5 crazy interior design ideas from customers

The story of designer Nelly Rumyantseva

A young girl bought an apartment in a modern residential complex and asked to come up with an interior in the style of “Alice in Wonderland”.

As a result, all of her furniture looked more like art objects than sofas and wardrobes: an emerald-colored armchair, lingonberry-red curtains and a red “fake” wardrobe, which actually hides a pull-out bed. All of this is vintage or antique.

The apartment as a whole looks strangely fabulous. There is an antique key in the keyhole of each door, and as many as three doors lead into the bathroom: standard, smaller and very small, like a rabbit hole. One of the walls is decorated with a printed rabbit from a Tim Burton film. The apartment also has a special area with a collection of hats, which the girl loves very much, decorative cups and teapots that refer to the Mad Hatter and the tea drinking scene.

The walls are painted in a neutral color so that bright furniture and decor elements look good against their background. For the same reason, the ceiling was left concrete, without finishing. Antique chandelier made to order.

Another oddity: there is no stove in the kitchen because the girl does not cook.

The story of designer Elena Nikolaeva

Somehow a girl who lives in China contacted me. She’s a Russian, it just happened. The girl bought a one-room apartment in Moscow for rent. In order not to waste time accompanying the repair, she decided to control it remotely and come after the completion of all the work to rent out the finished apartment. She planned a trip to Russia in a month. To meet the deadline, it was necessary to carry out repairs in parallel with the development and approval of the design project.

While the workers were removing the old finish, they were making the bathroom project – this is the most complex unit in the apartment. Then the builders worked on the bathroom, prepared projects for the rest of the premises. The starting point of the interior project was the kitchen; it was selected from ready-made exhibition samples from different companies. The progress of the work was shown to the hostess in the messenger – everything worked out, despite the five-hour time difference.

By the time the hostess arrived, we had finished finishing and bought most of the furniture. Within a week, the furniture was assembled and installed. The apartment has successfully found its tenants.

The story of designer Elena Nikolaeva

To accommodate three sleeping places in one very small, poorly designed room by the developer, the customer came up with a wardrobe in front of the bed.

With such an arrangement, there was only a 40 cm passage between them. On the plan it looked normal, but in life the hostess would constantly touch the furniture and feel like she was in a tiny “box”. The problem was solved in an elementary way: we changed the places of the bedroom with the living room.

In a small bathroom, in addition to the main equipment, it was required to place a washing machine. The hostess wanted to install it under the sink, but did not know that the machine for such a case is needed lower than usual. If you install a standard-height machine, you will have to hang the sink higher and it will be inconvenient to use it. Fortunately, we were able to advise her on a suitable option before buying.

The story of designer Elena Romanova

The client ordered a design project for a guest house on a suburban area. Wanting to surprise his friends, he asked me to come up with a space-themed pool decoration: lay out the walls with dark blue mosaics with stars or planets.

When the project was discussed, his wife proposed to combine the wishes of her husband and little daughter and put Alice and Gromozeka, characters from the Secrets of the Third Planet cartoon, on the walls of the “space” pool. However, the head of the family decided that the child would grow up quickly and better make a mosaic with images of the planet Earth and the space station.

After we calculated the cost of finishing. The mosaic is completely selected and laid out by hand or comes to the customer already printed on a roll. In both cases, the idea turned out to be too expensive, and the customer abandoned it. The finished interior features an oval poker table in the living room and a granite pickle cellar.

Stories of the architect Vasily Veselov

In my practice, there was an extreme case in terms of the budget allocated for repairs: the client was a family of artists, and they had very little money. I had to come up with a studio apartment: the walls were not plastered, but simply blown out of the spray gun; the electrician was pulled in an open way in a corrugation so as not to gouge the walls; the floor was not leveled, logs were laid, and wooden boards were placed on them. The only thing is that the bathroom was tiled according to all the rules. As a result, the interior acquired its own charm, and the family was satisfied.

There is another story about budget renovation. The customer decided to renovate the apartment to hand over the materials that remained after the previous repairs. Rolls of wallpaper, stored for years, and remains of tiles from different collections, differing in size, thickness and color, were used. To avoid surprises, we laid the future tile pattern right on the floor. The foreman who performed the work was dissatisfied, but coped with the task. The apartment was rented out quickly – people immediately fell in love with the unusual decoration.