Before & After: Vintage Tile Rules In This Remodeled Fisherman’s Flat in Spain
"Everything is kind of shiny here," says David the homeowner. "I think these funky patterns grew on us."
"Everything is kind of shiny here," says David the homeowner. "I think these funky patterns grew on us."
When David and Monica initially toured this first-floor flat in Valencia, Spain, there was a different color of tile in every room. Green and black for the hallway, pink in a bedroom, and a rust-mint checked pattern in the living room. It was a lot. "I had a little bit of trouble with so many patterns and colors," recalls Monica. "I liked it, but not all of them, all together, at the same time."
The couple currently live in Sweden, but she’s from Madrid and he grew up in Valencia, so they’d been looking for a house in Spain’s third largest city for a while. "I always dreamt of having my own place there," says David, while Monica was happy to exchange Madrid’s hot inland climate for sea breezes. "Having a house by the sea is like a dream for me," she says.
To that end, their property search honed in on Valencia’s seaside El Cabanyal neighborhood, which has easy access to the beach and row after row of quiet streets lined with modest fisherman’s houses, their fronts often covered in bright color or tile.
Modest fishermens’ houses with tiled and colorfully painted facades line the streets of Valencia’s El Cabanyal neighborhood. "Until recent years, the survival of the neighborhood’s traditional houses has been at risk due to political disagreements and speculation, but in 2023 a city plan which aims to protect the essence of the neighborhood (Plan Especial del Cabanyal-Canyamelar) was finally approved, resulting in new hope," says David.
Courtesy of David and Monica
"The whole Spanish coast of the Mediterranean has been overdeveloped since the sixties and seventies, but Cabanyal has been left alone," says David. And while many renovators tend to gut these old properties completely on the interior, that was not how David and Monica wanted to proceed with their remodel. "We didn’t want to remove the old wood doors and the tiles," says David. "We wanted to keep as much as possible."
Before: Entry
Before: David and Monica bought their first-floor flat in a 1927 fisherman's home in December of 2021. The houses are typically narrow, with light only entering from the front and back.
Courtesy of David and Monica
After: Entry
The couple kept and reused many of the old doors, as well as the tile wainscot on most walls.
Courtesy of David and Monica
See the full story on Dwell.com: Before & After: Vintage Tile Rules In This Remodeled Fisherman’s Flat in Spain
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