House Gravenweg, Rotterdam
This stylish 1920s home has been realized in a suitable and up-to-date manner with two bathrooms and a kitchen. The toilets have also been renewed. An essential element is the ground concrete of the worktop and the washbasins.
The choice of material and the way it is used creates a link with the time the house was built (terrazzo) without being a copy.
The bathrooms and kitchen were part of a more integral renovation of the house with attention to the quality of the installations and the insulation of the ground floor.
Colour design
A critical choice in this project was the material for the sink of the kitchen and the washbasins of the bathrooms. It is a black cement containing ordinary broken pebbles as used in concrete but polished on the surface.
The wood of the cabinets has been selected, and the grey floor tiles and even the orange on the kitchen cabinets are inside!
Light design
The surface-mounted fixtures on the ceiling are not visible in the pictures, the tube lights on the walls and the integrated mirror lighting.
In this house were still a lot of beautiful and original elements: a beautiful wooden floor, beautiful interior doors and panelling in the corridors. The stairwell was still original. Less impressive were the installations of the house and the bathroom and kitchen renovated in the 1970s. We have thoroughly addressed this together with the client.
The installations have been chiefly renewed. We have made a new design for the bathrooms and kitchen. Central to these designs is polished concrete for both bathrooms' worktops and washbasins. Sheets and washbasins are all performed by the firm Cristofolie from The Hague. The composition of the terrazzo determines the final image. Here, black cement with a surcharge of natural gravel has been chosen.
This terrazzo is combined with teak veneered elements in the kitchen and the first bathroom. In the kitchen, the fronts are painted white, and the cabinets and drawers have an orange interior as an accent locally.
The tile work in the bathroom is carried out in the Vogue system, including the corner and plinth sections, an excellent way to give the bathroom a tight and rounded look. The tile's surface is not even, so the whole looks somewhat nonchalant in combination with the concrete, with the rounded sides an excellent combination.
In 2016, everything seemed to look as if we had left it. The client has done professional maintenance on the parts that need it. An inconvenient detail appears in the sink and counter. The polished concrete is, of course, not entirely insensitive to detergents and/or toothpaste. That is now also visible. The Cristofolie company repaired the basket plug of the countertop. Some concrete had disappeared on the spot due to damage.
The kitchen fronts have been painted to eliminate the visible discolouration and damage to the paintwork. That is a disadvantage of air spraying paint. An HPL plastic front would have had less of this, but even then, damage can be caused by impacts. The tile work still looks perfect; that is not only well applied, but also the glaze of the tile work is of high quality. At most, you can see signs of wear in the kitchen in connection with the garden. We used the same tile for aesthetic reasons as in the bathrooms. Tiles that are slightly less suitable for the more intensive use in the kitchen.
