A Family of 4 Turned This Basic 550-Square-Foot NYC Apartment into a Cozy Home
Adrienne Breaux
·8-min read
Alex and Margaret Ferrec share this small home with their two daughters, and say a challenge was figuring out how to fit lounging and dining in their very small living room. "The furniture selection is very specific," Margaret begins. Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
"We’ve experimented with different arrangements; dining furniture has to fold up and tuck in to move around the room easily. Nothing is extra in this room, and at the moment, nothing else can be added in December." The couple also covered three living room walls with green linen-cotton fabric ("renter-friendly since liquid starch can be washed off and fabric removed"). Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
The leather couch bought last fall is their best purchase. "Our first non-hand-me-down living room furniture piece and ooooh soo very nice IMO," Margaret writes. Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
"Their second biggest challenge is making enough storage space in the kitchen. "Every six to nine months we take inventory and remove what’s not needed." Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
"Cooking for a family in a small kitchen has to be strategic — cleaning up as you go, often cooking recipes that are built in one to two pots/bowls, prepping and cooking elements ahead of time so food can easily be repurposed and thrown into future dishes." Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
"I’d really love to install a dishwasher this year, but I can’t imagine where we’re going to put the displaced items." Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
Margaret says the bathroom design is by far their proudest DIY. Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
"It was the biggest investment and I suppose therefore the biggest risk to design it and source all of the materials on our own. I’m very pleased with how it turned out." Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
The honeycomb and terrazzo tile is from The Home Depot and the vessel sink is Kohler. The cabinets were designed and built by Alex with Rylex Custom Cabinetry in Europly. "Alex designed and built cabinetry to maximize storage with pull-out drawers. [The upper] cabinet is thin but tall, so it can hold quite a lot of linens and toiletries." Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
The Air Weight towels are from Coyuchi. "We rotate between 100% linen waffle towels + Coyuchi Air Weight Towels because they’re plush, but fast drying and durable." Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
Alex made much of the furniture in the primary bedroom. "The bed is on a wooden platform with four large pull-out drawers, filled with linens, art supplies, sports equipment, off-season clothing," Margaret describes. Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
Alex designed and built the dresser to be extra tall and extra narrow so that walking on that side of the bed is still possible. Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
The layered summer bedspreads are from The Company Store and the pillows are from William Sonoma Home. Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
Alex and Margaret replaced swinging doors and installed barn doors. The white jewelry cabinet and mirror are from Wayfair. Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
When asked what zodiac sign their home would be, Margaret says it's a Taurus, "in almost every way (excluding the resistance to change)." Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
Margaret's favorite element in the home is "sitting on the daybed surrounded by books in the library nook. I love to sit there alone or with the girls looking at art books, thinking, writing." Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
Margaret says their home is one that's often filled with regular guests, "[We] host people often — friends for dinner, neighbors, people needing the guest bed overnight." Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
"We have regular prayer meetings in our living room (folding chairs are stacked under the guest bed), Alex’s parents come over every Thursday afternoon for dinner. The space is small, but it’s used up!" Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
An accent wall in the kids' room is painted in Farrow and Ball's “Sulking Room Pink.” Alex made the toddler beds using a simple platform bed and wood legs found online. The dollhouse is from LEP1 and Margaret painted and wallpapered the inside with paper from PaperSource. Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
The wood shelving and book racks were made by Alex. Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
They also replaced the closet swing-out doors in the nursery with space-saving sliding barn doors. Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
In such a small space, organization is key! Margaret and Alex installed custom closet systems with wine crates for toys, hampers, and hanging rods. Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
Alex and Margaret Ferrec are both artists and media producers who have lived in New York City for 10 years. Alex is an architectural photographer and videographer who’s also a woodworking hobbyist. Margaret is one of Apartment Therapy’s own videographers, and has been responsible for many favorite house tours over the years. Now it’s her turn!
Seven years ago the couple purchased this 550-square-foot apartment in Washington Heights, which they now share with their daughters, 4-year-old Simone and 2-year-old Florence. When they first bought the place, the vibe was very much “basic early 2000s renovation,” with “honey cabinets, light blue walls throughout,” and an “all-white bathroom.” She reports that there was “no real character in the architectural details or materials.”
"With the hanging art in our living room, we broke away from the grid and also moved away from the usual gallery wall cluster. We found the right places for the three extra-large paintings based on how the three paintings interacted together. Then we balanced smaller works in between and around them, balancing them based on the natural lines of sight that the big pieces directed. Everything is balanced but more intuitively, spaced out way with white wall space in between for breathing room. Visually, I move through and see the images/themes/colors as a run-on sentence," Margaret explains. "The artwork is either our own or by our dear friend, Rupert. Each piece is singular, has weight and meaning to us." Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
Margaret explains that they “brought in natural texture, organic modern, and folk decor with rich craftsman furniture, clean white walls, and lots of colorful art and books.” But they went beyond just surface decor by also doing a total renovation of the bathroom, where Alex designed and built cabinetry to maximize storage. While they hope for a bigger kitchen renovation in the future, they’ve made small but meaningful updates in the kitchen for the time being, including switching out oversized white appliances with stainless steel, apartment-sized ones and removing a dated overhead light fixture in exchange for IKEA track lighting.
Alex made the wood shelving and book racks in the girls' room. Credit: Erin DerbyCredit: Erin Derby
Alex has also built quite a few pieces of custom furniture in the small home, including a toddler bed, the primary bedroom dresser and bed, as well as lots of custom shelving and another bed in the office. (Yes, incredibly, there are three bedrooms in the small home!)
“With two young children, our home-world is now primarily a place where we rest, play, learn, and are inspired,” Margaret begins of their home. “It’s a small space so it has to be practical, but it’s also important to us that it’s cozy, filled with meaningful items, and is visually interesting. We love storied and playful things — especially quirky folk items that are humanistic and handmade.”
When Sin Ying Tracy Leung first bought this small apartment, it was "old, dull, and lifeless," but three years later it's now a colorful, playful, eclectic, and warm home.
The chain is making a big switch which will be rolled out in all pubs by the end of November but staff fear it's going to have complaints from disappointed customers
The extraordinary rumor that Kate Middleton never had cancer, which went viral over the weekend after an old report resurfaced saying the princess had been afflicted by “pre-cancerous cells”, can arguably be traced back to a deliberately opaque communications policy by her and her office. The half-transparent/half-secretive approach to Kate’s health crisis this year also resulted in one of the most disastrous episodes of news management ever seen in the royal family, when Kate disappeared from v
"After 6 years of lengthy discussions in political and science forums, which never get over a couple of thousand views, this is the one that goes viral..."
Russia lost a record number of soldiers in one day on Monday, Ukrainian intelligence said after its forces appeared to repel an initial phase of Moscow’s counteroffensive in the Kursk region.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Monday that President elect-Trump “and his transition team are already breaking” a law on presidential transition. “Donald Trump and his transition team are already breaking the law,” Warren wrote in a post on the social platform X. “I would know because I wrote the law. Incoming presidents are required to…
Conspiracy theories surrounding Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis and recovery have erupted online again, after a report by a respected and accredited royal reporter suggested the Princess of Wales never had cancer but was instead found to have “pre-cancerous cells.” Vicious rumors perpetrated by online trolls alleging that Kate either faked or exaggerated her cancer to cover up personal difficulties have been turbocharged by the claim. When Kate announced she had cancer in March 2024, she said
The man who has emerged as the MAGA favourite to lead the Senate during Donald Trump’s second administration presided over one of the biggest medical frauds in American history.
