Hilary Park, president and co-founder of fintech company LMRKTS, travels often. When she does, she brings home souvenirs — big ones, like art and furniture. After 16 years of living in the same apartment, Park’s Williamsburg loft had gone from open and airy to dense and claustrophobic. So she turned to Homepolish designer Marc Houston to instill a new sense order in her home, while still incorporating lots of her existing furniture, along with an extreme kitchen makeover.

Houston confessed that the project was a little out of his wheelhouse. “I tend to lean much more toward modernist projects: cleaner, crisper spaces,” he says. “But there was a level of playfulness that really attracted me to the project.” Houston used the expanse of wall space to install a custom-designed bookshelf, as seen in the top image, and reworked the floor plan, moving Park’s original steel and resin table, adding walnut Cherner side chairs covered in Knoll wool fabric, and placing the Yoruban throne chairs at either end of the table. Houston placed an area rug by Hanna Korvela below the table, helping to unify and define that area of the loft.

Park’s kitchen, seen here before the design rehab, had never been a focal point. “The kitchen was actually an afterthought which has now become the star of the space,” Houston says. “The kitchen was in desperate need of some TLC, so we overhauled it entirely.” He says the inspiration for the color and textures came about while having a conversation with Park about their respective tropical vacations. “We kind of joked that if we can’t be at the beach, why not bring the beach to us. All of the texturing was hand-mapped, and hand-carved by one of my incredible mill workers. We must have gone through three or four rounds of revisions until we got it to the place it is now.”