They Gutted This 1900 Home and Put It Back Together With Almost Nothing Standard
A 1900 Upper West Side home already had exposed brick, wood floors, built-ins, and a fireplace, but its rooms had collected finishes that pulled in different directions. Cream kitchen cabinets met small backsplash tiles, the fireplace sat inside dark painted millwork, and the cellar relied on freestanding furniture for work, storage, and recreation.
Designer Diana Maltseva of Gallery KBNY approached the 3,000-square-foot co-op triplex at 119 West 82nd Street as a full gut renovation. Across ten months, the project covered all three levels, with new flooring, changes to the staircase, and reworked parts of the layout.
What replaced the old interior goes far beyond new cabinets and finishes. Stone climbs from the kitchen backsplash to form the hood. An aquarium slots into custom millwork. A wood border traces the base of a marble fireplace. Reclaimed New York brick even appears where the masonry looks as if it could have been there for decades. Room by room, Maltseva turned construction decisions into part of the design.
Dark built-ins once made the fireplace wall feel separate
Deep gray-green cabinetry filled both sides of the original fireplace, with open shelves above closed storage. A wood mantel, patterned tile surround, and television added more layers to the center. Each component had its own finish and outline.
The fireplace was present, but it did not control the wall. Books, framed art, objects, cabinet doors, tile, and dark paint divided the elevation into smaller sections. That becomes important once the same wall appears after the renovation.
Brick already had a place in the house
Exposed brick ran beside the staircase, while gray painted walls, white balusters, wood steps, and strip flooring surrounded it. The brick wasn’t introduced as part of the new design language. Texture from the building was already visible before work began.
That existing material also helps explain why brick still feels at home beside the new finishes. The renovation could introduce cleaner millwork and stronger stone without turning the entire interior into a smooth white shell.
The cellar worked more like a collection of separate zones
Sports jerseys, a game table, leather chairs, an exercise bike, storage, and wall decor competed for the cellar floor and walls. Most functions depended on individual pieces placed into the room.
Nothing tied the work, recreation, display, and storage functions into one system. Later, Gallery would solve much of that with cabinetry built around the walls rather than more furniture placed against them.
Laundry exposed the utility side of the lower level
A washer and dryer sat beneath a wood counter against a rough painted masonry wall. Containers, laundry supplies, pipes, and equipment remained in view.
It is a useful contrast with the finished cellar because the renovation doesn’t just decorate the lower level. Much more of its function gets absorbed into planned surfaces and built-ins.
The small bathroom depended on basic fixtures
A toilet, louvered closet doors, brown floor tile, pale walls, and a simple ceiling fixture filled this compact room. There was little material hierarchy, with each part reading as a separate necessity.
Bathrooms after the renovation take the opposite approach. Pattern, stone, metal, cabinetry, and mirrors become part of a defined composition rather than a collection of fixtures.
Cream Shaker cabinets divided the old kitchen into small sections
Raised cabinet frames, stainless appliances, granite-pattern counters, square backsplash tiles, and hardware created many visual breaks across the kitchen. None of those choices was unusual on its own.
The issue was accumulation. Cabinet frames created one grid, backsplash grout another, while appliance faces broke the cream cabinetry again. The new kitchen would reduce those interruptions rather than add more decoration.
Farmhouse sink gave the old kitchen its strongest focal point
A white apron-front sink stood out against the darker counter, with cream cabinets and a tiled backsplash around it. Glass-front upper cabinets introduced another change in surface.
The sink carried much of the visual interest because the surrounding cabinetry followed a familiar format. In the renovation, the focal points shift away from an individual fixture and toward entire planes of wood and stone.
Peninsula connected the kitchen without becoming its centerpiece
The wider view shows how the kitchen opened toward the adjoining space. Pendant lights marked the peninsula, while cabinets wrapped the perimeter and stainless appliances remained exposed.
The footprint had potential, but the eye still landed on individual components. Cabinet, counter, backsplash, refrigerator, range, and lighting each announced themselves. Gallery’s new scheme keeps the open relationship while making those parts read as a more controlled composition.
Existing brick gave the living area something worth responding to
From the living room, the exposed brick wall becomes much more prominent. Its irregular surface sits beside smooth painted walls, wood flooring, upholstered furniture, and the opening into the kitchen.
That contrast matters across the renovation. Rather than make every surface match, the finished rooms continue to place refined materials beside texture, including polished-looking stone against wood and new millwork beside brick.
Walnut turns the new kitchen into broad blocks of cabinetry
The finished kitchen drops the cream Shaker fronts for walnut cabinetry with flatter faces and long vertical grain. Tall cabinets reach upward with fewer interruptions, while a pale stone island cuts across the darker wood.
Gallery describes the parlor kitchen as a transitional design centered on natural stone and custom cabinetry with satin brass finishes. The island uses Calacatta Brasil Honed quartzite with a waterfall edge.
The difference isn’t just color. Wood now reads as a large architectural surface, while the stone reads as another. Fewer small pieces have to compete for attention.
Stone leaves the countertop and becomes the range hood
The range wall pushes that idea further. Veined stone runs behind the cooktop, then rises into a large hood enclosure rather than stopping beneath a conventional metal hood.
Walnut cabinets frame the stone from both sides, and brass hardware adds narrow lines without breaking up the larger surfaces. What would have been a backsplash becomes much more important to the architecture of the kitchen.
Appliances disappear into a wall instead of breaking it apart
A stainless oven remains visible, yet the tall walnut cabinetry around it keeps the appliance from becoming the dominant object. Full-height panels create long vertical lines, with storage extending above and below.
Compare that with the original kitchen, where the refrigerator, range, dishwasher, cabinet frames, and backsplash each formed separate blocks. Here, the cabinetry sets the rhythm first and the appliance fits inside it.
Marble replaces several materials on the fireplace wall
The old fireplace combined painted cabinetry, patterned tile, a wood mantel, and a dark firebox. Its replacement gives the center of the wall to one veined stone surround.
Gallery identifies the material as Cipollino Ondulato Rosso, a natural Italian marble. White built-ins flank it, allowing the rust, gray, cream, and green movement in the stone to carry far more of the visual load.
The result shows a recurring move in this renovation: fewer materials within each focal feature, but far more impact from the material that remains.
Fireplace stone does not need a conventional mantel
Seen close up, the marble’s veining does what molding or an elaborate mantel might have done. Bands move across the surround rather than ending at each edge, making the material itself the ornament.
A narrow ledge provides enough depth for flowers and objects without covering much of the stone. Even the television becomes secondary against a surface with this much movement.
Floor was planned around the fireplace footprint
The base reveals one of the sharper design choices in the set. Parquet doesn’t just run into the marble and stop. A contrasting wood border traces the fireplace, turns at the corners, and separates the stone hearth from the surrounding pattern.
Gallery replaced flooring throughout the home as part of the gut renovation. That gave the designers control over a junction that can become an afterthought. Here, the point where wood meets stone received its own design.
Koi wallpaper turns a small bathroom into a full composition
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Blue-and-cream koi cover the walls above a navy vanity, while brass appears at the faucet, mirror, hardware, and light fixture. Pale stone on the vanity provides a break between the dark cabinet and active wall pattern.
The fish are not a random print. Gallery says the parlor bathroom introduced an aquatic theme through Sanderson koi wallpaper. The vanity counter also reused a remnant from the fireplace stone, carrying a material from the living room into a much smaller space.
That reuse is hard to spot from the room alone, but it explains why a bathroom with such a distinct identity still belongs to the same renovation.
Navy millwork rebuilds the cellar around the walls
The finished cellar bears little resemblance to the sports-filled room from image three. Navy cabinetry stretches across the walls, warm wood lines open niches, and work surfaces become part of the built-in composition.
Gallery designed the cellar as a study and lounge around one homeowner. Custom desks and bookcases joined the blue millwork, while the counters use Fusion Dark Leather quartzite.
Freestanding objects no longer have to define each zone. Cabinetry does that job, leaving the center of the room open for seating and circulation.
Aquarium becomes part of the cabinet wall
Instead of placing an aquarium on a stand, the design inserts it between sections of navy millwork. Cabinetry runs beneath it, open shelves rise beside it, and its rectangular opening follows the geometry of the surrounding built-ins.
The integration goes deeper than the photograph reveals. Gallery says the saltwater aquarium sits between two desks, with filtration hidden below and lighting and ventilation concealed above.
That makes the tank less like an accessory brought into the room and more like a feature the wall was constructed to hold.
Wine storage gets built into the same millwork system
Another section of the cellar cabinetry changes function without changing the overall language. X-shaped compartments turn a lower cabinet into bottle storage, while wood-lined niches above provide display space against the navy surround.
The detail completes the cellar transformation. Desks, bookshelves, aquarium, display niches, storage, and wine bottles don’t require a series of unrelated furniture pieces. Gallery folded them into one millwork system.
Across the home, that same approach appears at different scales. A hood becomes part of a stone wall, an oven slots into a walnut elevation, a fireplace determines the pattern at its feet, and an aquarium disappears into cabinetry. After taking the 1900 interior through a full gut, the designers didn’t rebuild it from a catalog of standard parts. They made the parts respond to the rooms.
Image credits go to Photographer: Kyle Caldwell, and designer Diana Maltseva of Gallery KBNY