Our Market Editor, Victoria de la Camara, has been taking us through her apartment’s renovation in a town called San Lorenzo de El Escorial, outside of Madrid, Spain. Here, she shares details about her home’s guest bedroom’s transformation. You can see the full home tour here, the bathroom before-and-after here, the kitchen before-and-after here, and the living/dining room before-and-after here.
Ahh, our guest bedroom… In our previously rented one-bedroom apartment in the center of Madrid, Spain – a high-ceilinged loft in a 17th-century building – we could only offer our friends and family the sofa as a place to sleep. Many slept there, but I always felt a twinge of disappointment of not being able to offer more comfortable and private accommodations for those that stayed with us. When we purchased our apartment in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, I was adamant about ensuring that our second bedroom become as comfortable and luxurious a space as possible for guests.
The previous owners allocated the bedroom for their daughter, with a single bed. The low ceilings and large closet made it feel cramped. Because of the relative height of the ceilings to the top of the room’s window, we knew that there was room to increase the height. In fact, we had about five more feet to work with if we wanted but in the end, it was raised a little under three. The old closet was removed, and we had hoped to be able to install a new one, looking at different layouts for the space. After careful consideration, we realized that there was no way to integrate a closet into our guest room without creating an uncomfortably narrow space for our guests to move around the double bed.
With new plaster crown molding, new custom wooden windows that imitated the classic profile of the originals, custom interior shutters, brand new oak flooring from Pur Natur, and several coats of “All White” Paint from Farrow & Ball, our guest bedroom was ready to be decorated. As is the case with most of our home, we had little space for many pieces of furniture – each would have to do heavy design lifting and be carefully selected.
When choosing furniture and decor, provenance is very important. The rug in our guest room from Nanimarquina, for example, is something whose ties to Spanish design has meaning for us. A year back, I was able to visit Nani’s studio, her designers, and sit down with her for a chat in Barcelona. I quickly discovered that she was both an impressive businesswoman and incredibly warm and welcoming. The studio had an array of boxes with all sorts of rug fibers, weaves, and tonalities. For a creative person, it was a dream. Naturally, when it came time to find the right rug for our guest room, I remembered one that stood out to me: the Nomad Rug in Natural. It had the perfect melange of beiges, and made out of Afghan wool had incredible durability (something crucial for a space that would have guests rolling their suitcases back and forth).
The rug in our guest room is a piece of design that brings us happiness, but there are many other elements that have been carefully selected. See our before-and-after in the slideshow to find out.
