For decades, Susan Herman loved her second home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., so much that whenever circumstances changed in her life, she preferred adjusting her living space over moving somewhere new.
After buying the house for $74,000 with her husband in 1978, the 1860s structure, a former butcher’s shop that had one bathroom and a few tiny bedrooms, provided a low-key escape from the couple’s primary residence in Manhattan.
“In the late 1970s, Sag Harbor was just emerging from a depressed time,” said Ms. Herman, now 78, who retired from running a preschool program at the Y.M. & Y.W.H.A. of Washington Heights and Inwood last November. “So I’ve watched the town evolve over the years,” she noted, as it attracted more affluent urbanites.
Her home has also evolved. When Ms. Herman and her husband had two sons in the 1980s, they needed more space and added a two-story extension to accommodate the whole family, expanding the house to about 3,500 square feet.
But Ms. Herman’s husband died in 2005. Her sons grew up, got married and eventually gave her four grandchildren. The 1980s version of the home no longer made sense.
“When they all came to visit, there was really limited space for everyone to sleep — that was one of the problems,” Ms. Herman said. “There was also a formal living room we built in the ’80s that no one was using.” Instead, everyone seemed to want to squeeze into the cramped kitchen, she noted.
Ms. Herman also wanted to transition to single-story living. “I’m getting older and the staircase is extremely steep,” she said.
Deciding it was time to renovate once more, she interviewed a few architects but failed to find one who shared her vision for reconfiguring the interior while maintaining the home’s original bones and historical feel.
As a solution, one of her sons put her in touch with Annie Leslau, a New York-based interior designer who had done a commendable job renovating his Brooklyn brownstone.
Ms. Leslau shared Ms. Herman’s desire to blend new with old. “Every time they got an architect in there, they told them they had to rip down the house and start new,” Ms. Leslau said. “She really didn’t want to do that.”
Instead, Ms. Leslau planned a substantial renovation of the interior that largely reorganized the floor plan while preserving most of the architectural details.
“We didn’t do anything to the exterior because it was in pretty good shape and we liked the charm of it,” Ms. Leslau said. “But inside, the house was very dark, and the layout was poor.”
To reorganize the ground floor, she reclaimed the unused living room and turned it into a new primary suite with its own bathroom. Where there was an infrequently used secondary sitting room, Ms. Leslau created a new dining room and doubled the size of the doorway leading to the kitchen at the back of the house for a more open feel.
Knowing that the kitchen was where everyone congregated most of the time, Ms. Leslau redesigned the space to include a long island with a waterfall marble top, which leads into a sunny living room with a gas fireplace. Uniting the kitchen and living room under one ceiling with exposed beams reflects how the family actually lives in the house, Ms. Leslau said, and provides them with more space and comfort.
“That room is filled with light and everyone gravitates to it,” she said.
Upstairs, she redesigned two of the three bedrooms as calming retreats for Ms. Herman’s two sons and their spouses. Then, she turned the third bedroom into a bunk room with four beds for the grandchildren.
Throughout the house, Ms. Leslau kept as many original materials as she could while trying to lighten and brighten the feeling of the interior. She stripped the orange-y finish off the original pine floors and applied a simple clear coat for an almost unfinished look. Where the home had wood paneling, doors and windows that had been stained dark brown, she painted them white.
Precision Development began work in October 2023 and was largely done by the following April, at which time Ms. Leslau installed furniture and art, mixing more new with old.
Among the new pieces are dining chairs from the Swedish company Gemla, a custom desk by Hedge House and a brass pendant by Allied Maker in the foyer. Family heirlooms include a number of paintings completed by Ms. Herman’s mother, Florence Friedman, as well as a pair lounge chairs she used to own, which Ms. Leslau had reupholstered.
Ms. Herman moved back into the house in May 2024, after spending about $650,000 on the project, and has found it’s the perfect design for her latest chapter in life.
“There’s plenty of room, the kitchen is so usable and I love my new bedroom,” she said. “It’s just amazing.”
Her children like it just as much, she added. “They’re so excited about it,” she said. “And they come out a lot more often now.”
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