NATAŠA JANJIĆ – ADAPTATION LOG / PART 1

Make a layout and project, choose a repairmen, arrange a price, choose parquets, tiles, sanitaries… and order it all on time. It’s a lot of work – Nataša Janjić Medančić knows from experience.

Nataša Janjić Medančić writes to us about all her choices, dilemmas and steps about renovating her apartment. In this section, she writes about the very beginnings of work in 2018.

Writing: NATAŠA JANJIĆ

One of the biggest reasons I went into such a large apartment is that, unlike many I have looked at before, I did not have to make any changes to the layout. All the installations, the toilet, the kitchen, I decided to keep in the same place. The decision was just a renovation, and what comforted me was that, even when you go into a newer apartment, you still want to remodel the bathroom and the kitchen with new tiles and sanitaries.

The first conceptual design was drawn by my parents, and it was up to me to decide on colors and style, though I went to all the stores with my mom, did a series of quirks about wishes and options, while hiring my dad, pretty free, for supervision. At that time I was doing several projects in parallel and without their help, I would not be able to bend the works and not make many expert initial decisions.

Since it is about a charming civic apartment, the fact that apart from the kitchen and the bathroom, leaving everything else as it is with just a little refreshing, did not seem repulsive to me, but rather something that I even owe to this apartment.

Parquet. A hundred year old beautiful, herringbone. Hard dilemma to take them off or not. It meant getting into potential unpredictability such as rotting joits or similar, but some of the damage and the squeaking of it encouraged me that if I didn’t do it now, I never would.

I opted for brushed oak, but at the last, thanks to the urging of my friend and architect Duje Kaliterna, I boldly cut that I want a French embroidery. Very modern and increasingly present, it evokes cleanliness and luxury, and fits very well with spaces with high ceilings, where at the same time I decided to play unobtrusively with stucco and rosettes.

I visited many shops, but in Mopar I came across the most beautiful choice and exactly the kind of flooring I imagined.