Designer gets creative with penthouse condos at CityCenter — PHOTOS

Restrictions on modifying your condominium are an industry given. If you want total freedom to knock down walls, add windows or add a fireplace, don’t buy a condo, especially one in a high-rise, design consultant Linda Tatum said.

She designed several of the model homes in the Mandarin Oriental and Veer Towers at CityCenter and has bought and sold several units in both.

“You can’t add a fireplace or water feature in a high-rise,” she said. “I was surprised by the restrictions.”

The Veer Towers don’t have gas lines, so only an electric fire feature would work there, said Bruce Heckman, the building’s homeowners association community manager. And the weight of a water feature, or possibly reconfiguring walls, would have to be approved by their architectural review committee.

She came up with some special designs to work around those restrictions.

“I have a windowless window, a waterless waterfall, and a fireless fireplace” is how she describes the features she installed in her newly acquired 4,000-square-foot condo at the Mandarin.

To inject a bit of Mother Nature into the unit, she came up with a blend of glass and light that is an effective substitute.

The unit’s entrance is behind a set of iron gates, which are used on the end units of the five penthouse floors.

“It’s like the invitation to the party,” Tatum said of the doors.

Inside the condo, a pebble path leads from the front door to the water feature, which is a tall piece of glass set in a framed bed on top of river stones. Lights twinkle.

“The feeling of water coming down is shown by low-voltage lighting. You can see motion in the glass, which I had specially etched to look like it was running water,” she explained. A dozen tree branches are planted behind the glass to simulate a forest of Aspen trees.

A feature wall of the living area is a light stone, lit from behind, with an electric “fireplace” insert below a wall-mounted TV.

“It’s a hologram,” she said.

In the master bathroom, Tatum wanted to have a view to gaze at from the elevated spa tub, so she created a faux window using trim that matches the rest of the unit’s windows and inserted glass covered with an ocean-mountain print.

Other cool features of the condo are televisions that recess into their cabinets when not in use and a powder room with a vessel sink trimmed with shiny bangles. There is a lot of Venetian plaster and silver-leaf finishes.

Tatum moved to Las Vegas in 2012 after a 20-year career selling real estate in the Los Angeles area. She got her design consulting business rolling after the Mandarin Oriental salespeople saw what she did with her first condo, which she bought with partner Wilfred Corrigan. She started a limited liability corporation and now has three employees who help her growing business.

She can set up a condo from “gray shell” (building with an unfinished interior and lacking heating, ventilating and air conditioning and usually without lighting, plumbing, ceilings, elevators or interior walls) to move-in-ready in six months, she said. Or if a client just wants the interior furnished and decorated, she can make that happen in about three weeks. Most of her clients use the condos as a second home, she said, and want the convenience of having it set up and ready to occupy.

In between jobs, Tatum and Corrigan extensively travel the seas, but she’s always happy to return to her Las Vegas home, she said. “For the first time ever, I don’t want to leave this place.”

For more examples of Tatum’s work, visit www.l2consultants.com