NY-based interior designer, and bathroom and kitchen specialist, Kathleen Perkins is a force to be reckoned with. Kathleen has emerged as an expert and veteran design professional who has developed multi-million dollar projects from conception to completion.
Kathleen has personally gutted and renovated five brownstones in the last seven years, and still lives in her latest project, a 19th Century Carriage House in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. A combination of original restoration and Asian influence, the property has been a feature of home tours in Fort Greene since 2009. Here, Kathleen describes the history and how she renovated this fabulous home:
“I found this wreck of a place in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. The house, which was then basically a squat filled with students from a nearby college, was originally a three-storey carriage house circa 1849. There used to be many, many carriage houses on Waverly Avenue, where this property is located. However, the majority of them burned down in the 1930s and 1940s due to faulty wiring. Back in the day, this carriage house would have served as a barn for the horses and carriage for the main mansion on nearby Washington Avenue. There was once a connected pathway between the structures. The carriage house’s mansion was owned by the Hollenbeck Family, but it had also burned down and had been replaced by a community garden, which is still there today.
The original cherry tree that is over a 100 years old in the backyard of the carriage house was there when I bought the place. Not wanting to damage it in any way, we built a deck around it and included it into the decor of the outside entertainment area.
We were able to salvage a lot of the original beams and brick walls from the original structure, even though so much of it was destroyed. It gives the home its historical feel, which I love. But most of the house needed to be replaced. I wanted a ‘green’ home so I used a lot of salvaged material. The floors are bamboo, and we managed to find alot of 19th century, black panelled doors, which came from an old school in Redhook, also in Brooklyn.
More repurposed materials were used throughout the house, like the closet doors throughout, which are sliding parlor doors retrofitted with 19th century mother-of-pearl storm screens from the Philippines. We also found a pair of stunning doors salvaged from a home in Harlem that had been in a fire. In order to keep the doors the focal point, I used very simple, matte nickel Baldwin fittings for the door hardware.
From a decor standpoint, I really wanted to bring in an Asian influence, but also be able to mix in more industrial pieces that refer back to the history of the house. So the stair treads and window details throughout are rosewood from Indonesia, which mix well with the retro lighting from Urban Archaeology. When it comes to bathrooms, it’s all about luxury and modernity, so we went with Waterworks products in all three baths. Along with the Waterworks fittings, we brought in more luxury with Calcutta marble brick tile, and other stone features throughout. I wanted the master bathroom to be completely luxurious, so we put in radiant heat flooring, and even kept the massive fireplace.”
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