Eco-friendly Refurbishment of a Ladies powder room - Part1

It was an honour to work for the prestigious RAF club in London and we were delighted to be in charge of the refurbishment of the Ladies powder room.
The ladies powder room hadn't been done for at least 20 years, and its paste glory had long tarnished, so the club asked us to transform it into a lovely space, that would be in touch with the sophistication of their clientele. Cherry on the cake, the club was also keen to do the refurbishment in an environmentally responsible way.

Below are two photos of the Ladies room before.

 

 

The ladies room is on two floors. Downstairs is a cloakroom where the members can safely leave their coats. Upstairs are the facilities. Under the staircase were the usual cupboards that were not really used. As the space is quite restricted, we decided to open it up by removing the cupboards. This newly created place could also host a make-up space well lit by a Hollywood mirror.

 

 

And here the new space:

In order to keep minimal storage. we built two drawers under the lower part of the staircase. We also installed a mirror on the back wall which creates an incredible depth to the room. We played a lot with the lighting, which brings a lot of interest to the room.
Here is another view of the room downstairs.

 

We chose a feminine and light colour scheme, the LED recessed down lighters provide a very good background lighting. If you want to use LED light, always remember to check the colour of the lights as they can be very white if not well chosen!
The coat hangers are re-installed as before; a voile roller blind provides softness to the window and a simple roman blind with a lovely glass trim dress the window elegantly. Carpet tiles are fitted, for easy maintenance; they can be replace easily in case of damage. The folding mirror is replaced by a foldable double sided mirror, so it is still a mirror when folded.

Details of re-upholstered chair

Detail of curtains

 

How do you like the transformation of the cloakroom? Don't hesitate to leave your comments!

 

A special thank you to Peter Schneiter who took all the after photographs http://www.peterschneiter.com/ 

 

Emmanuelle Lemoine

Creating an open plan 2: from idea to doing

 

Of course when it comes to removing internal walls, it just doesn’t happen like this. There are many structural issues to take into consideration, and even though some walls don’t look like being load bearing, they have an important function in keeping the whole structure of the house stable and solid. It is therefore absolutely necessary to seek the advice of a professional and have a structural survey realised to see how to remove the walls.

In this project I called a structural engineer who visited the house and scrutinised and studied how the house was built. At this stage any special structure of the house has to be looked at, including cellars and roof space. The structural engineer did gave us hios report, which was sent to the building and regulation office for their approval and to the chosen builder, who was in close relation to both the structural engineer and the building and regulation office.

After getting all the green lights and approval, the builder was able to order all the necessary material and organise his work on our project.

Of course in such a project there are many things that need full consideration, for example heating and radiators, lighting, windows and door…

The heating: the heating of the new room had to be fully reconsidered as with the removal of a wall a big radiator had to go (a big radiator that was located on the wall). This is when it is important to be able to calculate the right amount of necessary BTUs to heat properly the new room and then decide if you want to have visible radiators or if you would rather go for under floor heating. I must say that I love the under floor heating solution as it frees up all the walls from radiators and it also creates a lovely warmth, and you can even walk bear feet on tiles in winter if you wanted….

In our case the client decided to keep radiators, so we had to calculate the right amount of radiators with the right size, and find a good localisation for them to be included in the finished scheme. As you can see there are many things to be taken into account and can’t be left to chance. Make sure your plumber is up for it!

The electrics: As there is a new space created, a new lighting plan is needed. The kitchen needs an especially good lighting as when cooking or chopping vegetables, you need to see what you are doing! For this project we chose energy saving lighting that provide at the same time a fantastic lighting for a kitchen. We installed LED recessed down lighters positioned in such a way that there wouldn’t be shadows falling in the wrong place. LEDs have improved so much in the last years. They used to be extremely white and bright and only good to light up a garage… It is now possible to find LEDs that produce a warm and comfortable lighting, that doesn’t make you look like a ghost, but which provide a good light. Here again, make sure your electrician knows what he is talking about (I am so lucky to work with an excellent team, including builder, electrician, plumber, decorator…) to avoid any problems later on.

Two pendant lights are also going on top of the island, for atmospheric and task lighting at the same time (not on the photo yet). Plint lights have also been installed, very funky result!

  LED recessed downlighters

New opening: With the artificial lighting we always have to think about how to improve the natural lighting, which is a comfortable and eco-friendly aspect of lighting. In this case we have opened the existing window in the kitchen into a patio door leading directly to the decking area in the back garden. This big new opening gives extra light and a beautiful view to the garden.

Emmanuelle Lemoine

Creating an open plan 1: the idea

 

London houses are not famous for their big sizes, and very often our houses are made of smaller rooms which had their particular function in the past but can now feel rather small, oppressive and difficult to use. The solution to this is the creation of a bigger space by removing some internal walls. As we create a bigger space inside our walls means we are going to use the available space in a different way, and by opening the space, most of the time we gather in one place different functions.

This sort of multifunctional space has many advantages; for example people use less and less a formal dining room, so it all makes sense to have the dining area linked together with the kitchen area, instead of having two different smaller rooms. This is a way to create a new heart of the house, a warm place where the whole family can gather and enjoy each other’s company.

It is to solve this problem that I have been called a few times, and I have decided to share one of these experiences. For the following project I was called to create a bigger kitchen. As you can see on the rendering the house had three small rooms which were used as a kitchen (a small room, isolated at the end of the house that you accessed going down three steps) an un-used office and the third room which was supposed to be the dining room and was more a passage way leading to the kitchen as it was too narrow to host a proper dining table.

Plan of the space before

 

The client called me in to see how to improve the kitchen, with the idea of removing one wall (the wall between the un-used office and the kitchen) and create a bigger space. I explained that it was a very good idea but that removing this wall would create a long and narrow space which would be only half of an improvement. I proposed to remove the two internal walls separating the three rooms and create a frankly bigger space; the idea was very well received by the client who could suddenly see a brand new set of possibilities. I also proposed to raise the flooring in the kitchen so it would unify the whole space.

Proposed opening of the space

Now there are many opportunities to create a fantastic room with a big feeling of space. We'll see next how to do this.

Emmanuelle Lemoine

The Secret of Successful Storage

How often have you heard the cry “this house does not have enough storage”! Storage is so important, but it depends upon what kind of storage. It is necessary to differentiate between storage meaning to store items away out of sight and storage combined with display, or to merely hide the walls. We also have the freestanding variety or bespoke built in, the latter requiring a high degree of carpentry specialist skills. It also depends on the room in which the storage is to be placed.

Whatever the storage freestanding or build-in the most important pieces of equipment are a tape measure and graph paper. For freestanding initially measure the room and draw the outline to scale on the graph paper. Then measure the footprint of the furniture already in the room and the footprint of the item of furniture, these will then need to be traced onto card and then cut out. You then have the shape of the room and the furniture all to scale. You can then start to position the furniture taking into consideration cupboard door swings.

For built-in bespoke furniture, it is really better to leave it to the specialists, they know what they are doing and if you want a minimalist bank of storage, cutting corners is just not the answer. Although if there is too much built in storage the house can end up looking like the interior of a caravan!

Below are creative ways to find storage space in the home:

Hall

Freestanding furniture in a hall could be a low level chest of drawers or a console table with drawers. Many halls are just laid out with the stairs facing and a long passage leaving not much option for any furniture at all. One of the best ideas I have found if you have conventional stairs (not open) is to have cupboards built into the ‘triangle’ part which slide out. These cupboards can be 50cm wide and saves going on hands and knees searching for items which have been shoved to the back and not seen the light of day for donkey’s years.

Kitchen

To my mind, the only cupboards in a kitchen should be wall cupboards the interiors of which should have the capacity to ‘slide down’ making the top shelf accessible to people who are shorter than 6 foot tall! The base cupboards should be made up of drawers, these can be full height storage, or within unit 3 drawers deep, some of which can be refrigerated and also conventional, again saving going on hands and knees to the back of the cupboard. There are now all sorts of storage mechanisms for corner cupboards which ‘fold out’ which again solve the problem of almost climbing into a corner cupboard! As you can see I am not a fan of conventional cupboards in a kitchen.

Living Room

Really this is not the place for much storage apart from media and books. There are many storage units for media on the market. Media are not the prettiest of electrical appliances, therefore in my opinion, they are best kept out of sight in a well ventilated, easy to access unit and left to the experts. Book storage on the other hand can look absolutely beautiful if given a little imagination. Books could be stored by a ‘curly’ shelf mounted on the wall or even in ‘diamond’ shaped built-in bookshelves. Books should be displayed behind glass to keep them from getting dusty but not too close fitting to give them ventilation. Other storage in the living room could be in the coffee table where the top is split into 2, 3 or 4 segments which can be lifted up revealing storage within.

Bathroom

Some modern bathrooms can be very small and this is where a little imagination comes into play. Even if there is only a 12cm gap between the door architrave and the wall, built-in storage can be put in with shelving to house bottles shampoo, hair conditioner, shower gel etc. Get inspiration from 5* hotel websites, look for images of the bathrooms. If a bathroom cabinet is the only answer, do your research and choose carefully, some of them look awful! If you have a wall hanging wash basin, rolled up bath towels look attractive on a shelf beneath or even if you don’t have a shelf, a shallow basket on the floor with the rolled up towels piled in a triangle shape look most attractive – but not in a wet room!

Bedroom

If you have space for a separate dressing room or closet, perhaps an adjoining boxroom, I can recommend it. Consider building a wardrobe into an alcove or if there is room a bank of wardrobes along the whole length of a wall. Within these wardrobes think of slide-out drawers, built in shelving with the clothes hung at the height which is within your reach above. Also, I find that the ‘ottoman’ style beds, meaning the ones which the whole base of the bed is given over to storage and the mattress lifts on cantilevers are the best.

For freestanding storage, think wardrobes, 5 drawer chests side by side and bedside drawers. For the more unusual try shipping trunks say small, medium and large piled on each other, these can look very attractive.

I hope you have found this information on storage helpful. It has been suggested that I write my next blog on window treatments, so if anyone has any queries please let me know.

Anne Stuart