Brooklyn heights: derelict house renovation The prospect of turning a rundown four-storey house in Brooklyn, New York, into a welcoming family home was met with some trepidation by the graphic designer Carin Goldberg. The 19th-century terrace house, similar in style and scale to many late-Georgian properties found in Britain, had been left largely untouched for 50 years. When I first saw the house it was a scary mess," she recalls. 'I sat on the stoop with the estate agent and said, "There's no way we could live through it - we'll be divorced in six months."" When she returned for another visit with her husband, Jim Biber, an architect, he was more optimistic. He looked around and said simply, "I think we can do something with this."" The move was prompted by Goldberg's realisation that her job was becoming increasingly difficult to manage while living in a small cottage that the couple and their son, Julian, still have in the countryside. For Goldberg, whose work has ranged from album covers for Madonna to book jackets for Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, finding the right work space had long been a struggle, and she decided she needed to be in the city. Biber, who set up his own architectural practice last year (he was previously a partner of the Anglo-American design consultancy Pentagram) was already commuting to his Manhattan office. Biber was unfazed by the scale of the project. His recent work includes the recently opened Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, a vast complex of buildings which took eight years to design. But even he underestimated just how much work this semi-derelict 1830s house would take. 'I'd imagined that for a relatively small amount of money we could replaster and paint and replace a couple of bathrooms and do the kitchen and that would be it," he says. He soon realised, however, that he was wrong. The raised ground floor had been eaten by termites and had to be removed. And there were structural things that had to be done, and as much as I hated spending the money I realised we had to do it. Eventually the entire house was gutted. Everything needed doing, from new steelwork to rewiring to new drains. But many original features remained and the basic layout of the house was largely retained. Because there had never been a large-scale renovation of the house and very little had happened to it, all the original floorboards were here, the stairs, the doors, the door surrounds," Biber says. It had all the things that you could never afford to put back and even when you do it looks contrived. There is a generous sense of space over the four floors. The kitchen and family room are on the lower ground floor and lead out to the back garden, which has also been completely reinvented. The raised ground floor houses an interconnecting dining-room and lounge while the top two floors are for the four bedrooms. The interiors were a collaboration. I insisted on a few things and so did Jim," Goldberg says. He really wanted to keep the original stove and now I love it too. But he also wanted to keep the old sink and I said no way. I wanted a big, deep farm sink. I also insisted that we do the garden, which used to be just a big mud hole. In some places, inventiveness helped overcome budget limitations. Ikea cabinets were used for the kitchen island unit, while a vanity unit in the bathroom was made from steel tubing and a slate top. In went a collection of mid-century furniture (they have a particular fondness for George Nelson classics), plus family pieces, posters and art. Goldberg's study has shelves filled with reference books and a large collection of curios assembled on her travels. I really need an office that I can come into every day and which grounds me," she says. 'I don't really have hobbies, but I work, and if I travel and buy books or the things on my shelves it's always with the notion that one day it might influence something that I'm working on." biber.co