Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

Kitchen Storage

Because we did 99% of the work ourselves, our renovation progressed not along some deeply-reasoned timeline, but in fits and bursts, governed by the alchemical interaction of necessity and ability.

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Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

I Abhor Trends

Something about me: I abhor trends. Not to say I inoculate myself completely (seems like the only color trainers you can buy these days are white?) but rather that, in general, a big ole crowd of people doing something is enough to put me right off it.

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Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

Old Exits

One of my favorite things about designing spaces is the challenge of contending with preexisting elements that I consider, for the most part, sacrosanct.

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Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

The Kitchen Floor (Heaps)

Let me tell you about heaps. There are the heaps of lath that you tear out of the walls, and the heaps of plaster and horsehair that come with it. There are heaps of old floorboards in the basement that grow as you remove them from the bathrooms, and at the end of the day there are heaps of filthy clothes on the floor of your bedroom as you fall into bed, tender-skinned from the scrubbing you’ve given yourself in the shower. Heaps, my friend, are the constant.

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Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

The Kitchen Bathroom

My mother has this idea about American abundance as measured in the ratio of bathrooms to bedrooms, where the number by which the former exceeds the latter says something about its inhabitants, something like 'we are materialists, vapid'. I admit there is something to this, though like any social generalization it's not hard and fast and exists more clearly at the extremes, for instance in the 6-bed, 7.5-bath penthouse of the new Hudson Yards development. Anyway, having long internalized this toilet-based condescension it came as a bit of a surprise that we ended up with as many bathrooms as we did, not through any real effort but rather because of how the house had been used before we owned it.

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Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

Kitchen Challenges

One of the most evident challenges of the house was the kitchen. Because of a long standing, full-width addition stuck on to the back of the house, the kitchen had a set of challenges, namely a lack of light and also, because of a bathroom that had been shoehorned into it, a lack of space which gave it the feeling of a passageway to nowhere.

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Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

Milestones

When we started this account a couple of months ago we had pretty low expectations. We’ve done a lot of instagram promoting for our various artistic projects and in general it’s been an exhausting, anti-creative endeavor. This, I am happy to report, has been completely different.

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Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

The Parlor Bathroom, Part 3

I approached the parlor bathroom with the purism of the novice. This meant that I wanted ‘real’ everything, whatever the cost to sanity or budget. It’s a kind of aesthetic dedication that bleeds into all areas of my life and means that how it’s done is as important as the thing itself. OK, it’s mostly perfectionism.

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Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

The Parlor Bathroom, Part 2

So the parlor bathroom basically needed everything, but first, and urgently, it needed working plumbing—all the bathrooms did.

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Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

The Parlor Bathroom, Part 1

Ahhhhh the bathroom. The most under appreciated room in the house—until you do a diy renovation. Then suddenly it is the most important room: the one you quite literally cannot live without, the one that sucks in attention and resources, the one that threatens to end your relationship.

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Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

Doors

When we bought the house the doors were really our last concern. Sure, their surface was bubbled thickly with black paint, but at least they worked—ish, and once we found a few hours to reset their hinges with new ones, they really did work enough.

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Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

Locks

When I was growing up I remember hearing stories about boys taking apart computers and putting them back together to see how they worked. In my memory it was always said in a kind of whispered awe: these young geniuses with their irrepressible, adventuring minds.

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Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

The hidden wallpaper

One of the things I’ve grown to be very grateful for through the course of this house restoration is a well-cut corner. But K, you exclaim, You are known far and wide as a hard work enthusiast! You pray at the altar of the patron saint of Thoroughness! You are a founding member of the Do It Right Or Don’t Even Bother Club! Not wrong. Let me explain.

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Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

The painted ceiling

When we first saw the house, even before we decided to make an offer, I spotted a tantalizing curl of yellowing paint barely clinging to the parlor ceiling, and in the empty plaster space where it once fit, the faintest suggestion of a line. A leaf? A scroll? Were the parlor ceilings of solidly-middle class townhouses ever painted, even? I went home that night and researched, but could find nothing.

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Kirini O.K. Kirini O.K.

The beginning

When we started working on the house back in 2017 my friends told me we should put the process on Instagram. The words were, if I remember correctly, something, something, content, brands, sponsorship, money, which is exactly the opposite of how I think about what is valuable to me.

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