New Phase of Residence in Hampstead
I was first involved in the renovation of this property when my clients bought it nearly twenty years ago. Recently, they called me in again to change the existing cinema room into a gym. The lady of the house is keen on exercising to the Zumba videos she sources from Youtube. To indulge her great enthusiasm for this I created a mirrored wall at the end of the room behind which a large TV casts virtually life-size images of the Zumba dance routines she watches while exercising. Removable fabric panels above the mirror disguise the speakers. We then installed a Technogym at the other end of the space and added a built-in air-conditioning unit above it, which appears to all intents and purposes like part of the gym machinery. The carpet was jettisoned in favour of a sprung, timber floor and air-conditioning was installed throughout with discreet, round air-vents located in the ceiling.
We then transformed the original powder room adjacent to the gym into a shower room with a wet room floor finished in Bisazza mosaics. In addition we commissioned Bisazza to supply
three bespoke, decorative, mosaic panels for the walls and another to wrap round a rather ugly industrial looking structural column.
My client also asked me to look at the two remaining, un-renovated, en-suite bathrooms which we had fun designing in rather unusual ways.
One ended up with more of a nightclub ambience than a bathroom with metallic, silver tiles, various mosaics and very bold, black and white tiles and including blue floor lights.
The starting point for the other bathroom was the black and yellow marble, which my client fell in love with when we were out marble shopping one day. Accordingly, I polish- plastered the walls in the same yellow and added a mixture of contrasting mosaics in the shower cubicle and on the floor. We then covered the existing sash window with a hinged vanity mirror. By day this takes advantage of the natural light which floods in through a frame of sandblasted glass to highlight the fabulous, coloured glass wash basin. Craftily concealed lights, back-lit artificially, create the same stunning effect when switch on at night. The storage cupboard doors were finished in mirror with highly polished stainless steel frames.
