Part 5: Making room for our home’s hiding places
As we put the finishing touches on the plans for our home, our dreams of dinner parties in the finished open kitchen , of repurposed original sconces and refurbished original details , gave way to a less sexy obsession. The mop, the vacuum, our winter coats, the laundry. Specifically: Where would they all go and how could we banish them from sight? In the New York prewar apartments we’d lived in for years, closets were strictly optional and washer-dryers were nonexistent. What made glossy interior photos appealing , I came to realize, was what you didn’t see, because it was tucked into a hidden closet or built-in cabinet. Renovating our house gave us a shot at discreet convenience. Entering the first-floor apartment, pre-renovation, meant coming face -to-face with a faux-wood- grained cabinet door —in actuality, a false front. It was an arguably clever way to bump out the bathroom on the other side to make room for a turquoise jacuzzi-shaped tub. Otto’s initial plan for the enlarged ...