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Room for Two
Room for Two
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Room for Two
Type
Gina Farinas faced a remodeling
challenge with her small two-level Arlington condo: It would be easy enough to
open up the space to seem larger, but how could she make it feel more expansive
while accommodating a new roommate - and allowing privacy for both of them?
Answering that triple-sided challenge
was Georgetown architect Ernesto Santalla, whose solution involved elimination
of some walls, visual tricks to suggest an expanded space and multifunctional
furniture and built-ins to provide genuine comfort and privacy.
Farinas, 58, and Norma Samson, 72,
retirees from the International Monetary Fund and longtime friends, hoped that
sharing Farinas' home would be a practical living arrangement. Samson could no
longer navigate the stairs in her own two-level condo down the hall and no
longer wanted to live alone. But the women sought to maintain some of the
privacy each had enjoyed while living solo.
Before the move, though, the women had
to tackle how best to combine their households. Samson gave away some of her
larger belongings, such as an electric organ, to make the process easier. And Farinas
looked for ways to make the main level accommodate Samson without interfering
with her own use of the living room, dining area and kitchen.
Farinas had seen a room done by
Santalla (pronounced san-TY-uh) at a decorator showcase at the Washington
Design Center in Southwest Washington and liked his contemporary sensibility.
He quickly sized up the situation.
"The space was small and very
chopped up," Santalla says. The entry foyer served as a dining area. It
was cut off from the kitchen by a wall with a pass-through, and cut off from
the living room by a "wing wall," a short section of wall that jutted
out between the kitchen and the living room, built to incorporate and therefore
hide a structural column. The women had further enclosed the dining space with
a freestanding shoji screen. "You start to add these things up and it
makes for a space that is . . . not optimal," the architect says.
Santalla's charge, to create living
quarters for Samson, could be accomplished by repurposing the tiny room at the
rear of the living room that Farinas used as an office and catch-all space. As
luck would have it, it already had an en-suite bathroom. But even the
preexisting room required thought to make things "more fine-tuned to my
needs," as Samson puts it.
One issue was the size of the room and
the super-comfortable adjustable Tempur-Pedic foam bed Samson wanted. Santalla
was able to snugly fit a twin-size bed lengthwise against the side wall of the
room, where it basically filled the space, then built an upholstered back and
arms around it so it took on the look of a daybed. An upholstered panel that
runs across the bottom front hides the adjusting mechanism - and the diminutive
Samson steps on it to climb up into the high bed.
A flat-screen TV is mounted on the wall
at the foot of the bed, and the upholstered arm at her head flips open to hold
the remote control. Samson delights in the sleek floor lamp near the head of
the bed, which provides general light and has a tiltable shade to direct the
beam of a reading lamp.
Samson's bathroom had a bathtub, which
not ideal for someone with mobility issues. Now it boasts a walk-in unit with a
hand shower and a flip-down seat at one end.
Even after "de-accessioning,"
Samson said, she needed storage for clothing and such. The little room had a
walk-in closet, but it was awkward. "Not all storage is good
storage," Santalla says, "especially if you start to stack things in
front, to the point where you can't get to the stuff at the back. Some things
are designed to fail."
Instead, the back wall of the bedroom
is lined with two handsome wardrobes from Ikea. The frosted-glass doors were
painted on the inside "so I don't have to look at my clothes all the
time," Samson says with a giggle.
From the beginning, the women agreed
that the arrival of Samson in the condo presented an opportunity to take a
long, hard look at the whole space.
First to go was the chopped-up look.
Down came the upper portion of the pass-through wall separating the kitchen and
dining foyer. That meant losing the upper cabinets on the kitchen side. To
compensate, Santalla made the counter deeper, extending it into the dining area
and incorporating semi-custom cabinets with a satin lacquer finish below.
With the kitchen in full view, Farinas
and Samson began the by-now-standard quest for glamour appliances, in the land
of black and stainless. In order to save money, no appliances were rearranged,
but the women delightedly point out a Miele-brand wall oven that bakes and
grills and a tall, skinny (24 inches wide) refrigerator that doesn't overwhelm
the small space. ("Two people don't need a 48-inch refrigerator,"
says Santalla. "As we move toward living in smaller spaces, we can have
creature comforts, but we can live differently.")
Now the kitchen counter was part of the
formal living space, so Santalla topped it with composite quartz and extended
the counter material down the side of the end cabinet, giving the unit a look
that was less kitchen and more furniture. Drawer pulls on the kitchen side are
stainless steel from Hafele, while the pulls on the formal living side are from
Du Verre and have a more hand-crafted quality, the architect points out.
He extended the quartz-and-cabinet
treatment along the wall into the living area - to gather the women's TV and
electronics - but to do so meant pulling down that irksome wing wall between
the foyer and living room. That left the structural column, which of course could
not be touched. It's not the best of all possible worlds, but Santalla had the
column sheathed on all sides with mirror. The result of this sleight of hand is
that it does virtually "dematerialize to a certain extent," as the
architect puts it.
Another visual trick was to extend the
same flooring throughout the main floor. The continuity, Santalla explains,
would make the space look larger. And it was an opportunity to replace an
inexpensive-looking Pergo-type floor laminate with handsome taupe ceramic tile
that now runs from the foyer, into the kitchen, through the living room and up
the wall of the shower in Samson's bathroom. It was cheaper than laying new
hardwood, Santalla points out, and quite handsome.
But sometimes Santalla wanted to stop
the eye. Above the round dining table in the foyer, he hung a Tolomeo
suspension lamp from Artemide as a focal point. "When you walk in, it
gives the eye a place to rest," he says. "You don't take in the whole
space at once and realize how small it is."
When she hired Santalla, Farinas told
him he had to work with three carpets and that she liked color. The dining
chairs are red, but a visitor looking at the neutral colors of the living room
and bedroom beyond might conclude that Santalla ignored his client's desire for
color. But sit in the living room and look back toward the front of the
apartment, and a different picture emerges.
The dining table, one now sees, rests
on a vibrant red rug, one of three carpets on the main level. And the front
wall, including the front door, is a rich red, somewhere between tomato and
scarlet, taken from the red in Farinas's rugs. Even the trim around the doors
is painted red, unifying the wall. "People think trim has to be painted
white, but why call attention to a closet?" says Santalla.
The women are clearly delighted with
their shared nest. Samson is now Farinas's renter ("Ooh, and my rent is
late," chirps Samson early in February). The only problem is that Farinas
now wants the same level of attention and quality of finishes in her upstairs
bedroom and bath. For the moment, she's letting her checkbook cool off, but
that's the next phase of life in this Arlington condo, now made for two.
challenge with her small two-level Arlington condo: It would be easy enough to
open up the space to seem larger, but how could she make it feel more expansive
while accommodating a new roommate - and allowing privacy for both of them?
Answering that triple-sided challenge
was Georgetown architect Ernesto Santalla, whose solution involved elimination
of some walls, visual tricks to suggest an expanded space and multifunctional
furniture and built-ins to provide genuine comfort and privacy.
Farinas, 58, and Norma Samson, 72,
retirees from the International Monetary Fund and longtime friends, hoped that
sharing Farinas' home would be a practical living arrangement. Samson could no
longer navigate the stairs in her own two-level condo down the hall and no
longer wanted to live alone. But the women sought to maintain some of the
privacy each had enjoyed while living solo.
Before the move, though, the women had
to tackle how best to combine their households. Samson gave away some of her
larger belongings, such as an electric organ, to make the process easier. And Farinas
looked for ways to make the main level accommodate Samson without interfering
with her own use of the living room, dining area and kitchen.
Farinas had seen a room done by
Santalla (pronounced san-TY-uh) at a decorator showcase at the Washington
Design Center in Southwest Washington and liked his contemporary sensibility.
He quickly sized up the situation.
"The space was small and very
chopped up," Santalla says. The entry foyer served as a dining area. It
was cut off from the kitchen by a wall with a pass-through, and cut off from
the living room by a "wing wall," a short section of wall that jutted
out between the kitchen and the living room, built to incorporate and therefore
hide a structural column. The women had further enclosed the dining space with
a freestanding shoji screen. "You start to add these things up and it
makes for a space that is . . . not optimal," the architect says.
Santalla's charge, to create living
quarters for Samson, could be accomplished by repurposing the tiny room at the
rear of the living room that Farinas used as an office and catch-all space. As
luck would have it, it already had an en-suite bathroom. But even the
preexisting room required thought to make things "more fine-tuned to my
needs," as Samson puts it.
One issue was the size of the room and
the super-comfortable adjustable Tempur-Pedic foam bed Samson wanted. Santalla
was able to snugly fit a twin-size bed lengthwise against the side wall of the
room, where it basically filled the space, then built an upholstered back and
arms around it so it took on the look of a daybed. An upholstered panel that
runs across the bottom front hides the adjusting mechanism - and the diminutive
Samson steps on it to climb up into the high bed.
A flat-screen TV is mounted on the wall
at the foot of the bed, and the upholstered arm at her head flips open to hold
the remote control. Samson delights in the sleek floor lamp near the head of
the bed, which provides general light and has a tiltable shade to direct the
beam of a reading lamp.
Samson's bathroom had a bathtub, which
not ideal for someone with mobility issues. Now it boasts a walk-in unit with a
hand shower and a flip-down seat at one end.
Even after "de-accessioning,"
Samson said, she needed storage for clothing and such. The little room had a
walk-in closet, but it was awkward. "Not all storage is good
storage," Santalla says, "especially if you start to stack things in
front, to the point where you can't get to the stuff at the back. Some things
are designed to fail."
Instead, the back wall of the bedroom
is lined with two handsome wardrobes from Ikea. The frosted-glass doors were
painted on the inside "so I don't have to look at my clothes all the
time," Samson says with a giggle.
From the beginning, the women agreed
that the arrival of Samson in the condo presented an opportunity to take a
long, hard look at the whole space.
First to go was the chopped-up look.
Down came the upper portion of the pass-through wall separating the kitchen and
dining foyer. That meant losing the upper cabinets on the kitchen side. To
compensate, Santalla made the counter deeper, extending it into the dining area
and incorporating semi-custom cabinets with a satin lacquer finish below.
With the kitchen in full view, Farinas
and Samson began the by-now-standard quest for glamour appliances, in the land
of black and stainless. In order to save money, no appliances were rearranged,
but the women delightedly point out a Miele-brand wall oven that bakes and
grills and a tall, skinny (24 inches wide) refrigerator that doesn't overwhelm
the small space. ("Two people don't need a 48-inch refrigerator,"
says Santalla. "As we move toward living in smaller spaces, we can have
creature comforts, but we can live differently.")
Now the kitchen counter was part of the
formal living space, so Santalla topped it with composite quartz and extended
the counter material down the side of the end cabinet, giving the unit a look
that was less kitchen and more furniture. Drawer pulls on the kitchen side are
stainless steel from Hafele, while the pulls on the formal living side are from
Du Verre and have a more hand-crafted quality, the architect points out.
He extended the quartz-and-cabinet
treatment along the wall into the living area - to gather the women's TV and
electronics - but to do so meant pulling down that irksome wing wall between
the foyer and living room. That left the structural column, which of course could
not be touched. It's not the best of all possible worlds, but Santalla had the
column sheathed on all sides with mirror. The result of this sleight of hand is
that it does virtually "dematerialize to a certain extent," as the
architect puts it.
Another visual trick was to extend the
same flooring throughout the main floor. The continuity, Santalla explains,
would make the space look larger. And it was an opportunity to replace an
inexpensive-looking Pergo-type floor laminate with handsome taupe ceramic tile
that now runs from the foyer, into the kitchen, through the living room and up
the wall of the shower in Samson's bathroom. It was cheaper than laying new
hardwood, Santalla points out, and quite handsome.
But sometimes Santalla wanted to stop
the eye. Above the round dining table in the foyer, he hung a Tolomeo
suspension lamp from Artemide as a focal point. "When you walk in, it
gives the eye a place to rest," he says. "You don't take in the whole
space at once and realize how small it is."
When she hired Santalla, Farinas told
him he had to work with three carpets and that she liked color. The dining
chairs are red, but a visitor looking at the neutral colors of the living room
and bedroom beyond might conclude that Santalla ignored his client's desire for
color. But sit in the living room and look back toward the front of the
apartment, and a different picture emerges.
The dining table, one now sees, rests
on a vibrant red rug, one of three carpets on the main level. And the front
wall, including the front door, is a rich red, somewhere between tomato and
scarlet, taken from the red in Farinas's rugs. Even the trim around the doors
is painted red, unifying the wall. "People think trim has to be painted
white, but why call attention to a closet?" says Santalla.
The women are clearly delighted with
their shared nest. Samson is now Farinas's renter ("Ooh, and my rent is
late," chirps Samson early in February). The only problem is that Farinas
now wants the same level of attention and quality of finishes in her upstairs
bedroom and bath. For the moment, she's letting her checkbook cool off, but
that's the next phase of life in this Arlington condo, now made for two.
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