Interior designer Abby Tallman was given a particular objective when she started designing this upscale condominium in the heart of St. Paul’s Lowertown district in Minnesota. The client, a young professional, desired her apartment to demonstrate her mixed love of quintessentially French and New York apartments. The outcome is a house with a sophisticated New York state of mind and a flair of Parisian boutique resort flair. “There are all of these special touches in each area that give it a unique character,” says Tallman.
A century before, the property’s place on the Mississippi River was a significant warehouse and distribution centre for a lot of the upper Midwest. Its recovery produced a mixture of commercial and residential spaces that now compose the unique Lowertown area.
at a Glance
Location: St. Paul, Minnesota
Size: 1,425 square feet
Designer challenge: Transform a narrow formal dining room to a multipurpose area with design
Joyful Interiors Group
The greatest design challenge for the condominium was creating a multipurpose space in a slender room that was still elegant and glamorous. This chamber, initially intended for formal diningtable, today serves a composite of distinct functionalities.
“By employing a unique mixture of furniture pieces, we could make this type of versatile area for casual dialogue, formal dining table for five to eight people, and a place to distribute a notebook and materials to get work done,” Tallman says. The room, after underused square footage, is now a highlight of the house.
Chandelier: Glass Link, West Elm; flooring lamp: Louis, white, Torre & Tagus; wall paint: Storm, Benjamin Moore; trim: Deep in Thought, Benjamin Moore; phantom seats, Wholesale Interiors; settee, Cisco Brothers; background: Walt Disney Damask, York Wallcoverings
Joyful Interiors Group
The Parisian boutique resort influence is evident from the lace draperies, the phantom chair, the damask wallpaper and the grey tufted settee. But Tallman points out that the industrial-chic glass bulb chandelier is something you might easily find in an artist’s Manhattan loft.
Joyful Interiors Group
Loft-style windows produced a design challenge. “The client needed privacy during the afternoon by the office building throughout the street, but she didn’t want to limit her access into the views or natural lighting,” Tallman says. The solution was to double up lightweight cotton drapery panels; the bright white cloth helps usher in the sunlight, and the cotton cloth offers more privacy than a classic sheer drapery panel could.
Stool: Shanghai Porcelain and chrome, Torre & Tagus; drapery panels: Thai silk, Optic White, Restoration Hardware; tufted-back chair: Home Decorators
Joyful Interiors Group
Tallman’s client enjoys the cushioned acrylic candlestickssilver vases and glass lighting fixtures in the interior. Tallman kept the cherry finish of the hardwood floors to heat the space up.
Joyful Interiors Group
The 10-foot-high ceilings and big, loft-style windows give the room a grand, open texture with beautiful views of the surrounding historical buildings. The extra ceiling space meant more freedom to select more extended light pendants and fixtures.
Chandelier: Caviar Fixed Small Cluster, Arteriors
Joyful Interiors Group
The bedroom is where the mixture of different furniture pieces and affects converge to an attractive, chic fashion. The Asian-inspired bedside tables discuss the bedroom space with Thai silk curtains, a purple tufted chaise longue and headboard as well as also the unmistakable dandelion-like Maskros pendant.
Mirrors: Propac Images; chaise: Bellacor; background: Antonina Vella, Seabrook Wallpaper; wall paint: Nightingale, Benjamin Moore
Joyful Interiors Group
A black reactive-finish glass lamp casts a moody and dramatic lighting from the bedroom.
Table lamps: Flynn Mercury, Arteriors; nightstands: Lamps Plus; jewellery box: Global Views
Joyful Interiors Group
The mauve bathroom is the customer’s sacred space and the many womanly room in the whole unit. The swirls and soft curves of the curtain fabric and carpet are echoed at the swirls of their bathroom sketch art. “Everything about the bathroom is tender, glamorous, but still speaks the design language of understated elegance located throughout the rest of the unit,” says Tallman.
Wall art:”Deco Girl Facing Right” and”Deco Girl Facing Left,” Rebecca Cope, Art Classics