When Erica Sellers bought a townhouse in Ridgewood, Queens, with plans to renovate it, she simply wanted to build a new home for herself. But after she invited her friend Jeremy Silberberg to see it, the project grew into something much more ambitious.
Ms. Sellers was doing production work for a contemporary artist at the time, and Mr. Silberberg, who was working at an architecture and design firm, had offered to help with the renovation. But as they toured the space, the friends began discussing how neither of them was truly happy in their job.
“We were walking through the house and there was this magical moment,” Ms. Sellers said “We were like, ‘Wait, we could do something really special here.’”
Specifically, they decided that collaborating on the renovation was an opportunity to start their own design firm, and to use the townhouse as an example of their creative talents.
“The house became our first project and our baby to really showcase what we could build together,” Ms. Sellers said.
After Ms. Sellers closed on the property in July 2020 for $1.05 million, she and Mr. Silberberg left their jobs and founded Studio S II the following month. Then, Ms. Sellers had the interior of the townhouse gutted — including a 2,200-square-foot home on the top two floors, and a 1,000-square-foot basement rental apartment she planned to repurpose as storage — while she and Mr. Silberberg toiled on plans for the rebuild.
Rather than merely playing with favorite colors and patterns, or trying to channel a particular style like some interior designers might, they arrived at a unique creative vision that celebrated dark, gothic, even macabre elements.
“We like having a strong point of view,” said Mr. Silberberg. “We wanted to combine something futuristic or machine-like with the corporeal.”
“But,” Ms. Sellers interjected, “we wanted to take that eeriness and make it feel comfortable.”
To realize their vision, they developed a wide range of custom furniture, lighting and fabric at the same time that they tackled the interior architecture of the home with guidance from Mostafa Osman, a licensed architect.
Just inside the front door, on the parlor level, the duo created a living room that doubles as a gallery space for their studio. After staining the original pine floors black to give them a slightly charred appearance, they installed furniture they designed alongside items by friends. Pieces by Studio S II include the DV chair, which has eight legs to inspire a sense of double vision, and the Dark Matter side table, which has a base recalling stalactites and was generated by the “sonification” of audio clips collected from NASA’s public domain. Nearby, a spiky metal floor lamp by Mark Malecki looks like an alien robot ready to pounce.
Chain mail curtains retract to reveal a dining room and a breakfast area at the rear of the house. For seating at the breakfast table, the designers installed a 19th-century French gothic church pew and added cushions upholstered in a custom fabric they developed by collaging diabolical images from an 18th-century book on demonology and magic. Around the pew, they built a wall of drawers inspired by a scene in Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film “Spirited Away,” and added their own Scalp sconces, which resemble heads of human hair.
Upstairs, space was carved out for an open home office, a den that doubles as a guest room and a primary suite that evokes a dank, mossy forest. In the primary bedroom, they coated the walls and ceiling with deep earthy green paint, then added night stands with illuminated resin tops containing preserved moss. Below a bed covered in green velvet they installed a ceramic medallion by artist Rebecca Manson that reminded them of slithering creatures you might find beneath a rock.
Stainless steel pocket doors open to a bathroom with a vanity carved from a rough-edged block of black slate.
“That’s 800 pounds,” Mr. Silberberg said of the vanity, adding that installing the stone required craning it into place through a window.
After Aries Builders began construction in September 2021, the project took two years to complete, at a cost of about $1 million, which was far more than Ms. Sellers had expected. “But after spending years developing it, there were only so many corners I was willing to cut,” she said, noting that she didn’t want to compromise on the creative vision.
Shortly after the home was complete, Ms. Sellers’s life partner Tiana Tuttle moved in. But the biggest rewards have come from seeing the reactions of friends and guests.
“It warms my heart to see people walk in for the first time and go like, ‘Whoa, you really did something different, just went for it and didn’t hold back,’” Ms. Sellers said, adding that she hoped entering the townhouse would feel a little like stepping into an alternate world.
“I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to do,” she said. “It was so worth all the hard work.”
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