06 / Kitchen & diningWashington, DC
Residential and interior design · Washington, DC
Residential & Interior Designer in Washington, DC
Washington rewards restraint. Many of the city’s finest houses were built tight to their neighbors and close to the street, and their character lives in details that are easy to lose in a renovation: the rhythm of a brick façade, a stair that climbs the full height of the house, plaster cornices, tall windows at either end of a long plan. Talha Gursoy designs renovations and additions for these homes with one aim: to make them work for contemporary life while leaving their best qualities intact.
The city’s housing stock
In Capitol Hill, Georgetown, Dupont Circle, and Logan Circle, the rowhouse is the defining form: Federal and Italianate fronts, later Victorian bays and turrets, and narrow, deep floor plans with daylight arriving mainly at the front and rear. West of Rock Creek Park the picture changes. Neighborhoods such as Cleveland Park, Chevy Chase, Spring Valley, and the Palisades are made largely of detached houses from the early and middle twentieth century, many Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, or Arts and Crafts in spirit, set on modest lots beneath mature trees.
What a Washington renovation has to resolve
In a rowhouse, the central question is usually light and sequence. The middle of the plan tends to be the darkest part of the house, and every decision to move a kitchen, open a wall, or extend at the rear changes how daylight travels from one end to the other. Rear additions and lower-level work involve party walls shared with neighbors, which brings structural coordination and, often, conversations next door well before construction. In the detached houses of Northwest, the work more often centers on a kitchen and family room the original plan never anticipated, a primary suite composed from smaller bedrooms, or an addition that must sit comfortably beside an older house.
Approvals in the District
Building permits in the District are issued by the DC Department of Buildings (DOB), and zoning follows the DC Zoning Regulations, with the Board of Zoning Adjustment hearing requests for relief. Much of the city lies within historic districts, where exterior changes are reviewed by the DC Historic Preservation Office, and projects in Georgetown also go before the Old Georgetown Board. In many rowhouse neighborhoods the front yard is technically public space, with its own permits through the District Department of Transportation. Talha builds these reviews into the schedule from the first study, so the drawings that reach each office already answer the questions it will ask.
Selected work in Washington
Begin an inquiry
If you are considering a renovation or addition to a Washington house, Talha welcomes a short note about the home and what you hope it will become.
Projects typically begin at $150,000, and each begins with a paid design study credited toward construction.