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"Asked to renovate a one-bedroom, one-bath loft located in Manhattan&amp;#039;s trendy NoHo neighborhood (&amp;quot;North of Houston&amp;quot; Street), architect Jack Wettling was given a long space and a tall order: The narrow, 110-foot-long floor-through &amp;quot;had to become a two-bedroom with three baths,&amp;quot; he says. Then there was the study/guest room that the clients, Derek and Martha Kellett, wanted. And the walk-in closets. A laundry room. Plenty of space for entertaining. More windows (no easy task in the regulation-heavy world of Manhattan co-ops). And did Wettling mention that the contractor went AWOL mid-construction? Oh, and Martha gave birth during the renovation too.  &amp;quot;We probably asked for a lot,&amp;quot; jokes Martha, a former fashion executive who hails from Colombia. Yet nothing feels strained about the 2,000-square-foot apartment that Wettling designed for Martha and Derek, an Australian-born banking executive, and their children, Conor, 4, and Isabela, 2. Stretching the length of an early-1900s, onetime printing house, the sixth-floor home now flows seamlessly from front to back, with wide-plank wenge floors, soft neutral walls and clean lines that together express the warm, contemporary sensibility the clients sought.   When the Kelletts bought the unit from its previous owner, a surfer-cum-artist, it was &amp;quot;pretty bare bones,&amp;quot; Derek recalls. But the couple liked its abundant light and, once gutted, it offered generous ten-and-a-half-foot ceilings that could accommodate new central-air, sprinkler and other systems with plenty of height to spare. Still, Wettling lowered the ceiling only when necessary, leaving an expansive coffer above the combined entry and dining areas, where interior designer Rogelio Garcia, a friend of Martha&amp;#039;s, installed a Serge Mouille chandelier above a natural-edge dining table and contemporary ladder-back chairs. From there, one enters the south-facing living room, with its light pebble-colored walls\u2014Benjamin Moore&amp;#039;s Balboa Mist, a hue chosen by Eve Ashcraft, the project&amp;#039;s color consultant\u2014and a linen-upholstered B&amp;amp;amp;B sectional and vintage 1960s pieces (Paul Laszlo chairs and a travertine Sergio Rodrigues cocktail table), all in a tight, natural palette.  Throughout, Wettling &amp;quot;tried to take simple concepts and extrapolate them,&amp;quot; he says. For example, all the doors and millwork were carried to the ceiling to accentuate the home&amp;#039;s height, as were the custom kitchen cabinets, which were painted in Benjamin Moore&amp;#039;s Chelsea Gray and Seattle Mist. The kitchen, with its marble-topped island and proximity to the dining and living areas, offers ample space for gatherings. &amp;quot;I have a big family,&amp;quot; reports Martha, &amp;quot;and we like that they can all come over and enjoy.&amp;quot;  However, Wettling&amp;#039;s ingenuity truly shines through as one heads toward the more private half of the home. On one side of a new corridor, he squeezed in a storage room and a multipurpose study/guest room with a Murphy bed and a fold-down desk. On the other, there&amp;#039;s the laundry room and the first of three baths. To get plumbing lines to the other two baths, Wettling raised the floors.  The family&amp;#039;s bedrooms are now two steps up from the main living areas, which, Wettling says, &amp;quot;makes them cozier.&amp;quot; For the moment, a small study does double duty as a guest room, and the children share a single room. To bring in more light for the kids, who have their own en suite bathroom, Wettling added another window. Two other windows were punched out opposite the home&amp;#039;s kitchen and dining space. Meanwhile, the main corridor from the kitchen doubles as Derek&amp;#039;s walk-in closet as it leads straight into the master suite. In the bedroom, Wettling replaced an existing closet with a new storage partition parallel to a windowless wall. This enabled him to replace a fire-escape &amp;quot;foyer&amp;quot; with a walk-in closet for Martha. On the bedroom side of the partition, a burled-walnut veneer serves as a background for the bed. Click here to see the gallery for &amp;quot;Space Magic.&amp;quot;   Of course, like most renovation projects, this one hit some snags. For one, getting permits for new windows was a job in itself. On occasion, the building&amp;#039;s co-op board wasn&amp;#039;t exactly cooperative. And then the original contractor mysteriously skipped town. &amp;quot;I met with him on a Tuesday and on Wednesday he was gone,&amp;quot; Wettling recalls. But with limited financial damage and a shorter-than-expected delay of four to six weeks, a new contractor was found (&amp;quot;we were very lucky,&amp;quot; Derek says). Derek is now president of the co-op board, and the Kelletts have &amp;quot;a home we&amp;#039;re always happy to come back to,&amp;quot; Martha says. And, Wettling adds, &amp;quot;at the end of the day, we&amp;#039;re all still friends.&amp;quot; What The Pros Know In the Kellett home, a corridor isn&amp;#039;t just a corridor: with a little cabinetry, it becomes Derek&amp;#039;s walk-in closet too. Wettling often makes spaces do double duty: an even more striking example is the master bedroom&amp;#039;s fire-escape &amp;quot;foyer,&amp;quot; which now serves a dual role as Martha&amp;#039;s closet. The transformation was aided by a new, two-foot-deep storage partition, which replaced a more conventional closet; on the bedroom side, its burledwalnut surface backgrounds the bed. On the foyer/closet side, millwork doors conceal 30-inch-wide bays with movable shelves and hanging rods (a system repeated mirror-opposite). Hence, a new walk-in closet. What&amp;#039;s more, substituting the drywall of the old closet with the thinner millwork of the storage partition gained Wettling about six inches. &amp;quot;And that makes a difference when you&amp;#039;re dealing with a tight space,&amp;quot; he says. Click here to see the gallery for &amp;quot;Space Magic.&amp;quot; Click here to see the resources. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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