If you have a property on the ocean in the tropics, it will start to decay the day construction finishes. The salt air, the humidity, the monsoon seasons, the relentless sun.... all these factors are against you and in a very short time your home will start to look like its unloved and unwanted. We have quite recently finished a partial renovation of a large villa that is perched on the cliffs above the ocean in an area we call "Millionaires Row" here in Phuket. The Villa is quite old and in bad need of a refresh. It recently changed ownership so I was approached to conceptualize the interiors and then the new owners engaged me and my family to take on the renovation of two rooms initially, with a view to continue over the coming year with the rest of the property. Here is an aerial view of the villa. A pretty ugly building to me but in a fantastic location you can't deny! You can see there is already construction going on when we arrived as they had engaged an engineering firm to build a new retaining wall below the property.
We were tasked with redesigning the master bedroom and also converting their spa room in to a 2nd bedroom. Both of these existing rooms were so tired and drab it made me feel sad being in there. I was excited to bring a beautiful new look to both of these rooms! Here a couple of pictures of how they looked before we were engaged.....
The new owner was Asian which means they have a very different style and taste to westerners or Europeans. Where as a westerner in my experience normally prefers natural stone, lighter coloured wood like teak or ash, and an all round lighter palette that would reflect the tropical environment of Phuket or South Thailand, A Chinese or Korean client for example often prefers marble and gold, darker woods and many more "bling bling" elements that are considered to reflect wealth. This is not really my style but reality is that an interior designer needs to be adaptable to their client's wishes. Let's have a look at some of the renders we presented to them....
So you can see I have used marble flooring and walls extensively plus created a curved feature wall behind the bath using CNC'd brass. The wood tones are darker than usual and I have used metallic highlights where suitable throughout both bedrooms. We had a lot of back and forth during the design phase as I tried to gently push the client towards lighter more subtle colours and also remind them that the villa was also a rental business so we need to appeal to a broad range of tastes. Once the design was agreed and finalised we moved in for the demolition of the existing interiors. I mostly got in my brother's way but was part of the whole process....:)
Once the existing furniture and interiors of the bathrooms and bedrooms were completely removed we let our construction teams go in and completely gut both rooms back to raw concrete. This was because we needed to run all new MEP such as wiring and plumbing and aircon ducting.
The job progressed and I made regular visits to kick my teams ass. Sometimes I feel the minute I'm not there they switch their brains off. I have to always double check measurements and be sure each step of the process is being executed as per the design drawings.
So all thing considered with a few little challenges along the way (like every job) we got the two rooms completed and they look wonderful. I was unable to arrange my team to photograph the rooms after the furniture was fully in place but following images are from the last day of deep cleaning and handover to client. They had organised their own delivery of furniture so I must get there soon to get one last round of photos. Thanks for reading everyone and wish you all a productive week ahead!
