Drawing Floor Plans, Debating Bathrooms

BY JULIA ANGWIN

There's only so much you can do with a house where each floor is 16 feet wide and 58 feet long, with a staircase that takes up one-quarter of the width.

So when we drew up the floor plans to send to our architect for our Harlem brownstone renovation, most of our decisions–except the surprisingly contentious bathrooms–were pretty straightforward.

With our rock-bottom renovation budget of $350,000, high-end dreams such as creating a double-height living room or stairs to a roof deck were shelved early on. Our more modest goal was to return the brownstone to a family dwelling after years ...