KW · § IX
Journal · Notes from us
Quarterly
§ IX — Journal
Notes from
us.
A quarterly publication. Field notes on materials, joinery, and the slow business of building things that last. Edited at the workshop; printed in New York; sent to clients and trade by post. Between issues, we keep a daily Daybook from the bench.
The archive
2024 — 2026
↳ 00
New York, neighborhood by neighborhood
The classic six, the closet it never had, and the park across the street.
Custom closets for Carnegie Hill, Manhattan — dressing rooms and fitted wardrobes for prewar co-ops and classic-six family apartments, milled in the Bronx.
The white-brick co-op, the square room, and the tower on Second Avenue.
Custom closets for Yorkville, Manhattan — fitted reach-ins and dressing rooms for postwar white-brick co-ops and Second Avenue towers, milled in the Bronx.
The row near the park, the co-op on the parkway, and the tower at the yard.
Custom closets for Prospect Heights, Brooklyn — wardrobes for historic brownstones, Eastern Parkway co-ops and Pacific Park towers, milled in the Bronx.
The Greek Revival row, the State Street block, and the gut renovation.
Custom closets for Boerum Hill, Brooklyn — fitted wardrobes and landing presses for Greek Revival rows and gut-renovated townhouses, milled in the Bronx.
The garden Tudor, the brick colonial, and the co-op on the boulevard.
Custom closets for Forest Hills, Queens — fitted work for Forest Hills Gardens Tudors, Cord Meyer center-hall colonials and prewar Queens Boulevard co-ops, milled in the Bronx.
The center-hall colonial, the Tudor, and the river-view co-op.
Custom closets for Riverdale & Fieldston, the Bronx — landmark Tudors, center-hall colonials and Hudson-view prewar co-ops, milled in our own Bronx workshop.
The glass tower, the frame rowhouse, and the loft off Franklin.
Custom closets for Greenpoint, Brooklyn — waterfront-tower reach-ins, Franklin loft storage walls and fitted work for frame rowhouses, milled in the Bronx.
The park block, the mansard roof, and the top-floor suite.
Custom closets for Fort Greene, Brooklyn — top-floor primary-suite dressing rooms and landing presses for Italianate brownstones by the park, milled in the Bronx.
The wide row, the deep front garden, and the two-family stair.
Custom closets for Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn — parlor-floor wardrobes and landing presses for wide two-family Italianate brownstones, milled in the Bronx.
The tenement walk-up, the chimney bump, and the closet nobody drew.
Custom closets for East Village tenement walk-ups and co-op conversions — chimney bumps, bowed party walls and small footprints, milled in the Bronx.
The glass tower, the tight floor plan, and the height nobody uses.
Custom closets for Long Island City — Court Square and Hunters Point waterfront glass towers with tight floor plans, where ceiling height is the only spare dimension. Milled in the Bronx.
The rowhouse, the co-op, and the tower on the water.
Custom closets for Astoria, Queens — two-family brick rowhouses, prewar six-story co-ops and Vernon-corridor towers. Reach-ins to dressing rooms, milled in the Bronx.
The 1850s row, the landmark trim, and the missing closet.
Custom closets for Cobble Hill — intact 1850s landmark brownstones, tall parlor floors and stair-landing linen presses, scribed to walls that have moved for a century.
The box factory, the cobblestones, and the loft with no closets.
Custom closets for DUMBO — Gair-building factory lofts, waterfront glass towers and Belgian-block streets. Storage walls that zone a loft without partitions.
The loft with no walls, the tower with no closets.
Custom closets for Williamsburg — Wythe Avenue factory lofts, waterfront towers and Bedford walk-ups. Storage walls that zone a loft without partitions.
The cast-iron loft has no closets. Good..
Closets for Tribeca and SoHo lofts — cast-iron columns, eleven-foot ceilings and not a closet in sight. How we build storage walls a loft deserves.
The pre-war co-op, the plaster wall, and the board..
Custom closets for Upper East Side pre-war co-ops — plaster walls, alteration agreements, summer work rules, and cabinetry drawn to Candela proportions.
The classic seven wants its hall back..
Custom closets for Upper West Side classic sixes and sevens — deep pre-war closets, long halls, children's rooms and the West End Avenue linen press.
No two walls agree in the Village. Good thing we measure..
Custom closets for West Village and Greenwich Village townhouses — 1840s rowhouses, racked walls, landmark rules and storage scribed to crooked plaster.
Gallery district rules: store everything, show nothing..
Custom closets for Chelsea lofts, Flatiron conversions and Gramercy Park co-ops — gallery-grade concealment, art storage and quiet paneled walls.
The pied-à-terre: 700 square feet, zero excuses..
Custom storage for Midtown East pieds-à-terre — Turtle Bay, Sutton Place and Murray Hill. Murphy beds, double-duty rooms and a week's life in one wall.
The office tower's deep floor is the closet's best friend..
Custom closets for Financial District office-to-residential conversions and Battery Park City — deep floor plates, interior rooms and storage that loves no windows.
Four floors, one stair, and a century of beautiful storage debt..
Custom closets for Harlem, Hamilton Heights and Morningside brownstones — full-floor wardrobe walls, under-stair drawers and storage for whole-house living.
Glass walls, nine-foot slabs, and the developer's closet..
Custom closets for Hudson Yards and Hell's Kitchen towers — floor-to-ceiling glass, limited wall, and replacing the developer's wire shelving with millwork.
Six hundred square feet, dressed like six thousand..
Custom closets for NoHo and Nolita lofts and Lower East Side walk-ups — tenement footprints, vertical storage and small apartments that dress beautifully.
↳ 01
On material & finish
On paint, and the conversation about color.
Revere Pewter, Hague Blue, Roman Clay, and the eight coats that make a hand-rubbed lacquer behave like a piece of stone.
A trip to Tärnsjö, in October.
Notes from the Swedish tannery that supplies our leather, with a list of the chemicals not used in the process.
Pale, limed timber by the water.
Why we specify a pale, limed timber for mudrooms and houses near the coast, with a year-of-use field test.
↳ 02
On method
How we survey, in three dimensions.
Six paragraphs on the choreography of a LiDAR scan and a steel tape — and why we still bring both.
The joinery problem of a pre-war apartment.
Out-of-square walls, plaster substrates, and 10-ft ceilings — why a system from a catalog cannot fit a Park Avenue apartment.
What a custom closet actually costs in New York.
The honest bands — $3,500 reach-ins, $18K to $280K dressing rooms, $300K+ residences — and what drives the number.
The square-foot problem, and how a closet solves it.
Small closets, studios and the no-closet apartment — the honest playbook for storage in New York square footage.
Custom vs. California Closets vs. IKEA PAX.
An honest buyer's guide — when a modular or flat-pack system is the right call, and when a vertically-integrated maker is worth it.
Solid wood, veneer, MDF — an honest accounting.
What each material actually is, where each belongs in a closet, and the combinations a working shop builds — from a bench that mills all three.
The dimensions of a walk-in that actually works.
Minimum widths, aisles, rod heights and island clearances — and the honest line below which a reach-in beats a walk-in.
A closet is judged by its light.
Why CRI beats brightness, what temperature to choose, and where the light should actually come from — with the code rule about bulbs and sweaters.
A drawer, five ways.
A short tour of every drawer joint we use, in increasing order of resistance to gravity.
Why we sign every project.
A history of the maker's plate, from old-world cabinetmaking to today, and what we choose to engrave on it.
Defending the 32mm system.
An unfashionable argument in favor of the European adjustable-shelf module that runs through everything we make.
↳ 03
From the register
Building millwork for a Westchester house.
One drawing set, six rooms — Bronxville, Bedford, Greenwich.
№ 1001 — Riverside Drive.
The first project, in retrospect: the closet that became a studio.
Building a library for 4,000 books.
A 32-foot wall library in solid timber, designed for a working historian on the Hudson.
An interview with Alessandra Rota.
From the inaugural issue. On Milan, Boffi, and the slow road from cabinetmaking to studio.
+ Twelve essays in the archive — accessible to subscribers and clients
↳
Across the site
The twelve rooms.
Dressing rooms, pantries, mudrooms, libraries — the categories these field notes are written against.
Service areas, in full.
Manhattan, Brooklyn, Westchester, Greenwich and the East End — the geography behind the projects in the register.
The material library.
Every wood, finish, metal and leather kept on the bench — what the essays are made of.
§ 03 · By post
Four times a year,
by post.
Printed on uncoated paper in editions of 1,200. Leave a postal address; we send nothing else.