Home Store Renovation and Outdoor Event Space
Birmingham
The gut renovation of this carpet and furniture showroom’s first-floor interior transforms a dated and compartmentalized commercial interior into a more functional and light-filled series of spaces that better connect to the second-floor showroom and to a reimagined rear courtyard event space. Located in a 115-year-old typical “Main Street” building in a quaint neighborhood, the floor plan was originally comprised of two separate retail spaces with separate entrances. To create a unified entry a new fully paneled Entry Vestibule with a stone floor was designed to incorporate both existing front doors and provide immediate access to both showrooms. At the south showroom, the introduction of a paneled elliptical arch at the front stair provides a clear and inviting path up to the second-floor showroom. At the north showroom, a boldly painted new desk with workstations allows customers to be greeted easily while shopping. Additional programmatic requirements included new workstations integrated within a new Specifications Library, a more visibly prominent Back Stair, a new Kitchen, and a larger Meeting Room-all interconnected through the use of transoms and borrowed light. Access to the new courtyard is from the new Meeting Room through a pair of steel doors surrounded by transoms and sidelights. This former gravel parking area is now repurposed as a tree-filled pebbled courtyard providing usable outdoor space for deliveries, customer pick-ups, and private events. The courtyard is enclosed on the alley side with new bi-folding steel gates, brick piers with decorative stone finials, and brick lattice walls. The raised terraces are covered by a new metal awning spanning the length of the building.























Photography: Adam Kane Macchia