To preserve or not to preserve...part 2

photo by Ryan Benyi

The interior walk-through closet areas of the two 2nd-floor bedrooms were sacred to Kevin and me from the moment we saw them. We chanted the names of the wood species to anyone who would listen: bird's-eye maple cabinets, doors and mantel pieces in the master bedroom and oak in the back bedroom. Their survival through decades of hard and messy use while they were kitchenettes for the boarding house units exalted them even more in our minds. It is miraculous how intact they had managed to remain.

When our architect, Susanne Lyn, told us that our salvaged, cast-iron spiral staircase should be installed by the exterior wall of the house, we were unswayed.

We had to find a place for the stair that would not require us to sacrifice any of those beloved built-ins; we thought we'd found that spot in a closet in the back room. On-site measurements, however, shifted the stair more toward the cabinets and we had to say goodbye to one side of the oak.

Our original plan did include slight alterations, which we could only bear because the original marble counter tops and sinks had been replaced by Formica and metal sinks long ago. We wanted to convert the sink areas into very shallow hanging closets. On the oak side, we were going to reuse the beautiful mirrored door from the opposite side that had been eaten by the staircase to construct the closet. On our side―the maple side―we, once again, scored on Brownstoner's forum, finding bird's-eye maple pocket doors for sale, which Kevin and Mike retrieved late one night from Crown Heights and Mario re-engineered to fit our opening.

We didn't realize that our fantasy of continuing to preserve the walk-throughs was going to be further shattered…by practical-minded Mike. He came up with a clever plan to combine three awkwardly-shaped closets―one overly deep and narrow in the Master BR and two shallow ones in the walk-through―into one spacious and functional walk-in closet (the holy grail in NYC).

He proposed to close up the closet doorway in the BR, which meant shrinking down a stunning double door-frame (see above), and to consolidate the two other closet doors into one center doorway, which resulted in the loss of the beautiful "crown effect" of the top molding fully encircling the walk-through area (left). We shed a few more tears, and marched onwards.

The two new doorways have been perfectly recreated by Mario. We are looking forward to filling our big closet and being able to organize everything thanks to a wonderful shelving system by TomKat Fine Woodworking. The stunning original door frames and molding will live on always in our memories…