The Closet as Workspace, Bedroom or Bar

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/realestate/the-closet-as-workspace-bedroom-or-bar.html

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Some New Yorkers have a use-what-you-have mentality that allows them to see an ordinary old coat closet as a gift of more square footage in a city where every inch of interior real estate counts. With a little work and a lot of vision, they’ve discovered that the smallest and most unassuming space can become a bedroom, a work space, even a secret cocktail bar.

When Jane Herro, 30, a jewelry designer and a saleswoman at Realty Collective, first saw her one-bedroom apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn, she was most excited by the small coat closet behind a curtain next to the front door. It looked just big enough for her jeweler’s bench.

“I worked in my bedroom in my last place,” said Ms. Herro, who is originally from Milwaukee, and came to Red Hook after stints in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, and Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan. “When I saw this place I thought, that’s perfect. I love working from home, but I didn’t want to look at my work all the time, so I needed a closet where I could close it.”

The jeweler’s bench, which she bought at Metalliferous, did indeed fit the space perfectly. She pays around $2,000 a month in rent for her place, a price tag that’s still a shock after living in a Milwaukee studio that cost $500 a month. The trade-off is an artist-friendly neighborhood and a landlord who is understanding about the Saturdays she spends hammering away at strips of sterling silver or soldering small items with a torch.

Ms. Herro, who has a degree in jewelry and metalsmithing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, considered renting studio space for her work, but that didn’t seem feasible, given New York City rents. She walked away from a work space of 100 square feet for $400 a month. “I was like, I can figure this out,” she said.

She started by making modifications to the closet. “I added a bunch of shelving. I was dating a carpenter, so that was always convenient. I tend to date makers,” she said.

Storage space for her personal belongings hasn’t been an issue, because she swaps her winter and summer wardrobe in and out of the bedroom closet, keeping the out-of-season clothes in her kitchen cupboards. The savings on studio rent mean she can splurge on occasional dinners out, or on materials to make more jewelry. And when it comes to the commute, the closet couldn’t be more convenient.

“I literally wake up some mornings, roll out of bed and go straight to my bench in my pajamas,” she said.

She sometimes worries that working in a closet might be viewed as unprofessional by visiting clients.

“I say, ‘My studio is in my apartment, so don’t be shocked.’ People generally walk in and say, ‘I love Red Hook,’ and ‘Wow, you work in a closet!’ I pull back the curtain and it’s kind of the big reveal. People think it’s cool.”

A New York City closet can also be a living space. For families who are not quite ready for a suburban home, turning a closet into a small bedroom can help keep the moving van at bay.

Two years ago, Priya Patel, now 45, the founder of 4Mativ, a design and architecture studio, and her husband, Jesse Soleil, 49, the executive vice president, global director of digital at Porter Novelli, converted the windowed closet in the master bedroom of their townhouse in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, into a bedroom for their youngest child, Sasha Soleil, 7. The couple have two other children, Fortune Soleil, 17, Mr. Soleil’s son from a previous marriage, and a daughter, Sitara Soleil, 10, and just three bedrooms.

Sasha bunked with Fortune for a while, but the age gap between the boys made the situation difficult. When Sasha turned 5, the couple went to work reorganizing their bedroom. They put off-season clothes into storage, and bought free-standing wardrobes from Ikea. Then they added a loft bed and pocket doors to their now-empty bedroom closet and assigned it to Sasha.

“When Sasha got his room and I Facebooked it, people that live in other parts of the U.S. were like, ‘What?’ ” said Ms. Patel, who was the room’s designer. Her cousins who have sprawling houses in Texas were especially startled by the design choice.

But Sasha excitedly took ownership of the cheerful nook, moving in with his Yu-Gi-Oh! game cards, books and record player. Having his parents nearby has been a comfort to him, and the door to his room almost always stays open. “He can see us and that helps him sleep through the night,” Mr. Soleil said.

The setup may soon change as the family contemplates selling the townhouse, moving into Manhattan and buying a weekend house in the country. The townhouse, which they bought in 2005 for $750,000, is listed for sale at $1,799,999 and the closet bedroom has been a conversation starter at open houses, Ms. Patel said. “People have been coming in and saying, ‘Only in New York!’ ”

“I see the closet as a bedroom all the time,” said Abigail Palanca, a saleswoman at Compass real estate, who is working with the Patel-Soleils. “It’s definitely the new normal.”

Just like her clients, Ms. Palanca converted a walk-in closet into a room for her son so he would not have to share with his sibling. “It’s bought me a little more time in a neighborhood that I love,” she said, referring to Windsor Terrace.

Living life in the closet also gives city dwellers the chance to pursue their livelihoods without paying additional rent.

When Kristin Price-Wilson, 40, was ready to expand her career as a voice actor, she stepped into a closet in the Midtown Manhattan one-bedroom she shared with her husband, Greg Wilson, and began recording. The clothing in the closet acted as a sound buffer, though not enough of one to muffle the outbursts of a neighbor or the flushing toilets and running showers in other apartments.

When the studio next door became available, she and Mr. Wilson, 51, the director of inventory planning for the Crown Publishing Group, decided to buy it and merge both apartments. While they were at it, they would create a proper voice-over booth in a closet of what would become the master bedroom in the new space.

Mr. Wilson had purchased the original one-bedroom in 2004 for $379,000. He and Kristin Price — that’s still her professional name — met on eHarmony, moved in together, married, and in 2009, paid $225,000 for the studio next door. They have a 2-year-old son, Alec.

Contractors were initially puzzled by Ms. Price-Wilson’s request to cut a window in the wall between the closet and the adjoining desk area. “The first window they built was a little low,” she said. “They were assuming I’d be sitting in the desk chair looking through the window, but I actually need to be in the booth standing and looking at the computer.” Ms. Price-Wilson uses a wireless keyboard and mouse to record herself — she can even Skype clients and take direction through her headphones.

The upgraded booth has been a boon to Ms. Price-Wilson’s busy freelance career. “Stuff I’ve recorded in here has ended up on TV,” said the actor, who, on a dime, can change her tone from sultry car saleswoman to manic pizza pitch person. Having a home studio also permitted her to work up until two days before Alec was born, and regularly ever since.

In 2015, construction noise propelled a decision to move. They sold their place for about $1 million. Bridget Harvey, a broker at Douglas Elliman Real Estate, helped them find a three-bedroom apartment in Hudson Heights, Manhattan, for just over $1 million. A top-floor co-op, it has views of the George Washington Bridge.

The smallest bedroom is well suited for a voice-over booth and a desk (and incidentally, has no closet). This time, Ms. Price-Wilson will treat herself to a prefab stand-alone booth. The couple call it the Tardis after the police box used as a time travel machine on the BBC science-fiction show “Doctor Who.”

Repurposing a closet is not an idea that was born yesterday. In 2011, when Yi Tyng Tan, now 37, and her husband, Maxime Balay, 35, bought their Upper West Side one-bedroom loft for around $700,000, a closet under a staircase had been emptied of coats to make space for a desk. Ms. Tan, a lawyer who is taking time off to be with 5-month-old Celeste, and Mr. Balay, who works for a wine and spirits company, decided the closet could be put to even better use as a custom-designed cocktail bar.

“My husband has a big collection of alcohol, so we came up with the idea to have a wine bar where we could entertain friends and have date nights,” Ms. Tan said. They frequented speakeasy-style bars like Raines Law Room on West 17th Street when they started dating, she said, “so I loved the idea of hiding the bar.”

Ms. Tan posted the project to the renovation blog Sweeten to solicit bids from contractors. Enter Jonathan Eklund, the owner of Ecostruct, a design and build firm, who loved the idea of transforming the space under the stairs, she said.

“I had an idea of what I wanted to do, and I sketched it down on a yellow legal pad,” Ms. Tan said. “I looked on Pinterest and Apartment Therapy for inspiration and sourced materials from Home Depot. Because we had just bought a place, I didn’t have a big budget.”

The closet bar was inaugurated with a party for friends who were pleasantly surprised when the closet doors parted to reveal a watering hole. Before the baby came, the bar was a crucial part of whiskey tastings and theme nights. “We were going through this ‘Mad Men’ phase,” Ms. Tan said. “We’d watch it and make ourselves an old-fashioned like Don Draper.”

For Mr. Balay, who is from outside Paris, the closet bar serves an important social function. “Amongst our American friends, it’s very rare that people welcome other people into their homes. It’s probably specific to New York because apartments are so small,” he said. “But in France bringing people to your place is a must-do. It’s a different mind-set. The bar facilitates that.”

Instead of seeing the small space of her apartment as a problem, Ms. Tan looked at the possibilities. “I grew up in Singapore; we’re used to small apartments there. Growing up there were seven of us in a two-bedroom apartment.”

Still charmed by New York a decade after arriving from France, Mr. Balay said, “Space is a luxury in the city, so you use what you have and you try to make it work.”