Project Description
NEW YORK, USA
BROWN STONE BATCHELOR PAD
The living room of this lovely, lower ground Batchelor pad on West 10th Street had very poor lighting and had not been decorated for over 15 years. As a result it was dark and gloomy; without any ceiling lights; and painted in a dark terracotta with black doors, windows and architraves. And due to the lack of good utility lighting it had also become rather cluttered and shabby. The brief from the client, who is an avid collector of historic busts and other precious things from his frequent worldwide travels, was to retain the warmth and direction of the previous colours, but create a much more organised, decluttered and modern feel.
To achieve this, a great number of new dimmable inset ceilings lights and a chandelier were added to both the living room and bedroom ceilings, to make both rooms a lot brighter. Different lighting settings now allow for a multitude of mood settings, which are suitable for working from home, relaxing, entertaining, watching TV and cleaning.
Petra selected a new colour scheme, which represented some of the colours in a set of long beloved curtains, which were removed to open and brighten the room. They were re-used in the bedroom. Side mirrors were installed on each side of the deep windows and the curtains replaced with slatted Venetian blinds, so as to bring even more daylight into the living room. The old radiators were covered with an extended window sill and custom made radiator cover under, to provide two new window seats and/or display areas.
New modern shelves and side boards were fitted on either side of the fireplace, to now provide a suitable space to house a multitude of busts and collectables. One very large, very old sofa was replaced with two modern armchairs, with a foot stool each, so as to provide another modern element to the room as well as much more flexible seating, especially for entertaining large parties. Where the sofa was, there is now the ideal wall space for a beautiful tall boy piece of furniture and the new arm chairs are positioned in front of it.
The old dark book shelves have been moved into the bedroom and into a closet there, where they are now providing badly needed and easily accessible storage for a large collection of shoes. The bed was moved to another wall and the curtains were used to create a giant bedhead behind it, whist hiding a lot of additional, newly created shelving and storage space in an alcove to one side of the previous fireplace.
The one large built-in wardrobe, previously next to the bed, which housed the TV and was very limited and poorly equipped for clothes storage, was removed completely. This has been replaced with a double, floor to ceiling Ikea wardrobe with sliding mirror doors, which now provides the perfect and well organised storage for all clothing items, travel bags and small cases. The large mirror frontage also provides an additional feeling of space and light in a previously cramped and very dark bedroom.
A new chest and TV unit was purchased to go behind the bed, into which the TV can be lowered and hidden, when not in use. The TV also offers a swivel option, so the TV can be turned to face into the room, where the client can now have TV dinners with his elderly mother. Fold away tables and chairs for that purpose are housed in the shoe closet.
The kitchen and bathroom have been left as is but are planned to also be renovated in the near future.
