I think I have posted before about this large villa renovation we have ongoing at the moment. It was an abandoned villa that was rotting away. We were engaged to do some minimum renovations by the owner so it was presentable for sale. It was this post where I wrote about how we created a lovely master bedroom suite with a feature piece above the bed....
@seancallow/creating-a-bed-head-art-piece
I had not started posting in the Architecture+Design community yet so it probably has not been seen by these readers. The property has since sold and the new owners have engaged me to do the full renovation of the entire property including the interior design, the construction and all the furniture and joinery. It's a very big job and will keep us busy for several months. Lets start be looking at how the property was when we first arrived on the scene.....
So as you can see the main structure of the villa was completed but none of the interiors had been started as I believe the owners had run out of capital. It was abandoned and slowly starting to rot. Firstly I was asked to create some renders of how my vision for the property would be so I did a few sketches and got my team to start working on the renders. Here are a few of the ideas that were presented to the new owner and with the exception of a few small changes and requests all my designs were approved and we were able to move on to the renovation soon after.
So now the time has come to go full power on the interior renovations and this is where my brother takes charge. I visit the site regularly to make sure the designs are being implemented correctly and to check the finish teams are not taking any short cuts. I pay especially close attention to the tiling of the bathrooms and the plaster work on the ceilings.
Its funny because although the two guys in the picture know me and know I'm the boss, often we have subcontractors on site and those guys don't know who I am. They always shocked when this short lady arrives on site and starts telling them they doing a shit job and shouting at them. Then I pull up construction drawings and start telling them why they have gone wrong and what they need to do to remedy the situation!
The project is coming along very nicely and I'm happy with the progress of our teams. As the renovation is coming along the factory are working away on the builtin furniture and also loose furnishing that will be added at the end. I paid a little visit to the furniture factory and also my other workshop to see how they are getting on. They were cracking on with everything too so I'm feeling confident we are going to deliver on time.
Back at the villa the main living and dining room on the upstairs level has been more or less fully finished and I was able to spend a little time up there absorbing the space. This is important for me as an interior architect and designer as I need to connect with the spaces and understand how the light and airflow works in the building. What colours are coming through naturally from the outside environment and where does the sun rise and set and how does this light effect the interior spaces.
I will post again about this project as it goes on to the next stages. I hope everybody had a great weekend and a productive week ahead!
