Inside an 800-Square-Foot NYC Apartment Kitted Out With Custom Storage

Kerry Pieri

April 10, 2025 at 8:00 a.m.·8 min read

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When beginning a renovation in a 1910 Upper West Side town house, the pièce de résistance was destined to be the kitchen. “We wanted to highlight a luxurious green kitchen that we foresaw as the inevitable heart of our home,” homeowner Shea Buckner says. Matt Bidgoli, one half of Perifio Interiors with partner Raphael Portet, was happy to make that dream—and beyond—a reality. Knowing the owners were creatives—Buckner is an actor and his fiancée, Martyna Frankow, a model—was a selling point for the project. “They’re definitely open to the world of color,” Bidgoli says. The couple desired “something that was classic but still had a little bit of a modern edge and was very livable,” he continues.

Buckner and Frankow became enamored with Perifio Interiors upon seeing images of a recently completed home in rural Hudson, New York. After being introduced at a mutual friend’s party, the couple knew they had found the right designers for their new 800-square-foot home steps from Central Park, and what would become Perifio Interior’s first Manhattan project. “Martyna and I immediately fell in love with the stunning history of the prewar brownstones that line the street,” Buckner says. The home, however, was not a tabula rasa; extensive updates were required.

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Homeowners Martyna Frankow (left) and Shea Buckner with their Brussels Griffon, Uni, in front of their Upper West Side home

Structural renovations took an entire year and a half. The soaring ceilings in the apartment lend grandeur to the smaller square footage, but the space overall needed some new walls, while maintaining some of the original brick, new hardwood floors, a fully renovated bathroom, and a transformation from an eat-in kitchen to one with a statement island. “Maintaining the original prewar character and highlighting the 20-foot ceilings while balancing it with a contemporary aesthetic was crucial,” Buckner explains.

Part of preserving the original details includes the steel-case windows that look out to the tree-lined street. Striking a balance, in front of those is a newly built window seat with velvet Kravet upholstery that doubles as a daybed.

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A custom dining banquette upholstered in Schumacher performance velvet serves as a seating area around a West Elm dining table, which holds a Lucas Recchia polished bronze sculpture.

That seat is a perfect example of overcoming a design hurdle in the home—creating utilitarian, but ultimately beautiful, storage. “Another thing that was really important was maximizing space with storage—basically, there was none,” Bidgoli says. “It was definitely a big challenge.” The answer to that conundrum came in the form of highly specialized millwork. Enter: “A custom dining banquette that doubles as ample storage—while also maximizing seating because Shay and Martyna love to entertain their friends and family,” the designer continues. Upstairs in the loft bedroom, added storage meant building a custom desk, creating a wall of closets that didn’t exist before, and in the bathroom, integrating “as big of a custom vanity [by Tedd Wood] as we possibly could without compromising aesthetics,” Bigdoli says. Downstairs, hidden storage under the stairs was also built. It all paid off. “Perifio Interiors attentiveness to function while thoughtfully incorporating beautiful furniture and art from around the world made the space sing as one cohesive home across the three different floors,” Buckner says.

Custom walnut veneered millwork and shelves in the living area house Swedish ceramics, including midcentury Berndt Friberg vases and bowls, Carl-Harry Stålhane vases, and a Gunnar Nylund vase, purchased from Hostler Burrows. A Mugly NYC vessel and Figa rosewood sculptures from Bossa Furniture round out the collection, as well as a bronze sculpture by Victoire d’Harcourt, and a Tania Whalen vessel on the top shelf. An oil painting by Bruno Dufourmantelle finishes the vignette.

Bossa Furniture throw pillows coordinate with an Elizabeth chair by lb Kofod-Larsen from Audo Copenhagen and a Jake Arnold for Crate & Barrel ottoman. Specialty lighting includes a 1950s Enrico Furio floor lamp for Dominici via Bossa Furniture and a RH pendant light. The walls are painted in Benjamin Moore White Dove.

A Nordic Knots rug grounds the space, with a Isamu Noguchi pendant light floating in the background.

Due to the limited space, each piece of furniture and art hung on the wall held crucial impact. The living room was all about highlighting a rare-in-Manhattan woodburning fireplace, which called for a cozy navy Maiden Home sofa with a Missoni Home throw blanket—and a custom walnut coffee table that sits in front of it. Back at the custom banquet flanked by J39 Børge Mogensen chairs, a nod to the couple’s overall penchant for midcentury Danish design, hovers a T289 painting by Frédéric Heurlier Cimola from Amelie du Chalard, “a fantastic gallery in SoHo,” according to Bidgoli. It features an emerald green stripe that plays off of the green on the marble in the kitchen and a historical color from Sherwin-Williams, Low Green, on the walls in the kitchen. “I just wanted to use these saturated hues to really bring the space to life,” Bidgoli explains.

In the kitchen, custom Tedd Wood cabinetry painted in Sherwin-Williams Vogue Green is finished with Etsy-sourced hardware. Bas Stone honed silver roots marble is used on the island, countertop, and backsplash. A Devin Wilde black ceramic vessel, 1930s silver pitcher from Bossa Furniture, and Colin King for Audo Copenhagen walnut bow accessorize the space, which also features a Wolf range, Armadillo runner, and vintage Danish counter stools. “We wanted to highlight a luxurious green kitchen that we foresaw as the inevitable heart of our home,” Buckner explains.

Overall the palette upstairs in the loft bedroom is softer, and more languid, but still leverages the hero color of the home. “We stayed away from those deep saturated hues to promote more of a wellness and restful space,” Bidgoli explains. “I did bring in very subtle pops of color, and a little bit of the green from downstairs in the [Joe Henry Baker] painting above the bed and the long pillow on the bed. Going with the same motif, we used a very soft Japanese-inspired wallpaper and painted the closets sage green.”

In the bedroom, a Crate & Barrel bed is covered in Cultiver and Parachute bedding, complemented by custom floating side tables. The rug is Nordic Knots.

A spiral staircase leads to the bedroom and its newly built wall of steel case windows (with hidden automatic black out shades, of course), that mirror the original windows downstairs, and allow for light to stream into the room during the day. The upstairs loft becomes an oasis, but still very much a part of the three-story home. Unless guests are in town, and then those shades can be closed up tight for the evening. “You definitely have privacy,” the designer says. “It is like its own little world up there.”

In fact, the whole home is like its own little world nestled into the buzzing city—both part of it and an island in and of itself for the couple and their frequent guests. “We emphasized that the space shouldn’t feel too precious—comfort and hospitality were always near the top of our list.” Buckner says.