When Gissler took over the apartment it was in pretty
decent shape, down to the “well-built kitchen cabinets”
that contributed to his decision to purchase. He
didn’t need to renovate but made a few of what he calls
“architectural corrections.” Chief among them was
“un-kitchening the kitchen,” which sits in the middle of
the apartment’s lower level. The entry door opens right
into it, and Gissler did all in his power to minimize the
room’s utilitarian qualities and make it as glamorous
as the adjacent dining room. He painted the cabinets a
high-gloss “murky green” and replaced their glass panels
with mirrored wire glass that disguises their contents.
The island top is an elegant slab of dark green granite
suggested by the color of the existing Eastlake-style fireplace.
When Gissler entertains, as he frequently does for
up to 40 guests, the kitchen island becomes a glittering
bar.
In other tweaks, Gissler shifted the door to the downstairs
guest room for greater privacy and more storage
space, hung curtains on hospital-type tracks to completely
enclose the dining room for intimate dinners,
and added beams to the ceiling in the cozy upstairs
sitting room so it wouldn’t look “denuded” next to the
bedroom, which had already been beamed before Gissler
came along.
The apartment gave Gissler abundant opportunities
to deploy designers’ trade secrets, like replacing the recessed
lights in the kitchen ceiling with surface-mounted
fixtures with simple cone shades and lining the window
frames with mirrored panels to bring in every ray of
available sunlight. His dark wall colors are perhaps
surprising in an apartment measuring only 1,250 square
feet, but Gissler is not a believer in the oft-quoted maxim
that light colors make space feel bigger. “Brighter, yes,”
he says. “Not bigger.”
Gissler uses all his rooms to the fullest. The main challenge
of living in a row house designed for 19th century
living is “figuring out how to use all the spaces in a way
that makes sense for the 21st century,” he says. “Townhouses
have challenges and opportunities.” Gissler has
certainly made the most of both.
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