One Day With Anne V

credit : architecturaldigest

The model and mother sharing their time between San Francisco and New York has turned a dark fixer-upper into a bright sanctuary

When it rains, it pours out, but for the model Anne Vyalitsyna (known as Anne V.) the sun came out at once: She found her apartment - a three-bedroom bath with two bathtubs in the west village - and her husband's Dreams at the same time. "I moved there for two months before meeting my future husband," she says.

The apartment in New York City was Vyalitsyna's primary residence until she and her fiancé Yahoo! moved to San Francisco. Executive Adam Cahan, end of 2014 (the couple welcomed a daughter together in 2015 and got engaged in 2016). But Vyalitsyna was unwilling to give up the property she had begun to decorate and renovate with the help of Lucy Harris, owner of Lucy Harris Studio.

"It was a minor renovation - I would call it a renovation," says Harris. "It was a kind of cosmetics, we looked at finishes and hardware, and we decided how much we would do and what would do the most, and since it's not their primary residence, it makes no sense to do a complete gut repair."
The runway model had a checklist of things she wanted to change: unsavory green marble slabs in the kitchen; dark, heavy wooden doors; and mismatched floors and entrances were just a few of the obstacles.

"It felt really woody, like living in a Spanish-style house in Los Feliz, California, or in a cabin in the woods, it was too dark, I knew I wanted to make it light and airy and white." explains Vyalitsyna. "I wanted it to feel really happy and light."

Harris went to work by replacing the green marble slabs with white Corian, removing an old wooden island in the kitchen and adding clean white wooden doors throughout the apartment. New furniture fittings eased the feeling. "The main goal was to make it very functional and easy to use and really lighten it up - make it very inviting," says Harris. "Anne really enjoys spending time there, she's just a wonderful host."

To make the most of her kitchen - a space Vyalitsyna did not initially use - Harris replaced her original, long, dark table with one of organic modernity, which has a round marble slab and a hammered brass floor. "I've never been to the kitchen, and now I spend all my time there, it's as interesting as the shape of the furniture changes the room, and just putting light in there changes the whole experience," says Vyalitsyna.

Instead of a traditional coffee table in the living room, Harris chose what she describes as "two small tables that resemble amoebae nesting together," which can be pulled apart and pushed aside while Vyalitsyna and Cahan are 22 months old. Daughter, Alaska, plays. "In New York, you do not always have enough space to have a separate playroom, and you want them to have a place to run while doing things," says Vyalitstna. Designed by Harris and designed by Manzanares in Long Island City, the coffee table has no hard edges and is still "truly entertaining and refined, adding a personal touch to the space," says the designer.