Private Quarters: Renovated library in Kirkwood

Home and Garden

Private Quarters: Renovated library in Kirkwood

Photos: Randy Brazee and Jonathan Huff turned a former library into a home for themselves in Atlanta's Kirkwood community, Jan. 2013.

Randy Brazee and Jonathan Huff created their own story by renovating a former library into a home for themselves.

The structure in Atlanta’s Kirkwood community was built in the 1940s by funds donated by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie as one of the Carnegie libraries in Atlanta and nationally. Brazee and Huff bought the six-room property from the Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library System, which closed the library in 1995.

Original features they retained include the arches (about 12 feet high and a foot thick), lighting and bookshelves in the front room, which is about 56 feet long and 17 feet wide, with 14-foot ceilings.

Words such as “simple” and “easy to live in” define their interior design style. “Our style is partly driven by us, and it’s a lot driven by the building itself and the space and trying to do something that’s in keeping with the building,” Brazee says.

This table is crafted out of an old chalkboard once used at the University of Wisconsin. The couple says their favorite furniture piece is a library table they bought at an auction and now use as the dining table, which seats at least 12. The table has a red leather insert in the middle, and the wood matches the bookshelves. “It looks like it was supposed to be here all the time,” Brazee says.

Having a pool table in the house is fitting with the way they use the space by entertaining often, Huff says.

Brazee and Huff did the work themselves, slowly renovating. One of the first steps was tackling the bathroom situation. The building had male and female bathrooms, but only toilets and no shower. They had to add a shower before a bank would give them a loan.

Be creative in how you use the space, Huff says. One of their decisions has been to use reclaimed and repurposed items, such as an old door that became the side of the bar in the back of the home. “It’s really fun and exciting to use old things in new ways,” Brazee says, “especially when you’re converting a space.”

A wall was removed in the kitchen to enlarge the space. “As soon as we walked in, we just kind of knew that it was going to be perfect for us,” Brazee says. “It kind of lays out really well as a house.”

The pool. They took out the original 12-car parking lot to add the pool with a hot tub. “We built it with a plain concrete pool deck because we thought that was probably what would have been built back in the ’40s or ’50s,” Huff says. Brazee adds: “Not only is it great to have a pool, but our yard wasn’t usable in the back before.”

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Randy Brazee and Jonathan Huff created their own story by renovating a former library into a home for themselves.

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