Three Fabulous Bathrooms
(Page 3 of 3)
September/October 2005
By Becky Mollenkamp
Moroccan Masterpiece
RELATED CONTENT
These baths are distinctly different—a do-it-yourselfer’s dream, an old-fashioned recycling project...
Spark Modern Fires' energy-efficient fireplaces eliminate smoke, soot and ash....
An architect and an interior designer bring rammed earth to Wyoming....
Architect Andrew Mangan combined green features and modern design with this brightly colored, susta...
Bohemia n chic in Santa Fe
Reduce, reuse, recycle” is a way of life in Daniel Nadelbach and Gilda Meyer-Niehof’s Sante Fe home. Nearly every structural and design feature in this colorful, stylish bathroom has an eye toward sustainability.
Daniel and Gilda bought their twenty-five-year-old home three years ago because it gave the do-it-yourselfers a solid foundation with plenty of room for improvement. The home is constructed of sixteen-inch pumice blocks and features a solar hot water system. Inside, though, the rooms were inefficient and not particularly eco-friendly. The master bathroom was chopped up by multiple walls, had two sinks, a separate shower and bath, and water-guzzling toilets. So Daniel tore down walls and installed slate tile floors and more efficient fixtures.
“It was closed up and bottled in, so we opened the whole thing up,” says Daniel, a photographer. “Instead of being just a place to shower and brush your teeth, we wanted to create an environment where you’d want to hang out.”
The master bathroom looks like a piece of Morocco in the middle of the desert, proving the homeowners’ mantra: “You don’t have to live in a hippie shack to be environmentally friendly.”
Though their eclectic style has a Pier One or World Market feel, this couple rarely sets foot in retail stores. Ninety percent of the home’s furnishings and accessories are secondhand items they’ve collected. Gilda, an interior designer specializing in Middle Eastern and East Indian décor and owner of Jadu Designs, gets up with the sun nearly every Saturday morning and scurries from garage sale to estate sale; she decorated the bathroom using items found during these scavenger hunts. The pillows are made from garage-sale fabrics, the hand-carved mirror frame was found at a flea market, and the ceiling beams are reclaimed wood from an area home that was torn down. Gilda gets a great price and the knowledge that she’s saved an item from the landfill.
“Nearly everything in our home is recycled,” Daniel says. “There’s so much stuff out there that people don’t use anymore. We get good use out of it without putting more strain on the environment.”
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 | 3 |