In the heart of Yorkville, Erica Friedland Tufaro has fashioned gold from dirt.

In the early stages of pregnancy, and with a husband more confident writing legal briefs than twisting light bulbs, the young architect started eight months on a renovation, replacing every molding, tile, and knob in her postwar home at 80 East End Ave.

Now, weeks from giving birth, Mrs. Friedland Tufaro, who bought the apartment last December for $720,000, has nearly doubled its worth.

“What she has done is very, very smart. She has added value, and essentially created a buyer’s dream,” said a broker at the Corcoran Group, Robin Hudis. Ms. Hudis currently has a listing in Mrs. Friedland Tufaro’s building. In her expert opinion of the neighborhood, she said she would list the property on today’s market with a price between $1.2 million and $1.25 million.

“There is a lack of inventory in this neighborhood, which has driven up prices, and with the way this apartment has been renovated, its value has been nearly doubled,” she said.

Mrs. Friedland Tufaro, whose company is Erica Friedland Design, bought the home from the estate of an elderly woman who hadn’t had it renovated in a number of years. The 33-year-old, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a master’s degree in architecture, has been practicing for six years.

While a number of the cost-cutting methods Mrs. Friedland Tufaro used, such as contractors’ discounts, would be difficult for amateurs to come by, others are easy to pick up.

“In order to do these types of renovations, it is very important you have more than one exposure so you can have flexibility,” she said. For example, Mrs. Friedland Tufaro moved an internal wall in the apartment to enlarge the size of the master bedroom, the baby’s room, and her office, which was possible because the apartment was a corner unit with multiple exposures, she explained.

Mrs. Friedland Tufaro also maintains a clean palate to appeal to a broad audience of buyers, such as creating a simple kitchen with white tiles and cabinets, and stainless steel appliances.

“I kept the kitchen relatively generic to be acceptable to different types of buyers,” she said. She also decided not to buy top of the line appliances, such as a Sub Zero refrigerator, opting instead for an Amana.

“It is so easy to overdo it with appliances,” she said. “For example, I have an Amana refrigerator and stove, whereas a Viking stove, for example, would have run $3,000 to $4,000 more, but it wouldn’t have necessarily increased the value of my apartment by that much. Many people end up ripping out the kitchen and redoing it, so it doesn’t make sense to overdo the kitchen with the absolute best appliances.”

To cut the cost of her kitchen cabinetry without creating a cheap look, Mrs. Friedland Tufaro bought cabinet boxes from Ikea and hired a cabinetmaker to build the cabinet fronts. In this way, the kitchen gives the appearance of custom-made cabinetry without the price tag.

For the kitchen floor, Mrs. Friedland Tufaro chose slate, which is relatively cheap but is often overlooked because it is easily scratched. To hide the scratches, she chose an ostrich pattern that has naturally white stripes of varying widths and angles that blend into the slate. As for the tiles along the walls, she used narrow subway tiles that have a classic New York look and run $2.50 a square foot versus the $5 to $10 a square foot for traditional square shaped tiles.

The bathrooms also had hidden tricks behind their walls, namely tiled walls that were built over existing tiled walls. “It is absolutely fine to tile over an existing wall as long as the wall is fine and it has no water damage,” she said, adding it can save from one-third to one-half the cost of redoing a bathroom.

Mrs. Friedland Tufaro also kept the original cast iron bathtubs that came with the apartment, reglazing the surfaces and building ledges over their sides to give them the appearances of built-ins. The apartment’s hardwood floors were in decent shape, and rather than go through the hassle and expense of re-doing them, Mrs. Friedland Tufaro used a water-based polyurethane product known as Kirkland floor finish to spruce them up.

In all, Mrs. Friedland Tufaro estimates she spent “less than $100,000” in architectural renovations on her home. “I made a number of concessions. There are things that are more simple than maybe I would have liked, but they were investment choices that will hopefully pay off when we decide to sell,” she said.

As an architect, Mrs. Friedland Tufaro kept in mind three ideas when looking to increase the value of her home: “Keep it simple, using add-ons like pillows and paintings to add your own personal touches rather than more extreme design choices. Buy an apartment with multiple exposures. Be realistic with yourself about your needs.”