If you happened to find yourself in Rita Konig’s glorious west London flat with the April 2016 issue of House & Garden in your hand, you’d have little clue that you were in the same space that featured in that issue. Apart from the tell-tale C&C Milano red and white striped curtains that still hang in the front room – once Rita’s bedroom and now a generous kitchen-dining room – it is an entirely different flat today. Walls have moved and rooms, full of colour, pattern and Rita’s trademark inventive details, have taken on entirely new purposes. The catalyst came in 2020 when Rita separated from her husband and bought from him the one and a half bedroom flat above that had been a buy-to-let, enabling her to transform what was a ground floor flat into a generous two-bedroom, two-floor space for her and her daughter, Margot. A lattice-like staircase now connects the floors, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs, and the kitchen-dining room, living room, entrance hall, study and playroom all downstairs.
‘I just got to the point where I needed the flat to grow into the next phase,’ explains Rita, who bought the ground-floor flat in 2012. ‘I had so much time to think about what I wanted to do and a really good understanding of what I wanted from the space having lived there for almost 10 years,’ explains the designer. ‘I’d turned 50, was a proper grown-up with proper clients and I wanted my home to reflect that.’ She delights in the multiple ‘small wins’ that came from rethinking a space that she was already very well acquainted with – the way in which she managed to create a jewel box of an office by extending out into what had been an overlooked bin area; the way that she created a feeling of generosity by sizing up the existing door openings; and the way that she carved out space for coats and storage – hidden behind pretty batik-patterned curtains – in the little hallway that now leads to her study. This blend of the beautiful and practical is typical of Rita’s approach to design.
Very often, comparing before and after images is a case of looking at how the terrible can be transformed into the terrific, which, of course, isn’t the case here. ‘What’s fun is that the before was great – I’d just grown out of it,’ says Rita. ‘What the renovation has done is make everything so much more comfortable for how I live now,’ she adds. ‘It’s been such an interesting exercise in seeing how different a room can be – and often it’s not a case of either better or worse,’ she adds. On that note, we take a look at five before and after images from Rita’s apartment.
The kitchen turned entrance hall-bar
At the back of the flat, what had been a small kitchen became an elegant hall-turned-bar area. ‘I’ve rather grandly called it the garden hall,’ says Rita of the space, which now forms the main entrance to the flat and is reached through the enchanting garden that designer Butter Wakefield masterminded. There is another entrance at the front (for food deliveries and muddy paws) but this is the one that Rita and her guests use.
‘I can’t believe I survived that kitchen really, because there really was no space to cook anything,’ says Rita, with a laugh. However, when she designed the flat back in in 2012 – just back from living in New York and in an entirely different head space – she remodelled it to create a home for herself as a single girl about town: entertaining space, in the form of a large living-dining area, was given priority and the blue and white kitchen was kept purposefully small and practical, with Corian-topped units and a chic tiled wall. It served Rita well for a good few years, and as she fondly remembers, ‘it’s a space that saw us through everything.’ The pressure for a change, she recalls, ‘only amped up when it became a family home.’
In this new iteration, the kitchen moved to the front of the house (taking over what had been the bedroom), freeing this space up to become an elegant – and unexpectedly generous for London – entrance hall. ‘I didn’t realise what a win this room was until it happened,’ says Rita, who had the walls papered in Mia Reay’s joyful Japanese-inspired ‘Ainu’ design. A central table – ‘Rita Konig’s Chelsea’ from Oficina Inglesa – doubles up as a bar, alongside a custom shelving system created in collaboration with Russell Pinch, which runs along the left wall (just out of shot). ‘I love how the table is multi-functional – you can make drinks on it or play cards or have dinner for four around it,’ Rita explains. What had been the built-in larder became a coat cupboard, which Rita added a rail into. ‘I was about to spend a fortune on cupboards, which I just couldn’t afford so this was a good solution,’ says Rita, who had the wallpaper wrapped around the jib door so you now barely spot it.
Rita changed the windows in this room, swapping the two on the back wall for one central, slightly lower window that she had enlarged and shunting the one on the right wall to the left a little. ‘It was an expensive thing I decided to do about halfway through the works, but these windows make the room,’ explains Rita. ‘The space gets this lovely west light, so the larger windows make a huge difference.
Above the opening that leads from the sitting room to the entrance hall, Rita added mirrors, almost resembling a clerestory, high up above the door. ‘Gil Schafer suggested I did that and it works so brilliantly and gives the illusion that the hall has higher ceilings than it does,’ says Rita, who often collaborates with the American architect on projects.
The dining area turned sitting room
Previously, the open-plan dining and living area consisted of a dining table at one end, pictured here, with the sitting area laid out around the fireplace at the other end. Rita carved out space for the dining area by buying land from freeholders and extending the flat into the garden soon after she bought the flat. All painted in Adam Bray’s ‘Greville’, it was an elegant space, with four yellow leather-upholstered chairs from Philippe Hurel surrounding the dining table over which hung a drawing by American artist David Ratcliff.
However, the dining area – chic as it was – eventually became a bit of a pressure point. ‘I couldn’t bear inviting people to dinner, because we’d all be squashed up against the windows,’ recalls Rita. Now, thanks to the remodel, the kitchen, which has moved to a room at the front of the house, is large enough to accommodate a generous 10-seater dining table, freeing up this space.
Rita swapped what had been huge sash windows for floor-to-ceiling windows and doors, which she had painted in Little Greene’s delicious ‘Toad’ and fitted with her trademark Joss Graham bamboo blinds. ‘Now you can walk straight out into the garden, which is really nice,’ she explains. The far wall, which had previously been occupied by a chest of drawers and a large drawing, was fitted out with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, with the fronts painted in the same faux bois – an artistic imitation of wood – as the dado rail and panelling in the sitting room. In front of the shelves are a pair of vintage Heal’s cane chairs, which Rita bought at auction and had cushions made for out of her own ‘Ronnie’ fabric for Schumacher. ‘The thing with having a 10-seater dining table is that I needed to create more areas for people to sit down for drinks,’ she explains.
The sitting room
The sitting room remained largely the same in terms of the room’s function and the placement of furniture. In its earlier iteration, soft pink walls played host to a densely hung playful gallery wall, below which sat a sofa upholstered in ‘Ziggurat’ by China Seas from Tissus d’Hélène, which Rita brought back with her from New York. Now, this sofa occupies a prime spot in the bay window in the kitchen-dining room.
The living room is perhaps the room that has grown up the most, with its walls lined in cigar coloured linen. Fabric walls, Rita admits, were one of her many ‘grown up fantasies’, which she has indulged in the flat. ‘I wanted to be able to bring clients to this room and show them what I’m talking about when I say that brown rooms can be warm and glowing’ she explains. ‘I wanted this flat to be a calling card for where I’m at now.’ Similarly, she hopes that she can show clients that the natural fibre rug – ‘Abaca Squares’ from Patterson Flynn – looks smart rather than beachy in this context. Rita had the sofa made bespoke and upholstered in GP & J Baker’s ‘Le Zebre’ fabric. ‘I love how it feels quite like 1970s New York and just stops the room from feeling too serious,’ explains Rita. So too does the abstract painting by American artist David Ratcliff – the one that once hung over the old dining table – which now occupies the wall above the sofa.
The bedroom turned kitchen-dining room
The tell-tale sign that you’re in the same room here is the heavy wool C&C Milano curtains that flank the bay window. ‘They cost so much that I paid for them in installments over six months,’ says Rita. In their previous incarnation, the curtains completed Rita’s serene blue bedroom. ‘When it came to turning this into the kitchen-dining room, I basically designed the space around them,’ explains Rita, who while ever the perfectionist is also a pragmatist and was determined to get her money’s worth.
In order to create the kitchen-dining room, the wall between the bedroom and what had been a dressing room came down, creating a space that now spans the width of the front of the house. The kitchen sits in the space that was once the dressing room, consisting of a length of floor cupboards and an island, all made by Plain English and painted in its ‘Burnt Toast’ colour. ‘I’d always hated the idea of an island, but here it makes sense,’ explains Rita.
The walls are lined in Antoinette Poisson’s exquisite ‘Petite Indienne’ wallpaper, which provides a pretty backdrop to a 10-seater dining table – the ‘Rita Konig Oxford’ table from Oficina Inglesa – that finally answers all of Rita’s entertaining dreams. Antique chairs from Streett Marburg surround the table, while the antique chandelier above is from Quindry.
The bathroom turned powder room
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This windowless room right in the centre of the flat was once Rita’s main bathroom. In fact, in its former iteration, Rita shaved 12cm off the living room in order to create enough space to have a full length bath here. She leaned into the lack of natural light, boarding the space in tongue and groove and painting them in a high gloss ‘Deep Brunswick Green’ from Papers & Paints.
By buying the flat upstairs, Rita carved out space for an ensuite for her and another shower room for Margot, meaning that this room could become a powder room. ‘It felt like a real luxury to have a downstairs loo that was separate from my bathroom,’ explains Rita. ‘It also felt like a chance to be a bit splashy.’ It is now a jewel box of a space, with walls lined with Antoinette Poisson’s ‘Torrent - PP Rouleau’ – ‘I just love the muddy colours,’ she adds. Rita even had the ventilation fan papered – ‘I had a brilliant wallpaperer and you can barely spot it now,’ she explains. The ceiling is painted in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Etruscan Red’, while the cornice is in Rita’s favourite ‘Toad’ from Little Greene. An antique Venetian mirror, which Rita bought from Camden Passage over 25 years ago for her first flat, sits above the sink, while she had an antique unit, which had been knocking around her office, sunk into a void in the wall. ‘It now sits completely flush and I quite like how it’s a sort of vitrine.’ A pretty lantern from Max Rollitt hangs above.
