Sometimes a crisis becomes an opportunity. Such was the case when Abby Eskin and Zak Smith’s home flooded after pipes burst from a cold snap, forcing a renovation that turned into a whole-home makeover. The couple had moved from Los Angeles to Bozeman, Montana, with their two children, Zoe and Smith, and were living in a rental when they purchased the 1950s home. Situated near Montana State University in one of Bozeman’s only neighborhoods of midcentury residences, it attracted Abby and Zak with its floor-to-ceiling living room windows that filled the space with natural, even on dark wintry days.

But the rest of the house didn’t get much light, especially the kitchen, and its spaces felt disconnected from one another. Zak and Abby had been contemplating a renovation, but as Zak recalls, “We could be a little bit slow moving.” Then, when the basement and primary bedroom flooded, knowing these spaces would have to be remediated and essentially gutted, the couple realized this was their chance to do something more. Their daughter Zoe provided a push.

“When we were thinking about renovating, our daughter said, ‘I’d like to still live here when the house is done, before going to college,’” Zak recalls. “I hadn’t really been thinking about it that way, but Zoe was right. She wasn’t gonna get to experience the renovated house if we didn’t get things moving.”

The couple realized what they didn’t want was a typical regional approach, with “these kind of austere mountain-style or ski-lodge-feeling homes,” Abby recalls. “I was definitely worried that people wouldn’t get our aesthetic here.” What they did want was plenty of light and openness, and to embrace color.

Before: Living Room

After: Living Room

They met architect Allison Bryan, founder of Open Studio Collective, through their children, who attended the same school, and became intrigued once they learned Bryan had recently renovated her own home in Bozeman, another midcentury. “She had some great ideas right off the bat, just walking around the house, about things that we wouldn’t necessarily have thought of,” Abby says. Bryan immediately saw untapped potential. “It was these really segmented spaces with no connectivity. We just wanted to open everything up,” the architect recalls.

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen

Bryan specifically calls out an awkwardly placed casework coat closet near the front door, which was cutting off the the entrance from the living room—it had to go. So did a wall and cabinetry separating the kitchen from the living and dining area, since it partially blocked window light. A skylight in the kitchen, too, left something to be desired.

“I remember the first day I walked in, there was this huge skylight in the kitchen and it was completely covered up by a frosted piece of acrylic sitting low within the skylight that was cracked,” Bryan recalls. “I was like, Let’s take this out right now.” Today the kitchen stands out thanks to its refurbished skylight and custom blue cabinetry, which has a curved bar area at the edge of the space, a reference to a curving vanity in the kids’ bathroom, which was original to the house.

Before: Main Bathroom

After: Main Bathroom

In reference to the blue they chose, says Zak, “I’ve always enjoyed some of the midcentury-modern playfulness with color, and wanted to kind of embrace that, but not exactly the same—not with, say, avocado. Allison gave us a lot of choices. She had a strong vision, but was able to understand our aesthetic and really bring out the best in that.”

A major change was adding beechwood floors throughout the main level, their light tone brightening the spaces. Bryan had chosen the same floors, milled by Sheoga Flooring in Ohio, for her own home’s renovation. There were also key investments one doesn’t see, but made the home much more energy and resource efficient: new HVAC, plumbing, and insulation.

Before: Basement Stairs

After: Basement Stairs

Because there are no longer cabinets or a wall separating the kitchen and dining area, the spaces feel more connected. An open shelf on one side of the kitchen lets in more window light, as does the refurbished skylight. And by removing a portion of another wall beside the stairway leading to the basement, then cladding the lower portion of the wall in glass, the kitchen also feels better connected to the basement level. “When you’re sitting at the counter, you can see if someone is hanging out downstairs,” Bryan says.

Because it receives more light from upstairs as well as from new windows, the basement, which acts as a family room and (with the help of a Murphy bed) a guest room, “doesn’t feel like a basement,” Zak adds. “It just feels like another level of the house.” The stairway has been widened about halfway down, letting the family use it as stadium seating. Double-height treads there double as storage space, too.

Before: Dining Area

After: Dining Area

In the shower of the flood-damaged primary bath, to complement the kitchen cabinetry, Open Studio Collective and the homeowners chose tiles by Dwell and Concrete Collaborative in a shade of blue.

“The original bathroom had this yellow laminate, so at first we were trying to replace it with a new yellow, but Abby and Zak kept being drawn to blues,” recalls designer Georgia Barnett of Open Studio Collective. “And with this tile, there’s a lot of variation in the color, more than we realized when we were selecting it, because it’s handcrafted. I think it adds so much more depth than if it were to choose identical tones.”

Before: Kids’ Bathroom

After: Kids’ Bathroom

In the kids’ bathroom, a new custom vanity replicates the original’s curve. Its shape is functional, becoming narrower nearer the shower to create more floor space. An update to the original, the countertop now extends past the glass shower door to form a shelf inside the shower.

Arguably the most distinctive bedroom is not the primary, but the couple’s daughter Zoe’s, which originally was clad almost entirely in stained plywood. The family loved the look, but overall the space was dark, and the ceiling sagged. The renovation retained the built-in plywood desk as well as a plywood-clad wall, but now, a white ceiling brightens the room substantially.

Before: Second Bedroom

After: Second Bedroom

Open Studio Collective also retained a distinctive series of recessed ceiling lights in several rooms, which provided relatively little illumination, and in some rooms didn’t work at all. The clients wondered about taking them out altogether, but Bryan advocated they be retained. “It was a small thing, but really cool, and reminded me of Alvar Aalto,” she said. Simply replacing the old fluorescent bulbs with LED lights made them much more effective.

Bryan’s firm served as the general contractor as well as the architect, as had been the case for Bryan’s own house. But this was the first time serving in that capacity for another client; Zak and Abby made a point of giving an opportunity to a woman-owned firm.

With the renovation complete, the family not only love the bright, colorful look of their home, but it also helps them feel more connected. “I think it’s easier to have a feel of where everyone is and how they’re living in the space, whether it’s our son downstairs playing a video game, or our daughter down the hall,” Zak says.

In particular, the kitchen has become a multidimensional space for socializing and work. “The kitchen was really closed off before,” Abby explains. “It used to be if someone was there, they weren’t really interacting with anyone else in the house. But I tend to do everything here now. I will work here at the kitchen counter sometimes, if I’m not going to my office, and kids will hang out here a lot. It’s much more of a family space.”

And crucially, for a family that moved from Southern California to Montana, the added windows and openness help them feel closer to nature. “If someone’s like, ‘There’s a deer in the yard,’ you don’t have to walk into the other room to go see,” Zak says. “That quick access to the natural world, we really enjoy. I think the kids do, too.”

More Before & After stories:

Touring Midcentury Homes Was an Obsession. Then They Got to Revive One by Saul Zaik

An L.A. Music Producer’s Latest Collab? Turning a Midcentury Into His Family Home

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Open Studio Collective

Builder: Open Studio Collective

Structural Engineer: DCI Engineers

Custom Cabinetry: Applewood Studio

Appears In

Before & After: A Flooded Basement Kicked Off a Family’s Whole-Home Renovation in Montana