To prepare a 15-year-old town home in Raleigh’s Five Points neighborhood for sale, listing agent Scott Hoyt of ChangingStreets.com real estate company in Raleigh called in the experts at Trig Modern, a modern home furnishings store and interior design firm located in downtown Raleigh.

“When we started this project, we told Trig Modern to come up with a handsome, refined, and tailored home,” Hoyt said. “They delivered.“

The two-story, 1699-square-foot townhouse at 604 Scales Town Court includes two bedrooms, two and half baths, a deck, a one-car garage, and nine-foot ceilings. Before Hoyt brought in Trig Modern, the interior hadn’t been updated since the town home community was built in 2000.

“A few of the first, simple things we did to create a more modern, tailored ambiance was to update all the light fixtures and fans and paint almost every room a shade of gray complemented by glossy white trim throughout,” explained Trig Modern interior designer Ann Marie Baum, who worked with contractor James King on the project. “Then we refinished the hardwood floors on the first floor to a darker, more medium hue and installed new, gray-striped carpeting upstairs.”

She painted the staircase’s wood handrails and the living room’s built-in bookcase the same glossy white as the trim, and replaced all the interior hardware with polished chrome.

To keep costs down yet give the kitchen a badly needed update, Baum painted the original cabinetry a high-gloss gray. Then she replaced all of the appliances with sleek, stainless steel choices and replaced the countertops with “Dark Silt“ quartz surfacing from Atlantic Countertops. She also installed a new, single-bowl stainless steel sink with a brushed nickel faucet in the kitchen and replaced the dark ceiling fan and low-hanging light fixture with a modern, four-can fixture “to give the space a more open, airy feeling,” she said.

One of Baum’s favorite elements, she said, is the kitchen’s backsplash, “which is actually kitchen-proof wallpaper that costs a fraction of the price of tile and can easily be cleaned.”

On the second level, Baum removed the master bedroom's French doors and replaced them with a dramatic, wooden “barn door” that slides over the doorway on a black rail. “The cool factor went up tremendously with this move,” she said, smiling.

A major renovation occurred in the master bathroom where Baum introduced a new walk-in shower with glass wall. She installed new shower and floor tiling, created another quartz countertop from a remnant at Atlantic Countertops, and replaced all fixtures with brushed nickel.

“For the second bedroom's bath, we decided to throw in a little more color,” Baum noted. “We painted the cabinet a deep, glossy blue, the walls pale yellow, and a mirror frame a darker glossy yellow. The shower curtain is striped and uses all those colors.”

Updated and refined now, the townhouse is on the market. Click here to view the listing.

For more information on TRIG Modern, visit www.trigmodern.com or call 919.516.8744.