Around 20 - 30 years ago the development known as Laguna started taking shape in Phuket. It's on the northern beach of Layan and much of the area is reclaimed swamp and wetlands. The homes, condos and villas were built around lakes and canals. The overall concept is sound but in my opinion the homes are all very ordinary at best, bordering on downright ugly at some places. Now many of the homes are being renovated and for today's post I will run you through the renovation and refit that I did for my friend and client that owns several properties inside the Laguna complex. Here are some images showing just how tired and ugly the interiors of the property were before we started....
The owner wanted me to completely gut the interior. Open up the lower floor and redesign the entire living spaces. The bedrooms would be moved around and the bathrooms too. Essentially we were rebuilding the entire property. One of the hilarious things about the property was that the upstairs had a lovely view out over the lake. But the view was in no way utilised. The aircon condensing units were given the best view of the lake while the master bedroom had no view at all. Inside the 2nd bedroom toilet was a small window that could be opened to see the lake. I mean who in their right mind designed this building?? This is a recurrent problem with many of the older residential developments here in Phuket. At the that time there were basically no designers on the island and developers relied on a combination of architects and local contractors. The end result is many poorly planned buildings that were built with no real thought to good design and aesthetics.
Here are some pics of the demolition process....
Now lets skip straight to the finished project. We laid reclaimed teak floors on the upper floor of the villa, made a huge walk in closet also with reclaimed teak. We opened up the entire side of the villa facing the lake and gave the best views to each of the three bedrooms. Downstairs was completely opened up into a beautiful open plan kitchen and living area with a cute bar below the stairs. The swimming pool was rebuilt and the surrounding patio too.
The blue artwork in the master bedroom I created with the CNC machine at our furniture factory and then hand painted it over my spare weekends. It's on simple birch ply and although you cant see in the photo if you look closely at it in real life you can see the joins of the two pieces of ply although I tried my best to hide them.
Under the stairway we designed a lovely small bar with concealed fridges. My client has a taste for all kinds of alcohol and regularly entertains guests so a bar seemed imperative. I added LED lights to the shelving and made the general look and feel of the bar the same as the stairway behind with black painted steel.
Lets have a look at some of the pictures.....
I think the new style of the villa is a huge improvement in every way. The teak finishing throughout with custom furnishings and the new swimming pool all help to create a lovely home that makes you want to simply stay in and relax. The spaces are functional and beautiful and the views over the lake can be seen from every room weather upstairs or down. I will leave you with a final image of the outside of the house. .....
