1904 Victorian by Jillian Dinkel is at once grand and serene. This interior designer’s own apartment offers the creative freedom to experiment with bold finishes and contemporary family spaces.
Located in Manly, the apartment has been entirely reconfigured, making the most of its north-east orientation and glimpses of the ocean. Bedrooms have been re-purposed into an open kitchen and living space, with plenty of natural light and plenty of room for daily life.
The project is an exhibit of texture and materiality. Features such as custom joinery in coloured walnut veneer, marble countertops and handmade Moroccan tiles, all proclaim this space as an interior designer’s own apartment. Dinkel has built upon the design brief to celebrate the building’s heritage features, like the detailed cornices and the grand hallway arch, with dramatic finishes such as wainscotting, decorative wallpaper and bespoke lighting. Dinkel brings a distinctly American perspective to the project, with marble tiles that reference Brooklyn and a cobblestone laundry-cum-mudroom.
The residence being the interior designer’s own apartment meant the space was primed for bold, experimental choices, such as a bedroom painted entirely black. Much like the rest of the apartment, this room is executed elegantly. Both practical and adventurous, personal and decorative, this project is undeniably an interior designer’s own apartment.
Manly's a really great family suburb.
Obviously we are beachfront, but also it has a really nice village feel.
This property had been really neglected for decades.
It needed to be completely reconfigured to take advantage of the ocean glimpses
and the northeastern aspect that wasn't being used to its advantage.
Part of the brief was to completely reconfigure the home,
but respecting the few heritage details that it still remained.
There were really beautiful, original, highly detailed cornices in the front rooms
and also a beautiful grand archway in the hallway.
These details really inspired me and once I saw them,
I knew that I could really transform this apartment
to really speak to that grandeur and do it justice.
Not a single room has retained its original use when we purchased this apartment.
The front two rooms, which were originally bedrooms,
have now become a kitchen and an open plan living room.
We live our lives in the kitchen and living room like many families,
so we really gave some generous floor space to those places
and also made sure they were sat in the best position in the home
so that we can really enjoy that light all day long.
In the back of the unit, I've positioned most of the bedrooms in a second bathroom,
taking the apartment from a two-bed, one-bath to a three-bedroom, two-bathroom
with a separate laundry out the back.
Being American, I feel that I do bring a different perspective to the projects I work on,
in particular this being my own home.
In our entryway, we replaced some of the flooring with marble tiles
to give you a real Brooklyn vestibule feel.
The wainscoting throughout the hallway, again, nods to a bit more of a decorated feel
while still being quite minimal in color.
I've done very dramatic wallpaper to really give a sense of arrival
for our guests when they come into our home
and also to really transport you to a different time and place when you're in here.
Our second bathroom is another place where I used wallpaper
to give a little bit of a dramatic entrance to a little, very small jewel box of a bathroom.
This being my own home, it was a real opportunity to experiment
and one of those opportunities was painting our bedroom all black
from the walls, the trims, and the ceilings.
Materiality is always a front of mind for me.
There's a lot of marble, as there is in most of my projects,
and I love to use really natural materials that will patina with age.
We ripped up all the existing carpets and restored the original cary pine floorboards.
I used custom joinery throughout in a walnut-colored veneer
that I think really brought out a point of difference in this space.
In the en suite, we used handmade Moroccan zillige tiles,
which give a beautiful texture to that shower space.
In the laundry space, we used a cobblestone on the floors,
which, again, is quite an American aesthetic.
It creates more of a mudroom space so that sandy towels and dirty boots can go in from the back.
I always say lighting is the jewelry of our home,
so it's really important to get those elements right.
Almost all the light fittings in this project have been imported from America
using Visual Comfort, Apparatus Studio, and a couple other makers
that create beautifully bespoke lighting pieces.
When I look back on this renovation,
I really find that it's almost a journey through my history.
This apartment is now a real place of joy for my husband and I,
our 16-month-old daughter, and Miller, the Italian greyhound.
I find that it's really serene.
It's a nice place to come to at the end of a long day, and it's very quiet up here.
It's really just the ocean waves and the beautiful sun.
