How a Brazilian expat made her family’s Hong Kong flat feel like home
The sunlight that streams through yoga teacher Leila Fronza Quites’ Discovery Bay apartment reminds her of her homeland. The decor reinforces that feeling
Making the perfect home doesn’t always mean hiring an architect and a contractor. Just ask Leila Fronza Quites. She and her husband, Wilson Quites Jnr, have transformed their Discovery Bay flat using their own two hands and just a little help.
Fronza Quites, a yoga teacher, says she was drawn to the flat by its sunny disposition. “I’m from Brazil, which is a very sunny place,” she says. “Here, the sun in the morning is in my bedroom and in the afternoon it’s in the living room and the kitchen.”
But even though the light was heartwarming and the views beautiful, the layout wasn’t quite right. So seven years ago, when the couple moved into the two-bedroom, 960 sq ft flat with the younger of their two sons, now at university, they hired a contractor to remove the wall between the dining room and kitchen.
“It was a very small kitchen, which is why we decided to open it,” says Fronza Quites. “After we removed the wall I loved that the sun came through to the dining room, which was much darker before.”
Fronza Quites and her husband took it upon themselves to add the finishing touches. In the living room, they clad one of the walls in dark imitation wood, adding a rustic touch. The wall extends towards the kitchen, where under-counter cabinets have wooden doors in a similar shade.
As expats, when we move from our country, it’s important to have a place where we really feel comfortable and at home
The initial plan was to use real wood, but that would have proved difficult to mount on a concrete wall. “So we went to Lockhart Road, spent some days there researching materials and found something that looks like wood but isn’t,” says Fronza Quites. The faux wood is made of a composite that can be glued onto the wall.