ROOM TO GROW Joanna Delson and David Venderbush turned a narrow brownstone into a modern home with multipurpose spaces. Credit Albert Vecerka/Esto, for The New York Times
There is a fairly predictable real estate trajectory for the growing family in New York, from single-life studio to one bedroom, from one bedroom to two. A dining alcove becomes the nursery, you annex the apartment next door, and then the outer boroughs and finally the suburbs beckon.
Joanna Delson and David Venderbush, who are both 44, thought they would follow this trail, albeit later in their lives than many, when they moved with two children and one on the way from a large Los Angeles apartment into a 933-square-foot two-bedroom in Morningside Heights.
But that was seven years ago. On a list for a larger co-op in their complex, they bided their time by enclosing their terrace and making it into a dining room, office and guest room, moving the children to bunk beds and stowing possessions in floor-to-ceiling Ikea storage units.
Ms. Delson, a former high school teacher, made such clever use of the apartment that friends, and then friends of friends, began asking for small-space advice, and Mr. Venderbush suggested she start a business. In 2003, she began operating Space Management, finding clients by word of mouth.
Four years later, this past August, the family finally decamped to a new space, a narrow 2,400-square-foot townhouse in East Harlem, renovated by Ms. Delson’s sister, Perla, a partner at Delson or Sherman Architects in Brooklyn, and full of space-expanding solutions that both women helped develop.
The family had wanted to move east to be closer to the children’s schools (their sons are now 11 and 8, their daughter 6), Mr. Venderbush’s law firm and the Delsons’ mother. “We didn’t know what we could afford,” Joanna Delson said. “I thought we would have to buy a small apartment now and eventually buy another to cobble something together.”
In early winter 2004 she saw a listing in East Harlem, and thought the neighborhood would be convenient. When she called, the apartment had already sold, but the broker offered to show her a four-story, 16-by-40-foot brownstone divided into four apartments.
Even though the building was rundown, it had good proportions and high ceilings. “We hadn’t considered buying a brownstone, because we assumed it was beyond our budget,” she said, but after they saw the house, “we decided to reach for it.” Then, having gotten over the shock of owning a townhouse — even one for which they paid just under $1 million, a surprisingly low price for Manhattan — Ms. Delson and Mr. Venderbush had to figure out how they could afford to turn the four apartments back into a single-family house.
Initial cost-cutting ideas included moving in without renovating, adding expensive items like bathrooms in stages and renting out the ground floor. But faced with the prospect of living for years amid construction, they decided to go for it, within reason: to gut the house and create three full baths, a custom kitchen and four bedrooms, all within its narrow width.
The kitchen.CreditAlbert Vecerka/Esto, for The New York Times
The playroom-mudroom. CreditAlbert Vecerka/Esto, for The New York Times
What they wanted was an expanded version of their apartment, with open, communal spaces and private pockets for each family member. Desks could be shared, and there would be only one TV. While Perla Delson tried to minimize the cost of the major aspects of the renovation, Joanna Delson scavenged furniture from the street and tag sales, and shopped for inexpensive hardware. For the kitchen, fitted with painted maple cupboards made by Square Indigo, the contractor, the perfect pulls turned out to be from Ikea, curved stainless steel handles. “Nice ones were not in the budget, especially not when multiplied by 32,” Joanna Delson said, gesturing at the cabinets stretching more than 11 feet to the ceiling. The striped front-door mats are from Ikea, and the living room lamp is Thomas O’Brien for Target.
The old pine subfloors, which had been covered with vinyl and ceramic tiles, were solid, albeit pocked and worn. They were stained dark brown on two floors and painted gray on the top level. The staircase was sound, so it, too, was painted gray and brown (Joanna Delson’s colors of choice), and only broken treads and spindles were replaced.
The architects picked $4-per-square-foot ceramic tile, from Dal-Tile, for the children’s bathroom, which is divided so that all three can use it at once: the toilet and tub are in separate rooms, with a double sink at the center.
The couple also made sustainable choices whenever possible. The house was gutted, and recycled denim insulation was added to all the exterior walls. The paint is from an environmentally friendly line made by Benjamin Moore. The third-floor laundry room has a cork floor and an energy-saving washer.
The couple say they have spent considerably less than $1 million on the renovation, but they aren’t sure of the total cost because the construction has been done in fits and starts since they closed on the house in May 2005. Big-ticket items, like the facade, are still in the future.
The family lives in a house that looks finished but is intended to change over time. The first floor is largely unfurnished, with a cheap (but not cheap-looking) floor of stained Medex, a moisture-resistant, medium-density fiberboard with no added formaldehyde. “It is a playroom and mudroom, but it could be an apartment or mother-in-law space in the future,” Joanna Delson said.
All three children have their own rooms, but the two boys’ are each just 80 square feet. A teenager could move into the library-TV room (on the third floor) later, or the TV could move into the playroom (which will eventually have built-in sofas), transforming it into a hang-out space. The living and dining areas are defined only by furniture, and could be switched around.
“They were very cautious about taking over the space,” Perla Delson said. “They didn’t want to be spread really far apart, since they had been so close.” Communal spaces were favored over private ones: the children’s rooms all open onto a hallway with floor-to-ceiling shelves and a gallery of artwork. The parlor floor is open, with the kitchen running along one wall. Joanna Delson’s “command post,” a closet-size office, is opposite the kitchen.
Most of the tradeoffs are invisible to the nonexpert eye: new interior doors are painted solid-core rather than hardwood. The family hasn’t bought much new furniture, beyond beds for the children. Ducts for central air-conditioning were installed, but the compressor will have to wait for another year. And the backyard is just grass. “That’s what the kids wanted,” said Mr. Venderbush, who cuts it with a push mower. “Everything else is hardscape in New York.”
The family often ends up all in the same room, just like old times. “The children do their homework on the dining room table,” said their mother, rather than at their desks upstairs. On a recent day, she added, the two youngest were playing in one of their bedrooms, an 8-by-10-foot space.
“I thought, how interesting they are in there, when they have a whole big house to play in,” she said.