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Biggest Layout Challenges: 6 - 10

A couple of you are dealing with this scenario of a really long room, so here's another view, which I think you're gonna like this because it gives you more perspective of that idea, floating furniture in front of the window to but here's another view of that sundering we've been looking at just the corner of it, and this is the scenario where it's a really long room across the back of a house, and we have three different areas we have, like a dining area down it, one in a large seating area in the middle, and then a secondary seating area that you can't really see on this end with a dish with the tv on the wall so there's a fireplace behind the orange tears and on the far in there's, a tv with two other swivel chairs where you can watch tv and play games to civil chairs with ottoman. So we have created just with the furniture, the different spaces we've delineated them with just our furniture arrangements, and in this scenario, I decided just to use a rug in the center section there's...

old, great looking to roz oh, floor underneath, and so we left it open under the dining space, and then I used a dash and albert come, which is a great company, inexpensive I think I mentioned it yesterday, they make little cabana strike drugs if I didn't mention it yesterday I mentioned it in one of the last course is really inexpensive as faras rugs go and I love to sew them together so when you sell a striped simple where it's just a really flat woven rug when you sew it together you can on a strike you can't see where the seams are because I just look like a part of the strike so I'll take um the widest point I can get where in this instance was a nine by twelve and I wanted it twelve feet wide then it was nine this direction and I just added two or three together and so I would end up with, you know, eighteen or twenty seven feet of length with twelve foot of death and it's really fun there they're not the best rug for being staying proof you can have them staying treated, but because they're inexpensive they're not a huge investment and you can also flip them over and look at the other side. So the long rooms certainly using rugs to make it cohesive look consider using drapes or bookcases to divide the area like we've talked about to create your own unique wall uh and just taking cues from those existing elements in the room like situated those three areas like it started with the fireplace that made sense for one area had a focal point and then let the other areas flank that so you can look at both of your spaces and go what's a natural focal point, maybe that's, where I start with the first area and see if it can then allow me to decide how much space I have for other other things toe happen in the room and then using multiples instead of just one so for one chair, so sometimes a pair of sofas or a grouping of four chairs with an autumn and in the middle is a great solution for some small seating areas and thinking about how to make them work. So maybe not just a scenario where you confess it once one sofa and a pair of chairs, maybe you get creative and he's multiples. I love the idea of that radiation radiating chairs around the center objects, whether it's a coffee table or in ottoman with four chairs around that works really well, too, and then several people can feel comfortable in those seats. A small space can be really challenging, so finding fun uses for small spaces in your house, sometimes a very small bedroom or a very small room in your space is not really functional for a bedroom, and maybe you don't even need it for that, so you decide to use it for a unique idea we're going to look at some of these later, but thinking of ways this was just a little room in my last time off the kitchen, the last client, I think you used it for a tiny little playroom didn't really make sense for me, so we really turned it into an office slash craft or aim. There was even room in it for my treadmill, so we brought several functions that we didn't have a place for in the house, and we combine them into this space and really made them work together. And we use this all the time it's where everybody went to do any kind of project or the computers, and they're so making this sort of specialty room out of a small space really worked for us. Um, and then we talked about this is not just high ceilings, but those two storey spaces so it's a little bit different eso one of the things that can help but this is possibly a mirror as opposed to a piece of art. If there's something attractive to reflect and it can really help create cem visual with their interest instead of making a space seems so vertical. It can give you a little bit more, uh, off of a horizontal feel in some of these really tall rooms. Keeping this is what we talked about earlier really keeping the everything that's on the floor associated with that lower plane that we talked about so this person this amanda carol's who's a designer that I know a friend of mine she created this scenario where she just sort of ignored the top because she was dealing with some windows and other things that were difficult to deal with. So she brought everything down to a lower plane and raft the rest the room in this neutral so it became just that backdrop again where she got coziness and warmth on the lower plane and and just didn't really worry about the fact that she had this really two storey ceiling here's one of those scenarios where I said rug over a rug can sometimes work but it's more difficult to have a rug over carpet so a map of africa is it like a cow hide rug? I think it's a cow hide rug over like a sea grass a precise clinical so sometimes layering it depends and be sure now layering rugs is never a good idea for aging in place for anyone that's having a hard time picking their feet up um and also for children it's can it can be really tricky and a tripping hazard and then also using those architectural elements to anchor a space with a really two storey ceiling so tall ceilings so this is a great example of taking the stone all the way up not unlike that idea of taking the wood reclaimed wood up higher now this is a space idea a few years ago and I intentionally because the fireplace element went all the way to the ceiling I intentionally took the drapery all the way to the top you can see they go out of the picture drapery panels to the very tip top of the tall ceiling and it did it did not bring them in and that break over the doors because it would have created an additional line there and I wanted the ceiling to same expansive because the fireplace was already making it grand so lean into again the what's happening what you're dealing with if everything feels like it's already dealing with mainly the lower plane you can kind of ignore what's going on at the upper plains but if you have a strong element that brings your eye up anyway I think you lean into that you go with that so I placed the artwork where it would also enhance the height of that space also dealing with very high ceilings I imagine you are probably not a size that so they are high like that so the main living area is a two storey room basis so it feels more something like this yeah sailing the windows I mean I have two stories at windows is the back wall so I think that the challenges um, doing something like this with very long window treatments, just I think it's going to become cross prohibitive for yes, it's very convivial expect s o the other the earlier images showed is that that's something that I think works better for me, like functionally and budget wise, to really just think about making just delineating the room visually and saying, this is the room and just kind of ignoring the fact that there is and if you don't need to control the light from the upper windows it's fine, sometimes it's so it's so bright from outside that you actually need to be able to close over the upper windows, and then sometimes you can leave those open and you really just for privacy, bring the drive ary down till that lower plane, too. So you so that you'll just on your list. And we talked about that yesterday when you weren't here, but just making that list of sort of the priorities, the non negotiables for you, like we need privacy or we need light control that will help you make decisions and if you decide, okay, ultimately we do need the drapes to be really tall, then you have to say where can we take out of the budget somewhere else and put it in so it's all that putting together like a puzzle like we said before you start purchasing anything allows you to get all the decisions and all the functional checks check marks included in the space before you pin yourself in the corner and you will have already spent the money on the sofa I really needed for the drapes and and we don't really have any options on budget um and then just another another option of using other things like here it's lighting that used to really bring your ia but the focal point is still down here so that's where we said maybe not trying to decorate with art worker other things that's really going to confuse you of where you're where you're looking and you want to keep that strong focal point probably for you down on that lower plane and that's what it sounds like you're deciding on your own that it's really more about this space for your family not what's happening in that grand tall ceiling our favorite fireplaces on the angle here we go um so here's the scenario of one and this is just where they just went with it the fireplace is on the angle so they use this this is amanda carol again my friend that's the designer and she's in the texas I said atlanta earlier but she's in the texas area and this is just you just go with it it's on the angle, so use that more is the focal point and kind of like the scenario we were being told about earlier not a lot of place to anchor furniture and really one wall over here to the side of the fireplace and it looks like they've often tease that is the tv built in scenario so the sofa had to float so it's just situated around it and they do just made it work they didn't try toe ignore that it was a corner fireplace or anything and she loves this idea of layering rugs here's another layer drug um and so sometimes people feel the need to angle the furniture if the fireplaces angle they're like the fireplace is angled this way so I'm gonna angle myself for this way often not a good idea. So pretend like it's a straight wall in your mind look at the floor plan like it's all square because really I mean there isn't angled while going into the kitchen but in this area, if you can ever carve out a rectangle or a square imaginary lines in your mind, it can help you figure out how to get the furniture really simply laid out and organized there's already enough dynamic things happening in a space with an angled wall and if you start angling all the furniture it gets really crazy and really busy really quickly, so don't be distracted by the fact that that's an angle and be tempted to make everything else angled as well. I think that works really nice that's pretty um here's that idea of slope ceilings we were talking about so here's the scenario was saying earlier, a lot of times you don't have enough space to go all the way across the slopes ceiling with a curtain rod and hang drapery panels on the side, and this is the scenario where we didn't. So this is a nursery there's some of that great finalized fabric on the ottoman and the bed, by the way, because it was a nursery space, we wanted to be able to just sort of clean up and white down there's a crib on the other side of the room, but I couldn't take a drapery rod out foreign us past the window on either side to be ableto him director hang dr free panels, which I would have typically done. So the next best case scenario, which is what I was talking about earlier, is to just create ah fabric shade that goes outside the window it's not inside the two windows, how you would typically think of little shades, it covers the entire window and it has more impact exactly as I was describing a little while ago with the valet it's on and it's still really beautiful but it so it looks a little more grand but it just eliminates the whole idea of having to have that drapery rod going across the space um okay, so here's a scenario just quickly toe look at um given us some options so if we were looking at this spice and we had a door to the attic um and then maybe one of the problems is it feels like all the furniture is against the wall there's a sofa in front of a window and there's a lot of open space in the middle. So what are some scenarios? And maybe they say they go into that attic often so you could do that with those chairs even especially if they were swivel chairs or not that heavy to me if you're never going to go in that space it's not gonna look that weird for those to be sitting there, they're not touching it, but if you're really going in and out of that space a lot it's going to be difficult to get into them and so you're blocking the attic door he have this kind of wasted space scenario here itself it maybe maybe they want the viewing really of the tv to be from the south public because it depends on the client sometimes they'll say we love to sit in these chairs they're more comfortable or we want to lay on the sofa. So this is perfect for viewing the tv or other people saying that we did this sofa, tow line up with the tv or the wonderful scenario where we need the recliner tow line up with the tv that we have a lot of times. So you might be dealing with some of those ah situations. So and then maybe the furniture spread out too much. So these are some of the biggest challenges that people deal with. So maybe you go to something like this. There's still traffic flow in and out of the space. We allowed two more sofas or love seats toe work in the room, not wasting a whole lot of space by flooding the furniture here and it's much more conversational and then some just additional storage in the back. Because this is just the scenario that may work for this client that's accessing that attic door all the time. Ah, better conversation area. It looks more balance. Not a lot of bowling alley kind of floor space happening here. Additional in tables between the two sides shares, which adds another surface for drinks or books or the remote control. And then even potential additional storage that could be a tall piece or a low piece either one on the back wall with more storage space and then we removed that furniture that was blocking the attic door so you just have to think through that checklist of what each scenario works for for the client and overall we were able to get more seating more storage more surface space and more function and the room just looks more field and balanced right um so we have five minutes if we want to tackle something or if we just want to take a few other questions I think that question is american and talk about the challenge in the next segment I mean any questions from all students at this point officer you've got different things that you've been tackling I think leslie I feel your pain because I lived in a loft for about five years and all of the issues you've described I remember having to deal with them is great space I wasn't complaining I really was happy living there but there's so many different challenges that you never have to think off I think I ran into like five of the ten that u boat out there because we have the slope ceilings too you know photograph react like possible design challenge and it seems like a lot of times when people try to do something really architecturally interesting like a cool off space that's when they it's not enough just to do a cool off they're like, oh, and let's throw in this corner fireplace and let's do these crazy windows at the top and let's, do you know, no walls in anyplace on any of the three floors and it's like how many crazy scenarios could go into one home? But usually I find that they're all in the same place. So that's not unusual at all that you that you really identified with so many of this. Michelle, I'm sorry. Apologies. Go ahead. I'm just kind of working with what's architecturally in my space. Um, I've gotta counter height counter. Um and so at first I I put in a kitchen dining room table that was just regular time um and it to me it just looked off, it looked dissonant, and it made the bar stools not usable for the lower height tape, right? If you need to pull them over anything on, and I haven't found a lot of extendable or convertible counter height tables dining options when I'm thinking of what I learned here, a console table that may turn into a dining there's actually, I don't know if they still make it, but I think it was henry done that I purchased the table from that actually have it my parents river house and it is it's really cool it's a wooden top, and it might be too rustic for you, but you could paint it or change it. Or you could even have something like this built the base was a metal frame just tow for its just like imagine like a box, a rectangle with no sides on it. So just post that we're all connected top and bottom. Can you envision that like a metal frame? And so when it was turned sideways, rectangular, the tabletop fit the top of it as a rectangle on it was a like a seated height, and when you turned it up on its own end, it was large, it was proportioned properly, so the top wouldn't wobble. It would fit on it and be supported. And so you could literally just take the bass and go from here to hear and set the top back on it. And then it was a bar height table and it's really, really cool. So that concept you can look and see if it's still available. It was henry dawn, and I think it was their, um I have a collection that's like they're traveled kind of that artistic traveler can't remember what it's, not artists and it's. Artifacts, something like that. Uh, and it was this convertible piece, but if not, someone could make something like that for you. So it's not very heavy, you could literally pick the frame, and you'd probably have to have somebody help you move the table top off and put it back on. But it was that idea that you could have it, lois, he wanted to with chairs, or you could turn it up on its end. Is that kind of what you were thinking? Something that converted from those two heights, right? Or just if you had any advice or a point of view on and having a counter and a table that I mean there's only about six inches height differential, but that's, maybe the fact that it's only that well, right, a lot of times I have both in a space, um, it just, um, look, we'll talk in the reich, and if it's something apartment that everybody else needs to know, we'll bring it back so that nobody misses any of our good ideas, but it may be I need some a little more information and know about how the challenges worked together. So if we come up with some clever ideas that we think other of our viewers would want to know, we'll bring the big ideas