Wander the streets of our nation’s capital and also you’re certain to come across a digital rainbow of macaron-hued row homes with proudly protruding bays and fanciful turrets. Washington, DC’s Bloomingdale neighborhood isn’t any exception. Developed between 1890 and 1912, it boasts a number of the extra preserved examples of late Victorian and early-Twentieth-century housing types within the district. Nonetheless, that they’re intact doesn’t essentially imply they’re inhabitable, as householders Andrew Smith and Carl Holshouser found once they obtained a glance contained in the 1906 brick row home that might turn out to be their residence.

“It was in actually tough form, to place it properly,” says Smith, a vice chairman at TTR Sotheby’s Worldwide Realty. “It was full of things the proprietor had collected all through his many a long time in the home, from Christmas ornaments to piles of outdated magazines.” As soon as they appeared previous the muddle, although, they noticed the house’s elegant bones and unique woodwork. “I had all the time seen this home and thought, Wow, that might be nice to do one thing inventive with,” he says. In order quickly because the couple bought the place, they referred to as longtime pal and AD100 inside designer Patrick Mele, and enlisted the assistance of native architect Evelyn Pierce to present the home the considerate reinvention it deserved.

Despite the fact that the design crew initially thought-about an open-concept flooring plan, they finally determined towards it. “We voted to maintain the unique footprint of the home,” Mele says, as he hoped to keep away from what Smith jokingly calls “the bowling alley impact,” the place you stand on the entrance door and may see all the first flooring in a single look. “It’s the act of leaning into what a home is, versus pretending that it’s a loft,” Mele says. “Not opening up the partitions additionally saved the architectural particulars intact and the areas feeling a bit of bit extra intimate,” Pierce provides.

To unify the person areas all through the primary stage, Mele painted almost each floor—together with flooring and stairs—Chantilly Lace by Benjamin Moore. The full white-out was partially impressed by the interiors of architect Hugh Newell Jacobson, who did plenty of work within the DC space. As a result of high-gloss white flooring present each scuff and scrape, the concept did require a little bit of arm twisting. “Fortunately they took the plunge,” Mele says. “The area seems to be double the scale, and each bit of furnishings actually stands out.”

The white flooring weren’t the one design through-line within the undertaking. Mele employed a punchy black-and-white palette all through and likewise included mirrored surfaces in a number of rooms—a intelligent trick to make a slender row home look bigger. Such sleight of hand is on full show within the kitchen, the place a mirrored backsplash and glass-front cupboards create the phantasm of depth. There, a mosaic-tiled flooring and an vintage English-style lantern conjure turn-of-last century staff’ kitchens, whereas the retro sq. tile and that glam reflective backsplash really feel straight out of the ’80s—it’s Gosford Park, however with a New Order soundtrack. “At evening with the under-cabinet lights on, the mirrors make it sparkle. It’s such a magical little area,” Smith says.

Simply steps from the kitchen, Mele and Pierce created what would be the undertaking’s largest abracadabra second. Impressed by the charming courtyards and secret gardens of close by Georgetown, they transformed the previously derelict yard and carriage home into an outside entertaining oasis, full with a dreamy cover of wisteria. Incorporating the masonry shell of the unique carriage home nods to the house’s historical past and properly sums up the design crew’s method to the entire undertaking. Mele says, “Crucial message was to deal with honoring the unique bones of the home, restoring this residence to what it might need been whereas making it related for at present.”