Before & After: A Historic Catalan Farmhouse Redone by Espanyolet - Remodelista
Photography by Pernilla Danielsson, courtesy of Espanyolet. When we first featured Espanyolet, the Mallorca-based textile project of Thomas Bossert and Melissa Rosenbauer, the year was 2016 and the duo had quit their jobs in New York... ...sold their belongings, and embarked on an Eat, Pray, Love-esque year of adventure in which they ended up studying, and falling in love with, natural pigments—and Spain. Our clients saw what we were experimenting with and soon asked us to help them with the design of entire rooms and later houses.” The house is an old traditional farmhouse on Mallorca, a holiday escape for the owners, who are based in Barcelona. They were one of our first interior design clients and put a lot of trust in us, helping them with the entire house.” The house had suffered through several less-than-ideal renovations “in the 1960s, ’70s, or ’80s,” Thomas and Melissa surmise, “which left it feeling fragmented and not united. Weird steps up and weird steps down between rooms that should have flowed better.” Much of Espanyolet’s process involved stripping the farmhouse back to the original elements—including digging the floors down to “their dirt origins” and, after much thought, replacing them with microcement for visual ease. “When we first saw the house, we loved all the original, traditional elements, like the vaulted brick ceilings, stone stairs, and stone frames of the doors,” Thomas writes. The original stone ceiling arches above the cookspace. Though it looks original, the duo built the built-in “sofa de obra” anew and layered it with “beautiful vintage linen, un-dyed.” A pair of leather sling chairs, from Obsolete, in a sitting area. Round jute rugs—found at a nearby shop—echo the house’s curves. The stone stairs are original; the lighting throughout is by Contain Studio. A built-in nook and original stone window at the top of the stairs. One of four bedrooms, featuring an Espanyolet-made cloth headboard. Espanyolet’s lime walls are a collaboration with local artisans. The lime used has amazing antibacterial properties and will protect from mold. The pink tiles are actually natural terra cotta from Todobarro; the vintage ship window was already in the house. Beds are made with dyed linen throw blankets. Original beams and raw linen coverlets in a twin bedroom. Thomas and Melissa in the farmhouse. Before, with terra cotta floors and much clutter distracting from the vaulted ceilings.