DIY Spirit Reinvents an Industrial Home
While he didn’t mind getting his hands dirty doing some of the work of refreshing the space, he knew he needed professional help when it came to the layout and choosing colors and furniture styles. He found designer Brenda Brix of AMR Design while searching for local professionals on Houzz and enlisted her help through a design consultation. She wrote up a detailed plan, and he implemented it himself, finding materials and furnishings and even teaching himself how to build and modify pieces.
For example, he bought mirror tiles and antiqued them. He took a basic pine cabinet from Ikea and distressed it. He even located his own stainless steel and installed it himself as a backsplash. “I wanted to add personal touches and cool things that people would come in and we could talk about them for five minutes,” he says.
Brix’s plan divided up the long, narrow space without interior walls into a TV room with a sectional near the farthest window, a reading area with a single chaise in the middle and a conversation grouping with four chairs, seen here in the foreground. The sleeping area is to the right (not shown), separated by bookshelves.
Each chair in the conversation area is from a different supplier, because Brix and the homeowner felt that four of the same club chair would have made the space feel too heavy.
Breaking up the three walls of brick with artwork also kept things from feeling too heavy. The homeowner made the bus stop–style signs himself on canvas. “It brings a little script into the space and flows with the brick, so it feels like you’re outside,” says Brix.
Red chair: Costco; leather chair with metal: Wayfair; metal chair with sheepskin: Restoration Hardware
He created the live-edge floating shelf from a piece of wood he picked out at a local supplier and attached it himself. He bought the range hood from Costco and took it to a local powder-coating shop.
The stairs lead to a home office.
Shelves: Ikea
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So he bought a plain pine cabinet from Ikea and went to the local Benjamin Moore paint store, where an employee gave him some guidelines on what to do. Before assembling the cabinet, he applied two coats of white paint as a base, then did a little sanding on each piece. He then played with brown and green colors in a couple of layers and sanded the pieces until he was happy with what he saw.
Chaise: Costco
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The large opening to the left of the living room leads to some storage, a Murphy bed for guests and a door that goes to a spacious patio, where the homeowner performed most of the work on the mirror, cabinet and more.