to 1870, but created a modern contrast by covering the other wall in smooth concrete. A sculptural piece by Santiago Lena hangs from the ceiling.

Sliding doors cast shadows across the concrete floor.

The rear of the house features Victorian brick, a modern extension, and Velfac windows. Landscape designer Matthew Wright was inspired by the art of Henri Rousseau when choosing plants to set amid the garden’s Dorset pebbles.

The room also contains a sofa by Flexform, cushions from textile firm Chevalier Masson, a Jens Fager candelabra, and a painting by Roger Raveel.

The residence is set back a few feet from the site’s edge, allowing more light to flood into neighbors’ windows and leaving space for trees. “The idea was to make a strong gesture to incorporate ideas of openness,” Lynch explains. “It’s not just a box if you look at it closely. It’s a series of planes that fit together."

This Victorian-era home in Melbourne, renovated by OOF! Architecture, maintains privacy from the street, but does so in an unusually "friendly" manner—with a giant brick wall that spells out "Hello," a collaboration with local artist Rose Nolan. The residents wanted their house to appeal to passersby, since it sits on a well-trafficked block near a café.

The travertine floor for the guest bedroom came from a De La Espada showroom in Soho. When moving stores, the owners were considering throwing out their travertine floor, but Dealtry offered to install it in his home. Along with exposed ceiling beams, the tiles provide a sense of texture and warmth to the space. Photo by Tara Donne.

Green Thumb Sherman’s back garden is a model of adaptive reuse: The path is made from rubble bricks and concrete dug up from the backyard and crushed, and the bench is made from reclaimed cast-iron panels and mahogany scraps left over from replacing the interior stair treads.

The placement of the windows creates sight lines across the 4,770-square-foot structure. Northern Wide Plank sourced the reclaimed hemlock for the facade; Sherma Construction picked the specific boards to create a cohesive look. - North Hatley, Quebec Dwell Magazine : July / August 2017

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A sun-soaked reading corridor connects the living pavilion to the sleeping pavilion (seen in front).

A carpet of custom tile created by Navone punctuates a corridor on the first floor.