Inside an Interior Designer's Own Tastefully Designed Family Home

Hi, Ever House. My name is David Kamenzuli and welcome to house number 15. My wife and I fell in love with this house because we love the location. It's in Leah, which is in the center of the island, close to most things. It's also extremely quiet and private. You don't hear any cars or any external noise. It's a very tranquil space. It's very calm. It needs to contain our kids' energy. We live in a very fast-paced world, so we wanted something calming that you have time to digest and enjoy the house to the fullest. The house literally opens up on both sides. You enter the main door through the garden. You almost feel like you're in a protected space between the olive trees and the limestone walls. What we really wanted for our family was to create a place where you're almost living outdoors. We try to bring the outdoors in. So we had a blank canvas. It was literally two rooms and some orange trees. Therefore, we were able to create a house that exactly met all our needs. The house has four bedrooms, four bathrooms, an open plan living, kitchen, dining, and it also has a gym in the lower level. Inside, we try to keep it as clean and crisp as possible, whereas the outside, the garden, the landscaping, the walls, we kept it more wabi-sabi. We kept a very neutral palette, as you can see on the earthy tones. The main materials in the house are very few, which are stone, wood, glass, and steel. Being very few, we were able to go into much more detail and bring out the best in them. You barely need any paintings because the light just creates its own shadows. Just seeing the walls and the light move throughout the day is perfect. We kept a lot of curves throughout the whole house. The staircase was built in gypsum board, plastered with the same lime plaster that follows through the whole house. Also, the bathrooms continue with the same plaster. It's a bone color, which is our favorite color, and very earthy to complement the limestone walls, which gives a very calming feeling. The ceilings, we tried to keep them as high as possible to give you that breath of fresh air, so we have about three meter high ceilings. With the two large openings on each side, we kept the back patio for that ventilation throughout all the seasons. Basically, when you're in the living room, you feel like you're in a garden. You have plants on each side. We went with a lot of hard-wearing plants, very Mediterranean, typical for Malta. For the outdoor area, we used polystone tile for the pool. It's actually a real stone, not a glass mosaic. We have all the outdoors, kitchen tops, fireplace, with Roman travertine, which were filled on top, but the sides were all left raw, because I like the rough nature of the stone. Being passionate about beautiful things, I took it upon myself to design a couple of pieces myself, the outdoor furniture. I have a very good steel guy who I gave some drawings to, and he created the sofa and the outdoor chairs made in steel, and then I just got the cushions made separate. Natural lighting, we have plenty, because it's south-facing. We have a lot of diffused lights, not too many spotlights, wall lights everywhere, bedside lamps, which gives you a very cozy feeling in the evening. The kitchen was designed to use 100% of the space, so the cupboards go all the way to the ceiling, so you can put storage in it. The island has stools on either side, so it's almost like a second dining table. We use it for breakfast, for coffee, for lunch, we can use it almost all the time. We have a large dining table that sits about 12 people, which is the place where the kids can do their homework, where we play, we draw, we have friends over. It's beautiful because it's in the room, and you can enjoy all aspects of the garden at the same time. What's great about Open Plan Living is that if we're in the kitchen, we can keep an eye on the kids, if they're in the pool, or outside, or playing in the back part. We chose a limited color palette, mainly based on earthy tones, and also the materials we used were also limited. We used an exterior plaster that almost looks like a stone, called archipietra, which goes really nicely with the old Maltese limestone. Even the facade, we kept the old stone to be in keeping with the village core of Liya. The contrast between the new and the old works beautifully. All the bedrooms are facing the pool and garden area, so you can enjoy the morning sun. We went for a steel railing because we felt it was more in keeping with Liya. We're in the village core, it's much more appropriate. We also created a planter in front of the railing, which will eventually start cascading down. Upstairs, we have a master bathroom with two vanities and a freestanding bathtub. It's almost like a wet room. Regarding the lower level, we have an office, which is situated right under the sculpture staircase. We also have a yoga gym room, a large mirror on the wall with curved edges to continue with the curves of the staircase and the arches, and a cinema room for the kids to just unwind if they want to have their own separate space, which is great for us. The doors are not the standard doors. I chose to keep on going up all the way to the ceiling. There's no top box frame to have more flow. I think it gives a nice effect. The fourth bedroom lies above a third-party property. Since we detached the house, we had to create a bridge, and in my opinion, it worked out beautifully because that bedroom is really nice and private. We wanted the house to be timeless but still warm. The plastered walls together with the old stone really looks amazing. It's a little oasis, this open plan house within these large limestone walls. What I'm most proud of is that we achieved our goal. We wanted something very calming, very serene, because at the end of the day, the house is almost a backdrop to all your memories. Whether it's Christmas or a birthday, you're spending so much time there, so it's a very important space. I'm a happy guy. Subscribe to the EverHouse channel by clicking on the logo to receive updates on our latest episodes. If you have a project we could feature, get in touch with us at everhouse.co