Designer turned a modest two-room apartment into a comfortable city apartment for her family.
Designer Ksenia Muravyova designed this small apartment for her family as city housing in the presence of a country house. From the typical layout of a two-room apartment of 44 square meters. m they made a Euro three-room apartment with the necessary areas – a bedroom, a children’s room, a wardrobe and a kitchen-living room. The decoration and furniture are quite simple to fit into the renovation budget. The result is a very harmonious space that matches the architecture and history of the house.
The apartment is located in an old building, a transitional series between Stalin and Khrushchev. The layout corresponds to Khrushchev’s panels, but the ceiling height is 2700 mm, plus the owners expanded the floors, removed the logs and replaced them with screed, resulting in a net ceiling height of 2.8 m.
“There are four of us in the family: my husband and I and two children aged nine and three. The main task was to determine a place for each family member. A classic two-room apartment did not suit us: we live at different paces, I can get the children ready in the morning and my husband can go to bed, or vice versa. Therefore, a separate bedroom is a reinforced concrete condition. As a result, we got a capsule bedroom, a sleep-box, as you can call it, with a full bed, but without a window. We organized good ventilation in it, but we ourselves joke that the bedroom is like a casino – it’s not clear what time it is,” says the designer.
The rooms remained within their boundaries, enlarged the bathroom due to the corridor from the hallway to the kitchen, and combined the kitchen with the living room (apartment without gas). The kitchen is visible from the room, so I didn’t want to make a traditional set with wall cabinets. “We made the kitchen similar to our country house – with high columns and a lower base. I don’t cook a lot, so this configuration is more than enough for us. All appliances in the kitchen are built-in, and in the corner behind the sink there is space for small household appliances such as a kettle or multicooker, which are not visible from the living room,” says Ksenia Muravyova.
The flooring in common areas is porcelain stoneware, in the rooms there is laminate. Small black hexagons fit very well in scale into a compact apartment, and black color is a stylish accent base. The walls in the common area are decorated with thin-layer plaster. When the walls are plain but have texture, it looks less monotonous and more comfortable. The kitchen apron was laid with laminate as an experiment to check how practical this coating is in this context.
“The lamp above the dining table has two functions. The first is traditional – soft warm lighting for the dining table. And the second is that the scale of the lampshade distracts attention from the not very picturesque view outside the window. My friend made the lampshade according to my sketches in her home decor workshop,” says the designer.
“We don’t live in an apartment all the time. In the nursery, a good workplace for the eldest daughter, storage of clothes and adequate sleeping places were important. Heated debate erupted over the double bed. I didn’t want to put it on for the safety of my youngest child. In the end, we settled on a sofa bed. During the day it is like a sofa, and at night, thanks to the roll-out module, it turns into two beds. The design was chosen to be neutral, with colors that suit both girls and boys. Children bring a lot of bright colors to the nursery with toys, crafts, and drawings, so my professional belief is to make the nursery a calm backdrop for all this,” says the designer.
We have provided a walk-through wardrobe in the apartment; it is much more spacious than ordinary wardrobes that can be afforded in this area. The storage system was ordered from Leroy Merlin. They deliberately chose an open one so that things would be freely available.
The bathroom was enlarged due to the corridor. This made it possible to install a full bath. To optimize the space, we installed an overhead sink directly on the washing machine, and everything that is usually stored in the cabinet under the sink was placed in a mirrored cabinet with lighting. The installation was also completely covered with a furniture structure, which added storage space for washing supplies, towels, and household equipment.
Photo of the apartment before renovation
