Inside a Stunning Norwegian Villa Designed by Espen Sunde

My name is Espen, I'm an interior designer and this is my house in Norway. Welcome in! So this house is from 1914. We bought it in 2020. We've spent about two years renovating and restoring everything and this was actually in the same family for the first 106 years of the house. So it was the fourth generation and we were lucky enough to buy it in 2020. So you will see throughout the house that we have restored a lot of features and also added some features and kind of like updated the house to work in 2024 which we are now. Okay so we'll start in the living room. As you can see we have a pretty minimal style here. We wanted all of the original features to shine so we kind of wanted everything to be like a blank canvas if you want or something like that so that the fireplace and the flooring, all of the moldings and all of the details that we appreciate would shine through. In this room everything or hopefully it looks pretty original with the moldings, the windows and everything but actually everything that you see in here is new but we reconstructed everything to be as similar as the original as we could. We of course needed to update the house to have better electrician, better piping and stuff like that so a lot of things had to go. We also wanted to put down heated floorings because we are in Norway so the windows for example are an exact copy of the original but of course now has three layers of glazing instead of one that it was originally. Here we even had the handles handmade in America because they did not produce these anymore and we wanted it to be an exact copy of the original nickel ones that we had. As an interior designer I feel like often the tv is like the focal point of the room. We didn't want that as this is the main living room so we chose this tv which I think works more of like a furniture piece so this is ancient now because it's from 2016 so it's an ancient tv but it works for Netflix and that's all I need. Yeah so we actually got these floorings custom made to be the precise dimensions of the original so they have been individually cut like piece by piece. Originally in this house we only had this flooring in the dining room. What they did before where they had the guests is where they spent the money so they had like this amazing floor there and there were cheaper floors here so when we redid the house we kind of like call it an upgrade and we wanted the same floors throughout the house and as I mentioned we did want heated floors so we had to redo them anyways and that's when it made more sense to just continue with this herringbone look. So it's actually hardwood it's two centimeters thick you can like sand it down I don't know a lot of times and it will stay here for the next hundred years if you want to. We did this bench in the window section over there which is more of like the day bed relaxing where we can chill watch the tv and then when we have like social arrangements or whatever this is where we kind of end up. You can also see we have very low tables probably more low than most people would like but I really like to keep things down and then have something to come up after and then you can always build it up with books and stuff or whatever so it does make a statement but it's not like the focal point of the room. One of the things that really made us fall in love with this house we actually wanted this house for several years before we bought it we were like walking past and I really wanted this house at some point and then when it came for sale and we first got in the house that what kind of like was most astonishing to me was the view because you have like a park straight in front here and this is pretty close to the city center so you don't have like a lot of plots like this this area started with like the neighbor house here and then this house and so on so this was like one of the first houses that was built in this area and now during the summer of course it's so nice everything is just so green so beautiful nowadays winter it is Norway so it's white and snowy during the summer it's super pretty okay so let's move on to the dining room this is one of the rooms that really made us fall in love with this house I think it has such a special vibe such a special energy if you will we have this completely original paneling I guess is the correct word we have left this completely untouched so we just covered everything up for the renovation then redid the floors redid the ceilings all of the walls and everything that you can see except this paneling we have not lacquered it we have not oiled it we have not done anything to it we just wanted the 110 years that it now has been alive to to show with this panel this was the only room that originally had the herringbone floor we wanted to make something special with this room so we added this border around this room yeah yeah it is giving very vintage but definitely and as you can see for the furnishing in here we kind of went very opposite of the room so it's in very strong contrast I guess so we have these Charles Eames office chairs originally but we think it's very interesting to play around with like different styles and the very vintage and the very like raw maybe like strict if you will the same goes with this what is it called like a dresser but this one at least I've had this actually for many years it was one of the first pieces we brought into the home and I just loved this chocolatey brown color with this original paneling we also had then the opportunity to add some light features here on the walls also have a light here because there was none original so this is a brand called Nura I think it's Danish if I'm not wrong but don't arrest me if I am and this one is apparatus so this we have the same two lamps here in different heights because you order them in the height that you want it's an American brand so these are called the clouds and I think they are like in a lot of homes in New York and stuff but we as you can see don't have like a lot of art on the walls and stuff like that probably because we're just so interior geeks that we want like this dresser or this lamp or those kinds of things are like our pieces of art if you will yeah so we have like one of three fireplaces here I showed you one earlier probably saw one in the beginning as well this is the third so it's actually not original to the house but it was put in by the previous owners and it is made out of a Norwegian stone which is called Klebo stone and it really keeps the heat well so now we have heated floors of course it's not an issue anymore but for the previous owners that did not have it this was a very cold house and then this will stay like heated for probably 10 hours after you have had a fire in it so it's pretty nice and I think it's very I don't know royal almost it's like a crown or something yeah welcome to my castle we also have these amazing doors that we didn't actually know were in the house because they were like covered up and also we had to like redo the entire thing because they were not working at all or anything but now they work perfectly not that we need to close them but they are cute okay should we move on to the kitchen or yeah okay so this is maybe not surprisingly but like this is the space we use most in the house obviously I guess even though we have this beautiful dining room which I have showed you we also were very it was very important to us to have a sitting arrangement in this room as well we tend to like even though we're eight people over here we kind of just end up here and everyone just scooches together this is where we are like morning day and evening this this room you see today was actually several small rooms originally so you had like a pantry which is very cozy and you have you had like this place where the servants made the food ready to go into the dining room you also have this open fireplace that was like the oven back then so obviously we had to like change up this room to work better in 2024 because we don't use the kitchens the same way as we did back then so interesting actually so this is how time back in 1914 yeah the owners would have had you know helpers and a team yes so this was like an own entry for like the servants and actually I had to like fight a bit with the government is that what it's called the planning department that's what I'm looking for we had to fight a bit with the planning department actually because they really wanted us to keep like the servant entry and I was like well lucky it is 2020 and we don't have servants anymore so maybe it's time to like redo some things and then then we got allowed to to change this door so this was originally like very like a back entrance but we wanted to do the double door with glazing so that we can open up during summer we have like this area outside here is very sunny and it's very private so if we are outside during summer this is typically where we are so we really wanted that connection between the kitchen and the outside probably like this theme about the we really wanted to reconstruct everything so that it could have been original and we are hoping that things that we put into this house will stay for another 100 years or people renovate more now than they did before so probably not but at least it could if anyone wanted to so that goes with the hardwood floors it goes with all the moldings it also goes with the countertop in marble this is the arabescato marble so it has some more drama to it than the cavera which is maybe the more common one the same with the kitchen this is actually from a swedish brand they handcraft all of their kitchens and this is actually made out of solid wood which is not very normal to do anymore but since the original kitchen was in solid wood we wanted to continue that kind of vibe so here it is solid wood we have brass handles and it's actually hand painted on site with this oil paint that they used before so everything is like very true to the original even though it works better obviously today and i love that it's like hand painted with the brush so you can see like these brush marks it's very i think it's a bit british as well don't you do that a lot or yeah and actually this one is from england from perrin and row through the wall kitchen is where we bought that one so but as you can see of course we have some updated appliances here gargano here and gargano here um i don't love the gargano dishwasher so this is for melee and the fridge is from liver because that's my favorite which is the higher brand of melee is the fridge stocked up with any special goods no it's give us a preview i mean you can't i mean you cannot look in this fridge i'm curious it looks horrible no not too bad pretty healthy overall well there is no food there i mean it looks like i'm starving and i'm not i mean what is this well do you like to cook a lot from home no i don't so actually i say that we use this room a lot but i don't cook a lot but we have a lot of guests and my partner is better at cooking so if we have guests he is the cooker one of us definitely the chef one of us here as well we were a lot of back and forth as to what to do with this kitchen again in these old houses you have entry there entry here entry to the outside there windows you just have to work a bit around it and there's not any wall space that's why we chose to fit the island also for the social scene it's a lot it's very cozy to have this island as a social scene um also the bench here we just wanted to be like a bit cozy and i'm kind of lazy in the mornings so i like to just lay here and drink coffee made it a bit longer on both sides than this corner is because socially to like sit down on a chair or a sofa kind of takes a little commitment but we see that all the guests we have always go for like the simplest solution and then we have like this easy corners to sit on it's very easy for people to like feel at home so it kind of like lowers your shoulders a bit so that's like a little interior hack for those who are interested other than that the same with the furnishing here we have this table from the 60s it's danish and we bought it used and you can see it has like all of the stains we never sand it down we don't do anything with it i just wanted to live its life we like furniture that like can um be with us for years and can also like show that it has lived a life because we are here we have parties we have breakfast we spill wine and that is totally okay that is i guess the biggest controversy with marble and when we have marble people are like how do you have marble it stains so easily but then i like will embrace these things so i always say just have a tequila party right at the gate and then you're good to go so you're kind of like yeah because then you have all the it's fucked anyways no i can say **** sorry oops it's clear you're so passionate about you know interiors how did it all start um it's just it's just always been my hobby it's just i like when i was 10 years old the most exciting thing was if we got a new fridge at home and then i was like rushing rushing home from school to like look at the new fridge which is like the most uninteresting thing i everyone could imagine but for me that was just like the best day um and it's just been ivory decorating all of my friends parents homes since i was 10 i think so it's just been been like that i'm actually educated a real estate agent so i worked as that for a couple of years but then i quit it and started my own business to to do interior design and renovation of old homes specifically that's like just where my heart lays i guess what's the name of your business um okay so we are i guess pretty low-key as of for now so the business is called studio s2 so it's me and my partner um and we don't have a website yet but we have an instagram which i haven't posted anything yet but we will get there but as of for now it's my personal instagram so amazing yeah i'll tell you what i've noticed in here you've chosen a piece of art yes it really does so well i made this myself though because i wanted it to go with the wall um yeah it just gives some structure to the wall which i like i didn't i mean it would be beautiful with like crazy colors or whatever people would like here that's for the next owners to decide but i as you have probably seen by now and we'll see further through as well i just like it to be very simple but it gives some structure you can see this has even more of a matte finish than the walls it's not completely the same color but i have mixed in the same color so pretty much i guess also actually i love these stones though i bought this in denmark at an amazing place the studio oliver gustav so if you ever are in copenhagen check it out um they are also like from the maybe i'm lying now but they are i think from like the 1600s don't arrest me for it but i think so but they are like very old they are natural stone and i do believe actually it is marble so it has just got so stained that it looks like this definitely there has been some tequila parties or hopefully there have we also maybe like a nice little detail but old houses tend to have very many doors everywhere and we don't use the doors as today like they did in 1914 so we chose to make a lot of the doors here in the powder room upstairs to sliding doors so this is the original door but we have like reconstructed it and made it a sliding door so you have the option to close it but you rarely do so if you wanted to have a chef here and close the menu you could but we basically never do that okay and let's move into the hall so this is the very original hall we have the original staircase here these are called a king in norwegian i don't know if that is like woke to say anymore but they that's what i've learned at least so these are in oak and all of the railings here are in oak and then you see the paneling downstairs here is mahogany and here the same as in the dining room we chose to kind of like clean up the lines plaster everything make everything simple and easy and really have this mahogany paneling shine and you can see behind me as well this beautiful like handcrafted original window so this i think is the only one layered window left in the house we of course could not do anything with it it's just too too beautiful so originally the fireplace that is in the living room was standing here which obviously were super beautiful but it kind of made the entry to the dining room very weird so we decided to actually take it back to more of an original solution with which was to use some of the space behind here and build the fireplace in what do you use that chair for so i quite i just usually call this my tiktok chair because somehow when i go into the house or out from the house or anything i just often end up here and scrolling on tiktok so it's like a lazy chair it's a very weird place to sit but i think it just feels very private so i'm just sitting here chilling no one can see me scrolling on tiktok so here we have like a little wardrobe situation and then on to the powder room obviously since this is a pretty small space we did the same thing here as we did in the kitchen so we converted the original door to the sliding door the configuration of this whole area was different so we redid everything but we wanted to keep the original features as the door and that also allows for a very easy and functional place for the powder room so let's head upstairs so you come up here and you have this landing which really i guess in interior design it's pretty like much dead space but that's what makes this landing so beautiful in my opinion because it gives so much air to the space this lamp is from the same brand as the ones downstairs so this one is in oil rubbed bronze and calf skin i think it's so so cool and again like for me that's like my piece of art instead of maybe a big painting even though this wall would be very good for a large piece of art there are so many like original features that we just really needed to keep and we kind of just cleaned up the space i would say just cleaned up everything for this amazing curve the ceiling height the lamp that i mentioned that we love the arches so that the things can really come to life we really wanted to be as respectful as we could to the original design this is also designed by a very famous architect back in 1914 like one of the best renowned i guess architects of the city and i really wanted to like of course have him in mind redoing everything because there is a thought about everything that is here and then we just wanted to update the things that does not necessarily work in 2024 as life has moved on do you remember the name of the architect yes it's last storehouse in the region last store hoag i don't know how to say it yeah yeah yeah yeah let's move on to the primary suite so again you can see the pretty simple lines i like the bedrooms to be very calm you see that i'm i don't go crazy with the bedding i just like crisp white clean linens we did fit these shutters which i love also this wardrobe situation so we have this vaulted ceiling here just a little bit of the room and you see the lists go on the outside so kind of like to eliminate that and make the room feel more squared we added these two cabinets on both sides so that this just frames the window it lifts the ceiling in a way and then we have the same solution here as i had mentioned previously it is the sliding doors because again this usually just stays open yeah i wish i can say it was always disorganized sadly it's not but i can pretend that it is um yeah again i like to have like not that much stuff so we kept it very clean in here just like this racks i like to change out my clothing like by season so i took away a lot and then i just have like a few pieces in here okay so moving on to the primary bathroom it's connected to the walk-in closet and the primary suite everything is from the english water monopoly we wanted to go for like the at least we think it is a british vibe or like an english vibe again you guys know better uh if it is the same as i talked about done with the kitchen we want everything to be in 50 years this is just a porcelain sink and it will still be that there are no drawers that will be ruined or will not work or like get ruined by the steam in the room or whatever so again we went for the marble on the floor this is the carrara one more common and we have some arabesquato just around the door frame to the to the shower there other than that we really wanted this room to be not as bathroomy if i can say that if it makes sense we wanted it to feel like a room that's why we went for only tiles on the floor and just normal walls with like moldings everything that goes around the entire house and then we did classic subway tiles with the very dark grout in the shower of course there we need tiles but other than that we just wanted it to be yeah a bit more cozy than maybe many bathrooms now moving in here we have a little home office um this is i mean it is a bedroom originally but because we didn't need it we just made it to our little home office so this is where we sit and draw and do stuff like that got this custom made all steel um desk we did not think about how heavy it was going to be when we ordered it so when it arrived we kind of regretted it a little bit so think about that guys if you ever want to have steel like desk i think it's like 150 kilos or something so let's move into this guest bedroom again it's pretty similar to the other bedroom here you have this amazing art again that is oh yeah this is the very expensive exclusive art um but again this is pretty similar to the room next door you have this little balcony which is a super nice feature um in this space you also have the evening sun here that's why we didn't have this as our primary bedroom because we wanted the morning sun um but you can have like your last glass of champagne here at like pretty late during the evening if you would like because you have sun i think it's until like 9 30 or something during summertime now we also have the guest bathroom i think it's better that i don't step in because it's not that big i don't know what do you think okay i'll try so this little guest bathroom same as the other with terms of interiors again we just went for tiles in the shower and it's very simple with moldings on the rest uh really love this sink as well this has a pedestal in as opposed to those uh the other sink that we saw in the other bathroom i don't know what it's called legs isn't it because i'm still on legs yeah legs is actually the word i was looking for that that difficult so so the other one stands on legs and this one is a pedestal so it kind of gives a very different vibe i think this is more of like a 30s vibe maybe even 50s but yeah so this is the guest bathroom or the bathroom that would belong to the other bedrooms then we actually we have another floor there's not much up there but i'll take you guys and show you since we are here original entry to the attic when downstairs so was covering up this staircase but we wanted to have the light from both the ceiling window and also this window into the hall and the landing that we saw downstairs so we moved the entry to the attic up here and just went with a completely different vibe i would say with the doors so this is like a very raw i guess industrial kind of look so we did these floors with heating and stuff like that we redid the chimneys so they look nice um but we didn't really know what to do up here they make a very cool gym yeah and that's what was our second thought like we could have a gym and you don't need to do that much to have a gym you can just place it up here and then you have cables yeah because now it is on usually it's not it wasn't actually a problem because we of course had to people had to like what is it called like do the math yeah to see if we can do it um so it wasn't really that big of a problem they just took like this thing through the window there and then just poured it through okay there we go let's see the basement mind your head here this is a bit tight i guess when you go straight into this room this is the wine cellar so we kind of wanted to just install this rack with wine and then have this as like the area that you could sit you could have a glass of wine if you're very into wine and wine tasting you can do those sorts of things down here um this has a very different feel and different vibe obviously than upstairs originally there were probably we don't really know but there were probably nothing down here so we just wanted to make this like completely different really um but we did keep the original outer walls so they are like just raw uh open walls although we don't have yes i will show you i just have to text them because that is the apartment but i can show you like the laundry room first again we went for the same kind of industrial doors here that you saw in the attic or will see in the attic depending on how this tour will go yeah um and the same as the wine cellar but here we went for the fluted glass so that you have some privacy since it's usually a messy room it's not usually this clean but just don't come too far in because then it's not clean anymore so let's move on to the living area in the basement so we actually did this as a rental just here in norway you have like very uh what is it called very good like tax situation if you have a rental in your own house so we have two bedrooms here a bathroom and then this living someone is living here at the moment so it is what it is and yeah okay okay guys that is pretty much it so nice to meet you guys thank you for coming out here to norway thank you to the luxury home show for wanting to visit our house and see you next time