Brooklyn
onfidential C
Above: Katie mixed a dining room table she found at the Brimfield flea market with china cabinets from Drexel Heritage. She calls the Pratt & Lambert Vintage Claret walls “fierce, but warm.” Right: Large-scale pineapples on the entry hall’s Studio Printworks wallpaper are almost as tall as Prentiss.
On one side is a family that has been there forever—they grow
tomatoes for sauce and figs in the backyard. On the other side,
there’s a young couple with kids who play with ours. They’re
discovering the neighborhood with us,” she says. Their guides
include such characters as Vinny, the unofficial mayor of the block,
who is also an expert on alternate-side parking, a local obsession.
When Katie and William found the house, its appeal was
masked by its scent. “There were so many cats and dogs living
here,” she remembers. Moreover, the four-story house had been
split into four apartments. But Katie immediately felt a connection. “I knew it had the bones,” she says. “With every wall we
took down, I felt like the house breathed ‘thank you.’ We had a
relationship right off the bat.” Although she had renovated places
before, she had never embarked on a total gut.“I was intimidated,
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traditionalhome.com
but for the first time, this was really going to be my family’s home,
not just mine. It meant a lot to make it comfortable.” Because
she’s a speed demon, the job was finished in an unimaginable four
months. “I was on them like a cheap suit,” Katie laughs.
She wanted to put her own stamp on it but maintain a
conversation with the house. She saved the original tin ceilings
and added reclaimed barn-wood floors that ground the elegant
space with a rustic hominess. She brought French doors from
the Brimfield flea market to connect the music room to the
dining room, which shares space with a small entertaining
kitchen. (The main kitchen is on the ground floor, but Katie
got sick of carting dirty dishes down the stairs, so she installed
this satellite.) She created a retreat for her daughters on the top
floor and a roomy master suite on the third. ➤
