I love South Beach. I love Art Deco,” is what interior designer Melissa Ward’s new client told her. “I want it clean, not cluttered, not feminine.”

When Ward visited her client’s bachelor pad in Buena Vista, she was struck by how disorganized the space was.

“Here was a single guy, a really focused tri-athlete, who was living in chaos,” Ward says. “He had mail laying everywhere…it ran his life.”

Ward’s client presented her with a unique design challenge: a complete interior design makeover—“from totally traditional to modern”—in three weeks, from start to finish. And she had to vacate the house by noon each day when he returned home to sleep. Despite the time constraints, the interior designer was excited.

“It was a designer’s dream,” Ward says. “I would be working with a clean slate.”

With a color scheme and floor plans for the house approved, Ward immediately went to work tagging her client’s furnishings as “give away” or “keep.” Beyond a handful of family pieces, only the bed stayed.

The next step was having workers tear out the wall-to-wall carpeting and make preparations for new flooring. She then persuaded her client to relax the daily noon deadline for one of the three weeks so she could schedule the painters to finish their job and get out of the way.

“My client didn’t want to wait for anything,” Ward shares. “He wanted to buy local, and he wanted things bought off the floor.”

Limited with modern choices in Winston-Salem, Ward went to Contempo Concepts, the folks who had recommended her to her client. The home-furnishings business helped Ward by pulling together pieces and creating vignettes in the showroom for her client to see on-site.

“When we met in the showroom, I could say, ‘Here’s the rug, here’s the lamp, here’s the bench for under the window,’” Ward says. “I think it really helped him get a feel for how the space would transition.”

Set in the woods, Ward opened up the main floor of the house by removing some “funky” built-in cabinets and replaced her client’s tired carpet with natural bamboo flooring.

“Bamboo is eco-friendly,” Ward says. “It was nice to have an organic material in a house surrounded by trees. It tied everything together.”

The designer contrasted the light, organic flooring with deep chocolate brown furnishings and anchored the new floor plan with an entertainment center that had previously served Contempo as a floor model.

In the master bedroom, Ward replaced the traditional Queen Anne bed with a clean-lined, contemporary model that boasts a headboard with a hidden space to store extra pillows.

Since her client slept during the day, window treatments took on added significance in the room.“He wanted no part of custom-made drapes,” Ward says. “So I chose a neutral-toned contemporary roll shade and had my business partner Shari Crangle paint birch trees on it to add interest.”

Ward’s other business partner, artist Amy Poole, painted “two hot nudes” in oil and hung them in a newly decorated sitting room that overlooked the wooded lot at the rear of the house.

Tucked cozily in the woods, this once-cluttered bachelor’s pad has been liberated by the creative vision of the interior designer—a veritable woman’s touch—becoming the perfect retreat for a single guy.