La Belle Salle de Bain: A Chic Master Bathroom Remodel by Fiorito Interior Design

A master bathroom should be a luxurious treat, a place to relax, refresh, and renew. What my client had was anything but. A small footprint was made even smaller by an unnecessarily large tub and a separate water closet built at an awkward angle which cut into the space even more.

By eliminating the water closet walls and replacing the tub with a smaller model, we were able to open up the bathroom and make it the airy, tranquil sanctuary it always should have been. My client’s love of Paris led us to design a bathroom that embraces a kind of chic, couture sensibility with a stylized floral tile of Carrara, Statuario and Bardiglio marble, white subway tiles, and a Calacatta countertop. French grey walls and a sparkling, petite chandelier lend the final touch to this classic ensemble.

All after photos by Bernardo Grijalva

The before photos tell the entire story.

Have a bathroom that needs a facelift? Call me!

Happy designing!

Clean and Modern: A Fresh Bathroom Remodel by Fiorito Interior Design

When my client purchased his circa 1980s home several years ago, it came with this guest bathroom, seen below. He was eager to swap his brass accented shower doors, counter "bridge" spanning the toilet, wall-to-wall mirror, and terra cotta tiled floor for a sleeker, more contemporary looking room.

We gutted the entire space except for the tub which was in perfect condition and replaced the boring, square beige tiles with large format tiles of a subtle, threaded pattern. A decorative, highly textured band of stainless steel, stone, and glass runs through the shower and defines the counter of the new dark vanity which is now in scale with the room. New sconces in matte opal glass are twined with ribbons of forged iron. Walls are in a chic hue called Thunder Grey.

The modern sink hardware features a chrome trough spout and stylized square handles. The counter top, with its soft grey and blue-green clouds, is fabricated from a single piece of Sea Pearl quartzite.

The shower edges and niche are lined in a polished chrome detail for a clean, minimalist look.

And finally, the shower hardware with a bar and hand held shower head echoes the modernist approach to the space.

All after photos by Bernardo Grijalva

If you have a bathroom that could use a bit of updating, give me a call. I'd love to help!

Happy designing!

From Brick To Stone: A Fireplace Make Over By Fiorito Interior Design

One of the components of a recent remodel for some clients was a fireplace in a family room/kitchen area. As you can see in the image below, the fireplace had an ugly brick face--but what you don't see is the brick mantel and floating shelves made of the same brick, removed by the contractor in preparation for a gorgeous new gold and grey stacked stone face. We also removed an unsightly pellet-burning stove that sat outside of the fireplace.

Once we picked a stacked stone we liked that had a nice amount of warm and cool colors, a pleasing rustic profile, and a uniformly slim cut...

... my client and I were able to go to a stone yard and pick out some slabs of slate for the raised hearth. We tried some of the lighter tones to see if they would play well with the gold in the stacked stone, but none of them felt right. As you can see in the finished fireplace at the bottom of this post, we chose a light grey which seemed to ground the entire façade quite well.

The end result looks so much more sophisticated yet retains a casual, organic warmth. You can see in the first photo at the top of the post that we installed some recessed ceiling fixtures to wash light down the front of the fireplace breast, to highlight the beautiful rough texture  and bring out the lovely, almost sparkly gold tones.

This fireplace is adjacent to a kitchen remodel I created for my clients which will be featured here soon. Stay tuned...

Happy designing!

The Zen Bathroom by Fiorito Interior Design

As I have mentioned in past posts, inspiration can come from many sources. And sometimes the inspiration for a style direction is simply to move away from what is currently there!

After my clients purchased a new home, they came to me for help with a whole-house renovation in order to get rid of the style (and a few odd, ill-conceived choices) of the previous owners. In the renovation, we knocked down some walls to add another bedroom, an office, and a laundry room to the east wing of the house, and consequently we were able to completely re-think this guest bathroom. It suffered from a very 90s tan and brown faux-"Tuscan" facelift with heavy, thick tan granite counters, heavy brown cabinetry from a big box store, and tan walls. Oh, and did I mention everything was tan and brown? With so little definition, the room felt sort of invisible... and sad.

My clients did not like the window in the bathroom which was unfortunately placed, as seen from the outside of the home, next to the front door (Ding-dong! "Just a sec," your visitors hear you yell from right next to them, while seeing your shadow on the john). And they felt that a tub was not needed in the guest bathroom. We also took the opportunity to remove the large--and I mean very large--niche in the tub which literally pushed into a closet in the room on the other side. It was a very odd sight to open the closet doors in the next room and see a big looming box extending out from the back of the closet wall, effectively rendering any hanging space in that portion unusable.

In an effort to give my clients, who lean toward minimalism, something completely different, my vision for this room was light and fresh, streamlined but organic, with a Zen influence. During construction, we removed the large tub and very awkward niche to make room for a shower and enclosed water closet. Since we lost a window, we created privacy (much welcomed by my clients) but added light with a skylight placed over the new shower as well as a wonderful trough skylight placed over the length of the vanity. And we did all this without changing the footprint of the original space.

In the images below, you can see that the floor and shower enclosure are tiled in a weathered blue-grey porcelain that looks like patinated metal. A glass mosaic strip of blue, grey green, copper and bronze was placed as an accent in the shower and in a border to create a “rug” on the floor. A double sconce with a gentle, organic curve graces the mirror and doubles the light. The warm cherry tones of the wood on the custom vanity and mirror grounds the space while the simple brushed steel of the hardware and square shape of the faucets lends a tranquil, Zen feeling. Finally, the walls were painted a very light sky blue to finish off the organic, calm feeling.

If you have a bath that lacks style or definition, do not despair: please give me a call!
Happy designing!

Westside House by Fiorito Interior Design

After more than a decade of being bi-coastal, my clients decided to retire from the east coast to the west. But the task of packing up a whole lifetime in a home was quite daunting so they hired me to comb through their furniture and accessories to see what could fit, what should be left behind, and what should make the move. The job proved difficult since my clients have a wealth of absolutely gorgeous objects and furnishings collected from trips to exotic, far-flung locales like Nepal, or amazing antiques inherited from relatives in England. It was tough to pare down, but after hours of diligent measuring, I mapped out what would migrate west and where it would be placed once here. Several key rooms in the new house turned out to require all new furniture configurations so I then filled in some blank spaces with new, custom pieces.

They bought their recent Craftsman-style home from the contractor who had designed and built it for his family. While the house is extremely well made, the interiors were bland, as you can see from the "Before" photos below.

The only architectural work we did was to transform the den at the rear of the house into a television/garden room. My clients did not want the television to be on display, and from a design point of view, sticking a TV in an armoire just doesn’t cut it anymore. I recommended installing a hidden, mirror TV from The Art of TV, along with accompanying invisible in-wall speakers. To do this, we removed an unnecessary small door in the corner of the room (there is another existing small door right next to it leading from the kitchen to the backyard) to free up the entire wall. Now, at the touch of a remote, what looks like a beautiful wall mirror mounted over a low Japanese tansu comes to life, and theater-quality sound magically floats out from the wall around it! Since we removed the small door, we replaced an existing bank of windows with glorious French doors to allow easy access to the garden. A warm color palette in the TV room, seen below, contrasts nicely with the greenery visible through the new French doors since the garden now plays such a prominent and important role in the design and ambiance of the room.

Above, you can see the custom wall mirror as an element of decor in the room. The carved bamboo-like frame is from Larsen Juhl. The new Shinto media console is a place for my clients to display their collection of exquisite art pottery and ceramics.

Above, a SuperBright Samsung Smart television comes to life: TV when you want it, a mirror when you don't, solving the problem of "what to do with the television." The curry colored wall anchors the television within the space. My clients' striped silk and nettle woven rug is from Nepal.

Above, a large, custom sectional with nickel nailhead trim, and a leather topped/baseball stitched cocktail table add comfort and convenience. My clients can now host their movie group for movie night! Below, brightly colored custom pillows blend beautifully with some of my clients' textiles collected from around the world.

Photo by Jeff Fiorito

Photo by Jeff Fiorito

Photo by Jeff Fiorito

The warm woodwork was lost in a sea of beige. It felt heavy and clunky, and I was not at all a fan (I had actually considered painting out all the woodwork white). I knew the only way to make the woodwork succeed was to pair it with a color that would accentuate it, not make it blend. I chose a deep aqua color palette for the rooms at the front of the house which makes the woodwork sing. And we discovered a wonderful art niche over the living room fireplace that the previous owners had covered with a framed print.

The previous owners' arrangement of smaller yet oddly puffy pieces of furniture made the living room feel cramped. It may seem counterintuitive, but the best way to combat that feeling is to put larger pieces of furniture, properly scaled, in the space. When I use all the space in a design, the eye reads a larger expanse, making the room feel larger. Above, a generous three-cushion custom sofa in a luxurious Butternut chenille provides plenty of seating for guests to gather around the fireplace after dinner in the nearby dining room. And the niche above is now home to one of my clients' prized carved Asian figures.

The aqua color palette continues throughout the space, visually connecting the living and dining areas. The color makes the woodwork seem richer, deeper, warmer. It now reads as a special element in the house and not simply "trim." Even the beautifully stained concrete floors (with radiant heat) look better. I replaced the old out-of-scale chandelier with a sleek, glass and marble slab light fixture that is more appropriately shaped for the space and echoes the Craftsman elements of the home. The table runner is a vintage embroidered textile from Turkey.

All "After" photos by Bernardo Grijalva except as noted.

Help with furniture placement or new pieces? Color selection? Art placement? Give me a call!
Happy designing!

Master Bedroom: From Blah to Aaaah by Fiorito Interior Design

An uninspiring bedroom bored my clients. They longed for a special place to retire at the end of a long, stressful day but were completely stymied and did not know how to accomplish that. The bedroom needed to function as a retreat from a hectic life with two young boys, and busy careers but what they had was a bland room without any soothing qualities whatsoever. And no time to invest in making it the oasis they craved.

They were happy with the pieces of furniture they had, so I decided to build on what was already there. Now, I am not usually a fan of matching pieces of furniture, but in this case, I got a second night table from the same line. While the bedroom was of average size, creating a sense of symmetry makes a larger cohesive unit for the eye to see. The result is a more generous expanse. This was helped with a set of sky blue porcelain lamps, creating a more grand sense of "place."

Hesitant to have anything over the bed since we live in earthquake country (there's nothing worse than being woken up at 3AM by an earthquake only to have a piece of framed art over the bed jump off the wall and conk one on the head!), we hung sumptuous chocolate Dupioni silk panels with a slight sheen behind the bed. This accomplishes two goals: 1) to visually extend the headboard and draw the eye upward (another way to make the space seem more "grand") and 2) to introduce more fabric into the space as a way to soften the room and create more of a cushioned, comforting feeling.  Custom made bedding in soothing aquas and rich chocolates, along with a vintage oil painting and a modern etching of Pacific seascapes completes this now tranquil and luxurious room.

Have a space that is troubling you? A spot you just can't tackle? Give me a call!

Happy designing!

The Master Suite by Fiorito Interior Design, Part Three

I am proud to present finished photos of a Master Suite project I started in the fall of 2012. While it was under construction, I wrote about it here and here, showing structural photos and installation progress: take a look to catch up and see the fascinating evolution of the space.

This project was not a simple cosmetic facelift or even a down-to-the-studs gut job. This was a full-on extension/addition that required me to work closely with the contractor and architect. The back portion of half of my clients' home was blown out to make way for a much larger master bedroom and bathroom. And all the disruption, construction, and wait was well worth it.

But before we ogle the reveal images, let's take a look at what the space looked like when I initially encountered it. You will see why my clients were eager to be rid of what they (and I) considered to be a very un-masterful master bathroom.

Like many California ranch homes built in the 1950s, this master bathroom was not really a "master bath." The concept of a "master bath" as we know it today didn't really exist then. My clients, who only three years ago purchased the home from the family of the original owner, were saddled with a small, dysfunctional space. Chief among the dysfunctions: a vanity only 30" high (my clients had to stoop quite low to lean on the counter), and an inconveniently placed window that forced the too-low vanity mirror to reflect only the waist and partial torso--not the face--of anyone standing in front of it.

A separate water closet with a pocket door was also the spot for a very narrow shower. That, my friends, was a master bathroom in 1956. And so my work began.

In order to refine a design concept for the soon-to-be larger space, and thereby narrow down material choices, my clients and I had a brainstorming session: we spoke of an elegant Old World/ European bedroom and bathroom, a luxurious bath that would reference a Roman spa, and finally the idea of a Hammam was brought into the mix. We blended these ideas together in oil-rubbed bronze fixtures, and a tiny mosaic vine pattern in beautiful Bursa Beige marble from Turkey and white Thassos marble from Greece. The extension of the house allowed us to create a true master suite which includes a greatly enlarged bedroom area, and a generous sized bathroom with a jetted soaking tub, a very large walk-in shower, a double-sided fireplace (facing the tub on the bath side), and a luxurious 8' long vanity with double sinks and a storage tower.

The vanity wall is covered with the imported mosaic vine pattern. The custom Larson Juhl framed mirrors are flanked by gorgeous hand-wrought scones from Hubbardton Forge which echo the vine and leaf pattern in the mosaic. And the vanity itself features an  LED strip in the toe-kick which allows my clients to see in the middle of the night without having to turn on a shockingly bright overhead fixture.

Photo by Bernardo Grijalva

At the other end of the master bath, a luxurious jetted tub nestles by a fireplace in the bay window area. Views of the garden can be seen while soaking in bubbles...

Photo by Bernardo Grijalva

Photo by Bernardo Grijalva

The over-sized walk-in shower features a paneled wainscoting effect which I designed to be executed in Crema Marfil marble. The vine mosaic continues in the shower, topped by green onyx squares. A rainshower head and a hand-held spray on a bar provides showering options. The shower floor slopes gently in one direction toward a hidden linear drain; this allows the floor to be read as a continuation of the main space, without being interrupted by a center drain.

Photo by Bernardo Grijalva

I have a few more finished projects coming up which I will be sharing with you soon. New posts are always scheduled every Monday!

In the meantime, happy designing!