Luxe Atlanta Interior Design: A Condo Renovation Story
You never know where you’ll meet your clients… I met this client at a wedding of a mutual friend. We were seated at the same table and got to talking and naturally the subject of Atlanta interior design surfaced. She purchased this condo eight years prior to our meeting and had been fantasizing about making it her own. But alas, she was raising her son and working a lot and didn’t know the right person to work with to get the job done. Who and the heck has time to intentionally design and then manage a renovation with all of these other priorities? Frankly, not many people.
That’s of course, where I come in. I manage all of the moving parts of a design project and have connections and relationships to get the work done beautifully. There are hundreds of decisions in a renovation project and I help guide my clients through the process while also absorbing any of the stress that inevitably comes up throughout the process. I manage the ordering, the tracking, the scheduling and make sure every detail is considered, is functional, and looks amazing.
This client is the type of client that dreams are made of. She’s decisive, she’s super stylish with a personal collection of objects and art, she’s realistic about the budget, and she is nice as pie. As pie! I am not exaggerating.
The 90s were pretty cool but this apartment was dripping in skinny pendant lights, the color orange, and square tiles and we had to change that for this amazing lady. And everything was so dark. With concrete floors and ceilings and only windows on one side, there is not much room for light to pass through and reflect around.
The first order of business is always the floor plan. Since we were renovating all the areas, we decided to keep the walls and concrete floors as-is but update the layout. I moved the dining room to fill up what felt like a massive vacant hallway between the living room and the bedroom and created a nice little reading nook by the windows. I specified the size and shape of each furniture item and sprinkled in a few of her favorite existing furniture pieces. The floor plan serves as the outline of each piece we need.
I call the first phase of the design process, the Discovery Phase. It’s all about discovering what a client loves, wants, dreams about and also does not love, want or dream about. I ask clients to share their Houzz or Pinterest boards and we discuss what they are responding to in these images and how what they see could be translated into their space. In one of our initial meetings, I bring stacks of wallpaper, paint and fabric samples to get their visceral reaction. I am looking to see what colors, textures, and patterns resonate. Design is very personal and this is a great way to begin to dial in the look and the feel of a space.
You can see in the mood board we were aiming for luxury and also for drama.
In the bedroom we wanted soft colors and soft materials. We found this dream-scape wallpaper mural and pulled together the room around this. We added a larger area rug to soften the concrete, painted the walls, ceiling, and trim, replaced the wall sconce lighting and added more track lighting throughout to brighten the room. I always put lighting on dimmers so you can control the output. Especially in a bedroom, you want it soft and moody most of the time. We sourced new furniture that is a better scale for this large room, a custom upholstered bed in the softest velvet ever, and repainted her existing antique vanity glossy white.
In her en-suite bathroom we carried the color in palette using whites and grays. We designed this double vanity to have lots of storage. It has integrated plugs for her hair dryer within the drawers. The fittings are polished nickel and the tile is marble. In the shower we used this beautiful organic oversized mosaic tile.
This counter has what is called a mitered edge and we “water-falled” it down into the shower and used a glass partition to separate the actual shower.
In a bathroom renovation, I specify every detail from the direction the tile runs, to the thickness of the grout, to where the hardware is drilled into the cabinets, where the towel hooks live, and more.
It’s important to get all of the details right.
Here’s the final kitchen elevation and a basic rendering. The door shown below leads to the pantry and laundry rooms.
Did you notice in the before picture of the kitchen there was a lot of stuff on the counter? Part of our design process is to understand how the space will be used and function. How much storage is needed? How will the space be used most of the time? What would make using the space more convenient and better?
In this case, we created a pantry to store all of the appliances. They are all out on a counter and plugged in, just hidden.
Remember those floating shelves on that orange wall? We added cabinetry and made a bar area with an integrated fridge. We couldn’t bring the cabinetry all the way across because we had to work around an electrical panel. Instead, we framed a piece of antique mirror and hung the mirror over the panel.
We got rid of the rock wall and repurposed the two slipper chairs, the rug, and the circular table to create the reading nook below.
In the living room we designed a media center to house her record collection and serve as a focal point for the room. We even made the hallway area a little more interesting by adding wallpaper and mirrors and arranging a few pieces of her existing furniture. Those wall sconces were actually in her bedroom originally.
The powder room was completely transformed and so was her office. I wish I had a good photo of her new dining room to show off. It floats in this space below.
The most pressing issue in her office was storage so we took advantage of every square inch and added three oversized mesh cabinets. The mesh allows some transparency while still keeping up a ‘neat’ appearance. We used this room as an opportunity to go bold with color (an office should be stimulating!) and selected a green palm wallpaper and a beautiful green silk fabric for the Roman shade. We painted the trim and the door a dark green to disappear and placed a lot of her plants and various Objet d'art on top of the cabinets.
I just love how vibrant this little space is. And I love when clients are not afraid of trying things that might be just slightly outside of their comfort zone.
The end.
Like what you see? Interested in working with Violet Marsh Interiors on an Atlanta interior design project? Book a discovery call to see if we are a fit. Please cruise around the site using the navigation links below and please do let me know how I can help.