Randwick Walk-Up Apartment Kitchen and Bathroom

The U-shape was already there and it was the right shape, so the work went into making it hold more. Drawers took over the long run because a deep drawer beats a deep cupboard every time in a galley this narrow. Overhead cabinets run to the ceiling line, which adds a full shelf of storage and removes the dust ledge.

The two-tone split does the visual work. Timber-look fronts sit below the bench where they take the wear and warm the room up, white doors sit above where they bounce light back off the ceiling. A white stone-look benchtop ties the two together and reads as one continuous line right around the U.

The splashback is a gloss tile laid vertically in a stack bond, in the same white as the overheads, so the wall behind the bench reads as one surface rather than a stripe. Appliances group on the back wall: under-bench oven, electric cooktop, slide-out rangehood tucked under the cabinets. At the open end the benchtop returns as a short breakfast edge, which gives the kitchen a boundary without building a wall.

The bathroom is small and it was never going to be anything else, so the plan was to stop wasting the floor. Out went the hob, the shower base and the hinged door. In their place, one fixed panel of frameless glass and a floor laid to fall towards a waste inside the shower zone, waterproofed as a single wet area from wall to wall.

Stone-look large-format tiles run the floor and the lower walls, with vertical white gloss tile above the dado line to pick up the same detail as the kitchen splashback. Fewer grout lines low down makes the floor read wider than it is.

The vanity is wall-hung with an oval vessel basin and a wall-mounted mixer, so nothing sits on the floor and the tiles run underneath. A mirrored shaving cabinet handles the storage the slim vanity gives up. Tapware is brushed gunmetal, which is the one point of contrast in an otherwise pale room.

The parquet floors through the living room and both bedrooms are original and they stayed. So did the textured ceilings. Both are period details that a lot of renovations rip out on reflex, and both are in better condition than most things sold to replace them.

Leaving them is also what makes the new work read as a renovation of this apartment rather than a generic fit-out dropped into it. The warm timber tones in the kitchen and bathroom joinery were picked to sit alongside that parquet, not to argue with it.