A one bedroom home in Nova Park undergoes a transformation by an enterprising couple with a passion for interior design.
When the new Nova Park residential tower in down town Taipa was open for purchase back in November 2013, the number of buyers interested was oversubscribed several times over. Names were entered into a draw in order to be selected eligible for purchase. If you were one of the lucky, you’d be entered into another draw to decide which unit you’d be able to buy – it could be on any floor, any unit.
With this somewhat fraught set of ‘what ifs’, one can well imagine the leap of faith Portuguese couple Sofia and Joao Mendoca took when deciding to buy. “The official launch by the developers Shun Tak was at the Macau Tower. They managed it very well but the whole place was crazy, full of people, like a casino!” exclaims Sofia. “You could feel the tension in the air, the stress. When we arrived to put down our deposit it was the first time we’d even seen the plans of the building and the layout of the units!”
They were delighted to discover that the apartment drawn out for them to buy was on the top floor but one, with a great view, and directly under the spacious, elegantly appointed residents’ club lounge which can be accessed from outside the apartment, up one flight of stairs.
Two years from buying off plan, the building was finally finished and the Mendocas proudly took possession in March 2015. “The location is amazing, one of the top locations in Macau, with Central Park in front and the public parking underneath, supermarkets, restaurants all around, and near the international schools” Joao enthuses.
Although they have been property owners in Macau for many years and managed to renovate several apartments successfully themselves, this time their first thought was to employ an interior designer for this new purchase. “The problem was that it was very tiny” explains Sofia, “the kitchen is tiny, and there was no place to put things like luggage, ironing board, vacuum cleaner, ladder, mops.” The question was how to maximize the living space and still have room for lots of storage. They realized that luck was with them again in that the ceiling height, 3.3m, is considerably higher on their floor than on any of the lower floors.
With Joao being an engineer and Sofia’s innate sense of sensible solutions and good taste, they came to the conclusion that they’d tackle the renovations themselves. Joao got down to putting the drawings together and then engaged a friendly contractor to put their vision into reality.
First all the original dark brown doors had to go – these were changed to white so there is a cohesive theme of lightness and modernity. The kitchen door was given a 6” vertical clear glass panel, and the bathroom the same but in frosted glass for privacy. Cleverly, on the front of the main entrance door, the original wood veneer was retained and applied to the new door, so that the look of the public corridor outside the apartment is not compromised.
All original floor skirting was removed; “it was pale wood like the floor, but so narrow and cheap looking, so we replaced it with twice the width, 4” white skirting, to give a more elegant look.”
In the living room, the whole wall above and to the side of the main entrance door, has had built in floor-to-ceiling storage added for winter clothes and luggage. 
A strikingly attractive room divider separating the dining area from the living room was custom made; bamboo set vertically into a stainless steel frame.
One design feature borrows from another and flows from room to room: the stainless steel of the room divider is incorporated in a horizontal panel on the wall cabinet doors, in the elegant steel-grey metal framed mirror hanging above the dining table (an IKEA purchase, one would never have guessed!) and complemented in the wall hangings above the sofa in the living room. Then as one goes through into the bedroom the stainless steel theme continues in the metal curtain rod and the thoughtful detail of stainless steel open wall shelves for high level storage.
“At home we have a lot of hot, bright colours in our décor” Sofia explains, “but here we didn’t want to make it too warm and cozy – rather we wanted it fresh, bright and modern. This is a buy to rent property for us, so we wanted to design the interior to be suitable for a business man or woman. We have kept the basics neutral and then splashed colour, using accessories, turquoise, greys and white, so we have maximum flexibility on colour scheme, we can change it easily and inexpensively any time.” Fortunately the original floors are an attractive and modern pale wood. The walls are white, like the doors, to give a sense of space “and then we added a pale grey feature wall above and below the living room window seat causing an optical illusion of making the window look much bigger. The same grey is used again for the wall behind the bed head.”
The grey leather sofa and the grey window blinds were purchased in a furniture mall in Qianshan road, Zhuhai. The Noguchi coffee table that sits on a grey rug is from Di-Mension Living, Hong Kong.
All the cabinetry was designed by Joao and Sofia. They wanted a white piano gloss finish to reflect light and further help make the space look bigger. Infinite care was taken to anticipate the needs of a tenant; drawers for shoes, tall thin compartment for ironing board and shorter wider one for vacuum cleaner.
In the dining table we see again the stainless steel theme in its frame and legs. It has a raw wood top, and a matching bench, the wood gnarled and pitted having started off life as doors; as with the bamboo roof divider, this lovely natural wood provides an ideal balance with the otherwise hard, metallic colour and surface of the steel.
“We decided not to have 4 chairs; we went for only two chairs (white seats, pale wooden legs) and then the bench that matches the dining table. Doing it this way gives more of a sense of spaciousness and doesn’t block the access to the kitchen as 2 chairs would”, reasons Sofia. “Its funny, we’ve noticed from the design magazines and internet sites we’ve come across that this actually seems to be the new trend these days!”
The dining table accessories mostly come from IKEA and the strikingly handsome white handled cutlery and stainless steel napkin holders are from Zara Homes. The pendant lamps hanging above the table come from Di-Mension Living, Hong Kong.
One gets the idea that whilst stressful, it was a fun project that this couple, both busy with full time jobs, enjoyed tremendously. “We did a lot of online research ahead of time and so when we set out on our buying trips we used our time most economically – a weekend in Hong Kong (we started at the top of the 27/F Horizon Plaza shopping warehouse in Ap Lei Chau, and ended at the bottom!) and a day in China, and we had it all sorted out.” One of their piece de resistance finds was the cement stool, used as a side table for the sofa. This came from in Ovo, Hong Kong.
Window treatments in the apartment were inexpensive but have a quality look. 
The living room blinds, ingenious in design are made of a continuous piece of fabric but with a switch of a pulley horizontal sections of them become transparent one moment, and solid the next. In the bedroom, the grey tiger eye curtains run on a stainless steel rod, and have a white blackout roller blind behind.
The 42” flat screen TV is from Hisense, “super cheap – we wanted to save on things like electronics as these become dated quickly, so we could put more of our budget into practical solutions for storage” says Joao.
The colour palate of greys, turquoise and natural wood in the living and dining room flows into the bedroom; wardrobe, bed and side tables are in pale washed beech wood, and bed linen is in greys and turquoise. The metallic elements are brought through in the form of the metal based bed side lamps from Zara Home and the wall hanging above the bed. Even the clothes hangers in the wardrobe are sleek, modern and stainless steel! The bed, with super comfortable mattress, opens up for huge storage space underneath. It was custom-made to fit 
the room (6 weeks order time from Ou Mei Furniture on G/F of Chun Leong Gardens building, Av. Dr Sun Yat Sen, Taipa).
“We wanted to put a mirror on the wall facing the bed but our contractor insisted this was bad fung shui” smiles Sofia. He came up instead with the bright idea of attaching it to the side of the wardrobe as one enters the room, and putting a little picture light above it. The mirror reflection again adds a sense of openness to the otherwise compact space.
Very little was needing to be done in the bathroom apart from a few accessories; its white ceramic walls and marble counter top are attractive already and there’s plentiful storage. Likewise in the kitchen, a few accessories to give the place some ‘soul’ was all that was needed. 
The balcony off the kitchen however had a mini-make over. Instead of the ugly external building tiles, the Mendocas replaced these with more elegant square grey tiles with white grouting. They also installed hanging space for a ladder (remembering the high ceiling and the need to reach the high storage cabinets), a clothes drying rack, and a number of cleaning items like mop and brushes. 
“Yes, its been a work of love” agrees Sofia, “we really tried to think of every little comfort a tenant wants from their home. And irrespective of nationality, everyone who has seen the end result has loved it!” No surprise then when it was snapped up by a senior executive looking for a down town home virtually before the paint was dry!
Photos were taken by Antonio Mil-Homens for this article which appears in the Macau Closer December 2015 issue.
