Studio MAK

There’s a contract and everything 🙂.
Mostly we just have good taste, stellar organization skills, and a few great trade recommendations.

All of these have happened, luckily not all at once, AND usually on a Friday afternoon. No project is perfect and we communicate that to our clients on day one, but some of these still come out of the blue and surprise us.

However, we love managing the curveballs because it means we’re on site with the trades and vendors, problem-solving in real time and quietly absorbing all the little things they’re experts at. We never stop being curious and learning from them (we know a thing or two as well though ;))

Our goal through it all is for these plot twists to get resolved before it ever reaches the client, unless absolutely necessary.

Some people walk into a space with incredible bones and want to keep it light and airy. Others want it moody, layered, and a little dramatic.

This client wanted both, so we gave them two floors that feel like two completely different worlds.

Exposed brick, timber ceilings, a view of the Chicago River. We worked with every inch of it. Special finishes on the brick, layered lighting that makes the space feel alive at night, a staircase wall that actually stops you.

Moody and dark 🖤 or light and airy 🤍? Drop your preference in the comments.

Brick stayed. Stair got darker. Dining room got fringe.
Every move had to honor the original and push it somewhere new.
The after is the easy part to look at. The process is where it actually got made.

Things we couldn’t touch on this Lincoln Park home office: the linoleum floors, the doors, the trim, the ceiling that’s pretty quirky, and a few mechanicals that weren’t going anywhere.

Pretty much everything else, we could get our hands on.

Our clients come to us and say that a room isn’t working, but they can’t pinpoint why. Our job is to figure that out and land on a version they wouldn’t have landed on themselves. We love projects like these because when we can’t blow it all up, we have to get smarter and more creative about every other move and that’s usually when a client realizes why they brought us in.

Sharing the vision for this one via our realistic renderings. This is one room of this whole home refresh, so follow along to see how this one comes together.

If your project lives somewhere between a refresh and a full gut, that’s our zone. The DMs are open 😉

We’re the only ones in your rolodex hoping you make it big. Statistically.