Historical center apartment

The first step implied the combining of two neighboring apartments into one. However, the internal load-bearing walls complicated the redesign. Now look how that worked out.

Our customers are a married couple 65 years old. It is specific that the apartment consists of one and two room apartments; the house is brick-built, and each partition is load bearing. The owners have a large and friendly family, many grandchildren and nephews who often come to visit and stay with their grandmother for the weekend.

In a nutshell

The challenge was to merge two apartments with no replanning, preserve Italian parquet and plaster stucco from past renovations, and consider as many storage spaces as possible.

Details

Obviously, it was impossible to get away without any redevelopment: so we demolished the partitions in the hallway and moved the bathroom wall by 10 cm to accommodate the built-in washing machine. It was suggested to change the original purpose of the rooms and divide the space into private and public zones. Between them is the dining room, before there was a narrow and inconvenient living room.
There is a living room instead of the former master bedroom. Instead of solid partition walls in the hallway, an embossed partition wall was installed according to the designer's sketches; eventually it brought more air and light to the space. The wardrobe is with a secret – there is another entrance to the apartment hidden.

When selecting finishes, we focused on wallpapers: Paintable in the hallway and kitchen; with English tweed effect in the living room; with a soft pattern and ease to care of in the bedroom. To expand visually the space the designer introduced a panel with trees.
To ensure safety the floor in the hall and kitchen was tiled with special polish. The living room floor is covered with parquet, while the bathroom has Spanish white tiles that are easily cleaned; besides the client has a steam generator, which facilitates the process.

The leading elements in the bathroom are the chandelier and the mirror’s frame painted according to the designer’s sketch. A composition of Spanish tiles was created over the installation. In the master's bathroom, tiles with geometric patterns were initially laid on the floor, but the customer decided to remove it, since she was not satisfied with the quality of the cement tiles. The chandelier remained from the previous apartment. A riser pipe is hidden in the side closets on the right, shelves for storage are provided on the left. All bathrooms have easy access to water supply systems.

The whole apartment was carefully thought out; just the same, way as the director designs a movie. We worked together with the client: we managed to keep the plaster molding, found nightstands to match the Spanish wardrobe bought during the first renovation in the same showroom 20 years ago. Unfortunately, it seemed impossible to preserve the parquet, which was flooded when workers were changing the wiring and there was a heating pipe in the wall. Now these are just memories, but back then the construction required resilience and patience.