Home to an avid art collector and swimming in colour and texture, this five-bedroom house has been renovated with style and longevity in mind.
Completed by Sydney firm Adam Scougall Design, Mosman Art Home is a contemporary house that celebrates and complements the various pieces of Australian art exhibited within the reimagined Sydney digs.
Before its makeover, the home exuded a distinctly ‘90s vice, complete with glossy white bathrooms, corner spa baths and multicoloured feature tiles so the house needed updating to accommodate the owner’s changing lifestyle. The successful CEO requested a home more conducive to long-term living. As such, the bathrooms were altered to facilitate aged care, with grab bars installed in the master bedroom.
The owner originally planned on a mirror renovation focusing on the guest bedroom and ensuite. However, the brief swiftly evolved to include the renovation of all bathrooms and the refurbishment of the majority of the two-storey home. “The client is an art collector who wanted to incorporate her vast collection with new furnishings to overhaul the existing environment,” says architect Adam Scougall.
The project encompassed the renovation of three bathrooms (one master and two guest bathrooms) and a powder room. The original joinery was removed, redesigned and reinstalled in the main living area and bedrooms. Fresh coats of paint and speciality features have been distributed throughout the house and new window treatments including curtains and shutters soften the scene.
An original door leading to the guest bathroom was closed off to allow for the creation of a media room in what was once a bedroom/study. The use of wall space as a gallery for the owner’s art collection is inspired. Rather than taking the safe route with plain white walls, the project team opted for richer hues offset with white.
“The client is also a painter and her work was brought up from being hidden away in her downstairs studio, framed in striking colour accents and hung in the stairwell,” Adam says.
Textured finishes such as grasscloth wallpaper and stucco paint highlights provide contrast, while layers of satin, silk and velvet furnishings ooze opulence. The dark-blue stripe that runs through a custom rug and halfway into a custom safe is optically intriguing, and Porter’s gunmetal grey continues the striped line from the sofa up the wall.
It wasn’t all straight lines and smooth sailing, though. Challenges arose when working on the master bathroom. “The proposed design called for the relocation of the existing shower waste. Upon examination, the only way to achieve this was to core hole through the existing concrete slab,” Adam explains. “It wasn’t critical that the steel reinforcement within the concrete slab wasn’t jeopardised during this process. We performed a concrete x-ray, which provided us with pinpoint locations as to where we could core hole. We engaged a specialist core driller following the x-ray, and with the results we managed to fashion the new waste path without affecting the structural integrity of the concrete slab.”
In it for the long haul, Mosman Art Home isn’t just a pretty face. Behind the layers of luxury, modern refinement and picture-perfect at is a house capable of serving its occupants regardless of age and mobility.
