For a family with two children, the new layout is ideal: a separate bedroom was provided for the parents, the children were separated into a separate unit, and the kitchen-living room became the center.
The center of this apartment in a Stalinist building was the spacious living-dining room – doors lead into it from almost all rooms. Because of the gas, the kitchen had to be separated with glass partitions, but I liked the idea so much that exactly the same doors were made into the hallway – now the entrance area does not look isolated.
The customers are a married couple with two sons, six and eight years old. They were careful in choosing a designer, but listened to the recommendations of friends, and already at the first personal meeting with Natalya Solo, contact was immediately established: the customers completely trusted the professional both in the planning solution and in the choice of decorative solutions.
There were many wishes for the space: separate rooms for the children and a separate bedroom for the parents, a dressing room, two separate bathrooms, always with a bath, a dining area closer to the kitchen.
“The head of the family is French. Therefore, one of the main tasks for me was to create a convenient layout that would make it possible to turn an uncomfortable Soviet communal apartment into a comfortable apartment of European quality,” says Natalya Solo.
An obvious drawback of the spacious four-room apartment was its corridor system: all four rooms were small, but the corridor “ate up” twenty square meters. The isolated kitchen was very tiny and did not allow us to place a dining table for the family there.
The tiny bathroom left no room for a washing machine and boiler. The work was complicated by transverse crossbars running along the ceiling, along which the partitions were located. But the undoubted advantage of the apartment was the presence of six windows facing two sides – into a quiet courtyard and onto the street with a view of the temple.
As a result of the redevelopment, Natalya Solo retained the number of rooms: she got a bedroom, two children’s rooms and a living room. In place of the spacious corridor, two dressing rooms were created. The entrance to the kitchen was made from the living room – this made it possible to allocate a dining area in the living room near the kitchen.
“The gas stove made its own adjustments, and we gave preference to glass partitions, which functionally provided the required insulation of the kitchen, but visually kept the space unified,” says the designer.
The same glass partitions separated the passage to the private area and the hallway: now sunlight from the living room penetrates these areas and overall the space looks united. As the customers wanted, we made two separate bathrooms: one guest bathroom and a spacious bathroom with a laundry area. The redevelopment project was fully approved and agreed upon by the Moscow Housing Inspectorate.
An interesting solution was the organization of a walk-through living room. Five doors open into the living room, three of which are glass partitions, and the other two are hidden doors for painting, which completely merge with the walls when closed.
To create an authentic atmosphere in a French apartment, we chose a “French Christmas tree” as the floor covering, which was even installed in the kitchen. The walls were painted with Little Greene and Benjamin Moore, and some wallpaper was used in the nursery. Moreover, the wallpaper under the philosophical name “Wabi-Sabi” was chosen by the six-year-old owner of the room himself, and the designer approved of his choice.
Natalya Solo chose furniture for the project together with the owner of the house, who truly enjoyed the process and tirelessly delved into the smallest technical details of the manufacturers. This is how the project included a dining table and chairs, a Calligaris coffee table, a Sits sofa, and Aromas lamps.
Some of the cabinet furniture was ordered from Italy, some was made to order. The kitchen was designed by many companies, but they settled on the practical IKEA, which suited perfectly stylistically; the designer only selected expensive Italian handles for the facades.
