How Designer Molly Bloom Enlisted Her Family to Renovate—Without Going Crazy

Molly Bloom is a doer. Whether it’s designing, styling, and personally shipping her eponymous jumpsuit line, or opening an Etsy store that sells hand-painted cicadas, Bloom is a through-and-through creative who takes matters quite literally into her own hands. So when it came to renovating the 1,600-square-foot house she bought in Western New York, she knew she’d adopt a DIY approach. Bloom grew up in a home built by her father, a landscaper and construction specialist, and her grandfather. "It felt like a legacy to honor and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do this with my dad," she says.

After leaving her job at clothing company Billy Reid in Florence, Alabama in late February 2020, Bloom planned to return to New York City, where she’d previously lived. Instead, she and her then-husband found themselves sheltering in place with her parents in Youngstown, near Niagara Falls. A few months later, a chance encounter with a 99-year-old homeowner at an estate sale led to the swift purchase of a 1950s-era house in Lewiston, just 10 minutes away from her childhood home. "It was just the perfect little coincidence of an affordable home," Bloom recalls. "We said fuck it, let’s build a family and a life here." She and her father spent the next 10 months painstakingly remodeling the house as he taught her the ins and outs of demolition, electrical wiring, plumbing, and everything in between.

From balancing her love of bold, esoteric curios and art with a space to work and play, to negotiating the inherent challenges (and joys!) of working with family, here’s how she did it.

When Collaborating with Family Members, Be Clear About Intentions

"The first couple of months working with my dad on the house were definitely a little bumpy," says Bloom. Her background in product design and user experience meant that she had very specific requests and desires that, to her father, were not as cost and time-effective as he would have liked. For example, from her first visit, she knew she had to change the "eyesore" off-center fireplace in the living room. "I had so many different layouts mocked up over a nine-month span, but landed on this one"—building a frame around it and creating a new arched hearth. Her father, aware of the kind of work that would entail, attempted to convince her otherwise. But she stuck firmly to her guns, insisting on building a frame around it and creating a new arched hearth. "Seeing people swoon over it never gets old," she says.

Three months into their collaboration, Bloom and her father decided to have an open conversation to avoid further conflict and maintain their very close relationship. "We discussed what was important to each of us and what we could do independently on the house," she recalls. From that point forward, once the specifics had been laid out and level-set, the partnership moved smoothly.

With the powder room (converted from a pantry), Bloom wanted to pay homage to her time in Florence, where she walked along magnolia trees everyday. She enlisted her mother, an artist, who spent a week creating a floor-to-ceiling magnolia wall-painting, which serves as a bold counterpoint to the home’s otherwise neutral wall colors.

Keep the space neutral with lots of wall real estate

As a maker and collector, Bloom was excited to create spaces for specific art pieces, rather than shoehorn them into existing wall real estate (read: gallery walls) as she’d had to do in the past. This also meant that she envisioned a more neutral palette for the home, so the artwork and accents could really shine without feeling overwhelming. "I wanted the house to be a peaceful blank canvas that was timeless and up-to-date," she says.

She embraced the existing midcentury bones with accents like Eames and basket egg chairs, but largely stuck to light wood and the classic combination of black and white. In the sunroom/office, Bloom installed concrete plywood-looking tile floors with a Schluter heating system which, she says, were worth burning a finger pad and rendering her temporarily unable to unlock her phone (it has since recovered!).

Add Personality with Lighting

"Every fixture tells a story," says Bloom, who added personality to the overall neutral aesthetic by showcasing distinctive lighting elements. She has three chandeliers: one over her dining table, sourced from Etsy seller LightCookie2, designed to be tonally in sync with the surrounding walls; another in a peachy hue for the magnolia powder room (fabricated in Latvia); and a third, created in partnership with New Orleans-based lighting designer Mimi.Girouard, to illuminate the basement pool table with plenty of brightly colored fringe. To match her pink plates on display in the kitchen, she commissioned clay pendant lights from Naaya Studio in a similar colorway. For the remaining fixtures, she landed on classic milk glass orbs mostly purchased from Home Depot and Etsy.

Marry Cross-functional Use with Separating Elements

Bloom is an extrovert who loves to host, but also a creative that depends on solo recharge time, so creating open spaces in addition to separate areas was essential. The original house was very choppy, with lots of small rooms, so she opened up pass-throughs, with an entertaining area that encompasses the living, kitchen, and dining rooms. She made sure to add windows that frame her beloved willow tree and let in lots of sunshine, especially during the long Buffalo winters. Thanks to her background in product design, she knew that an inch or two could make all the difference with furniture, so she worked with local carpenters on custom pieces.

As she was living with her then-husband, Bloom made the detached sunroom into her office, outfitting it with a red Preway fireplace which heats the entire space. "If I needed to go work on my jumpsuit line or another project, he would still have the living space to keep hanging out with friends or be on his computer," she explains.

Trust Your Impulses

An avid collector, Bloom made sure to follow her instincts throughout the furnishing and decorating process. "If I was super emotional about a piece, like the embalming table that has become my desk, I would just go with it, even if I didn’t know where it would end up," she says. She topped the steel table, originally from a funeral home, with a modern acrylic finish (not before saging it, of course). "I think a lot about how my environment can feed me and, working from home, I choose to surround myself with things that feel really meaningful," Bloom explains. Throughout the home, she made sure to juxtapose the more characterful, quirky pieces with a clean, inviting backdrop to avoid an overload of design that might veer into kitsch.

Since 2020, things have shifted both personally and professionally for Bloom. She’s no longer married and is currently focusing her attention on dba MOLLY BLOOM, a line of homewares, furniture, and art centered on the love of cooking she inherited from her Lebanese grandmother. But she’s stayed on in Lewiston, finding solace in the area and in her physical space, where she spends a few weeks at a time in between short jaunts around the country and the globe. "I’ve made it into a spot where people can come and feel inspired," she says. "If you want to do a project together, we can do that here. If you just want to hang out, I’ll make you dinner."

Illustration by John Devolle

Related Reading:

How One Renter Turned Her Loft Apartment Into an ’80s Dance Studio

How One Influencer Created a French-Chateau Vibe in Her Greenpoint Rental