Homeowner and architect Gjergji Shkurti describes his DIY project as a lesson in “how to take a generic bathroom and give it more character.”
Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.
When the New York City-based architect Gjergji Shkurti bought his one-bedroom condo in Ridgewood, Queens, he wanted to remove some of the cookie-cutter “contractor special” aspects from his home. Luckily, he was his own design expert on the project as the cofounder of the architecture and design studio SolidVoid and the fabrication and construction company Figure+Ground.
Gjergji Shkurti’s otherworldly gold bathroom was a labor of love and involved a lot of patience: “It was a beautiful two months of meditation, sitting there and just gold leafing.”
Photo by Joe Thomas
Take a look around his 600-square-foot space and you’ll see nods to the minimalist, neutral-toned stylings of Japandi interiors, punctuated by his collection of art (Shkurti showcases visual works made by friends and colleagues from his alma mater, Cooper Union). He refinished the original wood floors with a natural monocoat to bring out the creamy beiges of the white oak, and extended that tone to the base molding by wrapping the generic trim with solid hardwood. Custom wood curtains and shelves were installed to echo the white oak, as well.
What makes the golden bathroom so alluring and unexpected is that the rest of Shkurti’s apartment has an airy, Japandi-style aesthetic, anchored by the white oak floors and its hardwood accents throughout the space.
Photo by Joe Thomas
In stark contrast to the rest of the space is the bathroom, which Shkurti has turned into a golden box—the metallic foil covers every square inch of the ceiling and three walls (Shkurti skipped gold-leafing the shower tiles, of course).
The inspiration for this gilded moment is two-fold. First, Shkurti remembers his experience gold-leafing an interior of an artist’s space at a previous architecture job. “It stayed with me,” he says. So when the opportunity to design a bathroom for a new bar opening in Brooklyn came up, Shkurti advocated for an opulent bathroom, “but they wouldn’t let me gold leaf it,” he says, “so here we are gold-leafing my own apartment.”
Shkurti’s goal with covering the white walls with gold leaf was to make the material transition to the black shower tile more interesting and less jarring.
Photo by Joe Thomas
See the full story on Dwell.com: How They Pulled It Off: A Small Apartment Bathroom Dripped Out in Gold for Under $1,000
Related stories:
