As someone who has spent his career crafting high-end homes for other people, Michael Abrams was ready to create one for himself without compromise. So after his 2020 divorce, the interior designer purchased a 1,400-square-foot townhouse in Old Town and promptly set about making every inch of it his own. With no client to have to consult with, Abrams gave himself full license to indulge. “It’s the first place I designed as a single man,” says the founding partner of Abrams Valenti Interiors. “So I didn’t deny myself anything.” The result is a reimagined home that proves downsizing doesn’t have to mean dialing back.

What drew Abrams to the townhouse was its livability: It has a private entrance, ample outdoor space, and parking just outside the kitchen door. He also liked the setting, smack on Wells Street, in a part of town he says he’d underestimated, despite living in Chicago for 47 years. What he didn’t love was the inside: The two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath looked like a relic of the flashy ’80s, complete with awkward angles, fussy rooms, and a corner fireplace that took up far too much space. So Abrams set about stripping the place to the studs and rebuilding it. “Every finish and everything in the house is brand new. The only thing I left as is was the front door,” he says, noting that the neighborhood association required it be kept intact.

The mood is distinctly masculine, with autumnal hues and natural materials. “I like woods and dark finishes,” Abrams says. “Rusts and oranges have always been colors I’ve gravitated to.” Walnut cabinetry by Eurocraft anchors the kitchen and extends into the living space as paneling, reinforcing Abrams’s goal of creating a space that feels more social than culinary. “The kitchen exists mostly for entertaining,” he says, citing its waterfall island doubling as a bar. A terrazzo backsplash and black-and-gold accents, from the Lightology fixtures to the barstools, add depth without clutter.

He also removed some walls and eliminated a formal dining room in favor of a custom curvilinear leather banquette that serves as a breakfast nook. Above it hangs a gallery of collected canvases. Friends who pregame here are besotted by the powder room, which offers dramatic appeal with an espresso-toned fluted vanity and floor-to-ceiling quartz. “Bathrooms can be jewel boxes,” Abrams says. Other details are equally theatrical, if more subtle, like the textured wall coverings that replace paint throughout the home. “Paint has a very flat finish. Wall coverings elevate a space.

Abrams carries that philosophy upstairs, though with a contrasting aesthetic. Here, the primary bedroom is quiet, airy, and cocooning, thanks to added moldings, a fabric headboard that expands the length of the room, and alpaca bouclé drapes, which Abrams admits were a “required indulgence,” that soften the space without sacrificing strength. “You feel like you’re protected,” he says. Those curtains are motorized, a treatment he now considers nonnegotiable. “It’s one of those things that once you do, you’ll never not do again, like when you put in a heated floor,” he says. Rather than viewing the lowered ceiling of the primary bath as a constraint, Abrams layered in lighting — tucked it into a trough in the shower, beneath the vanity — that bounces off white and beige surfaces to decadent effect.

The secondary bedroom functions as a study, drenched entirely in dark green, with a Womb chair for reading, though Abrams concedes he doesn’t use the chair as much as he expected. That, he says, is the lesson of downsizing: You realize what you don’t need. “It’s nice to edit and only have the important things at this time in my life,” he says.

Those important things include Phil, a 75-pound rescue dog who is the real master of this remodeled domicile. “His hair is everywhere,” says Abrams. And that’s just fine. “Nothing is precious. Every space and piece of furniture gets used.” A reflection of this next chapter of life, Abrams’s new home is intensely personal, layered with style, and built to love hard for the long haul.