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All Photos/living/furniture : storage/furniture : bookcase/lighting : pendant/floors : medium hardwood

Living Room Storage Bookcase Pendant Lighting Medium Hardwood Floors Design Photos and Ideas

Sometimes all it takes is a little luck. For a young married couple, it came in the form of this rare find: a 19th-century, three-story, single-family home in the heart of Paris. The building was a charmer with good bones, but was in need of some serious care. In a vibrant retrofit by architect Pierre-Louis Gerlier that includes structural reinforcements, the reimagined design is set off with a new floor plan. The lower level now serves as a space for the couple’s children, with the public areas—including an open-plan living/dining room and kitchen—on the floor above. Upstairs, the attic has been transformed into a very large primary bedroom with a green-and-white bathroom suite. The living room (pictured) showcases the firm’s bespoke carpentry work with a beautiful, mossy-green built-in bookcase that frames a new fireplace, and a staircase surrounded by arched doorways that hold hidden storage. “We created visual breakthroughs in order to connect the different spaces,” says Gerlier. “The rounded arches are there to help magnify these moments.”
From the start, the clients wanted their home to have a "barn look," honoring the agrarian vernacular of the built environment around them. Interior walls and ceilings are clad in local pine, with a paint treatment to remove the yellow from the wood.
Two dividing orange bulkheads—which are the box gutters that protrudes through the house—separate the three pavilions. The family congregates in the central pavilion for meals around the dining table, and to relax in the lounge.
The built-in sofa anchors the living room and faces the existing fireplace. The Leather Oval Chair with a red steel base sits off to the side, and the coffee table was fashioned by attaching vintage steel legs to another tile sample board.
Adding in live-edge details via countertops, freestanding furniture pieces, or built-in shelves is something that O’Donnell enjoys. "It’s fun to come up with uses for funky live edges and incorporate that into the design and still make it functional," he says.
As an architect who specializes in universal access design and ADA compliance and as a wheelchair user herself, Karen Braitmayer was no stranger to the challenges of accessible design. Although she had been able to take advantage of her 1954 home's single-level, open layout, as her daughter (also a wheelchair user) grew up, the family's accessibility needs also shifted. The main living area includes a more formal sitting area near the entrance, the dining area, Braitmayer’s workspace, and the kitchen—you can see the couple’s daughter working at the island. In the foreground is a pair of midcentury chairs; at left is a Heywood-Wakefield that Braitmayer found at an antiques shop. Seattle-based designer Lucy Johnson completed the interiors. The windows are from Lindal, and the exterior doors are from Marvin.
The design team sought to make rooms feel more like apartments, and so included reading nooks and hangout spots throughout, mixing jewel-toned furnishings with vintage finds and rock-and-roll ephemera.
In the wide hallway between the kitchen and additional bedrooms is an entertainment and leisure space.
Near a Gent wood-burning stove by Thorma in the living area, an IKEA Poäng chair and ottoman provide a cozy spot for reading. Thanks to the passive design strategies utilized by Ovchinnikov, the house stays warm through the winter with only minimal heating required.