Katonah House is a minimalist residential renovation located in Katonah, NY, designed by TBo. The project’s central challenge was not the 4,600-square-foot structure itself but the accumulated damage of well-intentioned additions. A mid-century house built in the early 1970s with genuine spatial ambition – expansive ceilings, exposed fir beams, saltillo tile floors evoking a California mission vernacular – had been progressively undermined by a 1980s bedroom wing that fractured the floor plan and blocked light. TBo’s renovation works less as a reinvention than a careful act of correction, stripping back later interventions to recover what the original builder understood about the site.

The formal move that most changes the building’s character is the replacement of the primary structure’s steep shed roofs with split gables. The shift softens the house’s silhouette against the open fields and wooded surroundings, reducing the aggressive sun exposure the original roofline created. It is a restrained decision – the kind that reads as obvious only in retrospect – and it resets the relationship between the building mass and the flat New York landscape. New openings throughout, including lift-and-slide doors, clerestory windows, skylights, and light tubes, extend this logic inward, pulling panoramic views through the house and dissolving the boundary between the domestic interior and the surrounding meadow.

Inside, the renovation’s material sensibility stays close to the existing palette while tightening its execution. Douglas fir reappears in the kitchen cabinetry, directly referencing the original beams overhead. Volcanic basalt countertops and a kitchen island surfaced in basalt with handmade ceramic tiles sit against the restored saltillo floors, holding the warm, earth-toned register the house established fifty years ago. A skylight positioned directly above the island washes the work surface in diffuse natural light – a detail that serves both function and atmosphere. The primary bathroom pairs basaltina tile with cedar cladding, framing a view of waving meadow grasses that makes the room feel considerably larger than its footprint. The kids’ bathroom takes a different approach, using bold color tile under a new skylight, acknowledging that the house accommodates a young family rather than a static showpiece.