This Luxe Florida Condo Mashes Up Classic + Contemporary Glamour

When Florida-based interior designer Cheryl Kees Clendenon of In Detail Interiors first met her client, she knew she was ready for something new. “[W]hen we were initially hired for the project [she] was recently widowed and trying to find a stride that was her own in a space full of a lot of old memories and leftover furniture from her life in Tampa,” Cheryl recalls.

“We wanted the condo to feel totally completely 100 percent different from anything you'd expect for the space — but balanced when viewed cohesively against the exterior landscape and considered as a beach condo. This is not your rusty bucket-o-bolts design and certainly does not hit what a lot of people would identify as coastal — but we felt a leaning to consider the landscape outside in a fresh way with this space.”

Must-haves for the new-and-improved condo included “a more efficient kitchen space that was truly going to be a cook’s kitchen,” a generous space to host family and friends, and “an overall perspective for something 200 percent unique.” Follow along on Cheryl’s in-depth tour.

A non-negotiable front door is still an excellent candidate for a glow-up. “The front door to the condo cannot be altered or changed… but it can be painted,” Cheryl notes. Our fabulous faux finisher did this for us and it is where we said ‘OK, the client can do as glam as she wants!’ So it is a metallic finish with some gold foiling worked in.” Other condominium doors, please try harder.

Dramatically-veined white Silestone embellishes the counters, peninsula and kitchen backsplash, then carries up and out across the entrance wall that flows into the dining room. “We did this for continuity,” Cheryl explains. “We could not do anything about the drop down over part of the kitchen as we expanded the space — the client was a big cook — and so to carry the continuity we could not achieve with the ceiling, we carried the countertop material across the entire back wall and over to the dining entrance. It distracts from the soffit [that is, the visible underside of the ceiling’s functional architecture] we hope!”

Continuity was a priority underfoot as well: “Flooring is the same throughout every room in the condo,” Cheryl says. “It is a 24 x 24-inch porcelain tile, rectified — which means it can be set very closely together, and it resembles concrete.” In other words, it’s perfect for heavy foot traffic from guests, even and especially if they’ve got sandy feet.

Materials also mattered in terms of kitchen hardware, which offered an opportunity to indulge the client’s love of details like the metalwork in her light fixtures. “She was big on materials looking and feeling real in terms of their actual composition, so she wanted something with clean lines but a handfeel that was very satisfying,” Cheryl says. Translation: No lightweight or "brass-inspired" accessories. “These pulls are actually brass through and through and the finish on them, while sealed, isn't too shiny, so it started with a hint of patina that felt very balanced with the grain-matched wood in a clean but natural sort of way.”