They could have gone the teardown route, razing the original home and rebuilding from scratch, but they didn’t. Instead they completely gutted the interior, excavated the basement—which allowed them to raise the basement ceiling from 6 feet 6 inches to a full 8 feet tall—and added a fourth floor with three rooms and a full bath.
“We basically built a completely new house on the old foundation,” Michael explains.
Today, when you enter the home (shoeless, please), the command center—an open family room and kitchen combo—lies straight ahead. Dark floor tiles connect these two zones, ultimately climbing the walls of the family room to give the space a moody, sophisticated feel. (This Japanese-influenced aesthetic also carries over into the half bath.)