You know a renovation is getting serious when you have to buy a commercial building to get a space large enough to make the custom millwork. That was what Tessa French and Zeb Burge, the couple behind design-build firm Spot Lab, found themselves doing in the spring of 2021 when they signed on to reimagine a 980-square-foot apartment on the top floor of a 1953 cooperative building in Brooklyn’s Windsor Terrace neighborhood.

The clients—Eric Tsai, a programmer at a linguistics research institute, and Audrey Christensen-Tsai, a research collection manager—had seen the pair’s work on a Brooklyn house, which had been featured on Brownstoner, a local real estate website. “It felt like it was done by somebody that had a handle on fun detail, but it wasn’t overdone,” says Audrey. “They had a strong sense of color.”

Eric and Audrey, who have an eight-year-old son, August, purchased their two-bedroom corner unit knowing they would have to address the kitchen’s and bathroom’s outdated finishes and appliances. “I remember moving in and saying, ‘We just have to live with the kitchen for a year,’ ” says Audrey. They had to nail shut drawers that had no bottoms. Throughout the apartment, cramped, closed-off spaces were a squeeze to navigate, and there was a serious lack of storage for their library of more than 1,000 books, which occupied every corner and surface. “I’ve never really gotten rid of books,” says Eric. “Generally, any book that I get my hands on doesn’t leave.” (“I read everything on Kindle because of Eric’s book habit,” Audrey adds.) In addition to a modern kitchen, the family wanted a way to host up to eight dinner guests comfortably and a designated workspace to replace Eric’s desk in the entrance hall, which doubled as a pullout dining table and, unofficially, a catchall for unending clutter.

To open things up and add functionality, Spot Lab envisioned curved, birch-plywood cabinets that would snake from the kitchen—which gained a U-shaped banquette—to the living room, creating a built-in desk in the hallway and adding floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Blue Durat kitchen and bath countertops made of a recyclable, polyester-based material and blue paint on the undersides of shelves and inside closet doors visually connect the spaces. Modular pegboards in the kitchen and office area allow for evolving uses. “It was the right call in terms of flexible growth, but also the language of the circles as a texture became a cool part of the design,” says French.

There was just one problem: The designers didn’t have prior cabinetry-building experience. “We just bootstrapped this thing,” says Burge, who called a vacuum press supplier for a crash course in bending plywood in the couple’s new woodshop, which they’d converted from a dilapidated alternator repair shop so they could produce millwork in-house. “The banquette was the most difficult thing we made,” he says. French agrees: “It was way more math than we even thought possible.”

The designers’ hard work paid off, however—the family hosted eight for dumpling-making around their banquette this past Chinese New Year. Eric’s desk is no longer an afterthought. In terms of other millwork, a custom media console in the living room holds the couple’s robust record collection, a closet (created by combining two small bedroom closets and a linen closet) expands storage in the primary bedroom, and a new vanity punches up the bathroom. The family’s next project? In true bibliophile fashion, organizing and cataloging their books.

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Spot Lab

Builder: Thaer Abuqare, Imperium Construction Services

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A Bibliophile Couple’s Brooklyn Apartment Finds a Smart Storage Solution for More Than 1,000 Books