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How to Measure & Photograph Your Space

So really had a we measure and photograph of space, so it's not it is fun to have these for before and afters, if you like to see the transformation, but it's also just helpful when you're actually planning the space and some of the apse that I'm going to show you how to use in the next segment, uh, I think we'll introduce them a little bit may possibly in this one, you even need to have your images of your rooms in a certain way, like straight on and at different angles so that you can really start understanding how room functions. Also, if you are in a store, you get somewhere, maybe you're thinking about purchasing a home, and you only could photograph it while you were in the spice and you come home and try to remember how something looked. If you don't have the right images of the space all the way around the room, you're gonna have a hard time making decisions. We'll see this happen to later, when people start sending design challenges to work on us, I well, I can't really tell w...

hat's happening in this other part of the space and its all important information, so it's a great time to get everything on paper from the beginning, so hoops, so when you're photographing a space the first thing that I like to do is take a straight square shot of every wall in the room, so back up as far as you can to try to get an entire wall and photograph your room, and even if you're not going to be, um, renovating every space, it's still it's still really great to do this? I did this in my house before we moved in, I went over, and I think I took about two or three hundred shots. I went into every single room of the house and photographed it properly, so I would have all these images if I needed them, and so taking square shots of every single wall in in the room, and then also taking some other details of the space like doors and window openings in anything that you might have to deal with radiators, whatever architectural pieces, aaron the space, because when you're planning the design, you're probably not going to be standing in that room and it's really nice to be able if you're on your dining room table or if you're out of the retail store for me, like I'm in my design work room, I really need all of those pictures to show me what I'm dealing with, and I referenced them all the time, and then I think it's also great teo to take um that's not what this is but back to the first point it's also great to then take cem a few shots of the room from a corner so that you can see what happens what things air adjacent to each space so that you could take square shots and then you two step back and take kind of an angled shot from each corner of the room so you can really see how things work together um and then photograph any existing furniture, accessories or artwork anything that you're going to use in the design because this is where you also keep from forgetting things and make sure that they all worked together. So if you had imagine back in the days when we could have polaroids and we could have them all you know shoot him out lay him on the table to look at things I use pictures like that for uh this is the chair I want to use in here and here's this chest and here's the sofa and even write the measurements on them but I'm looking at those key pieces while I'm designing everything else in that space um and then if you do wanna have great before and after shots be sure that you take the before photos like this and then khun take the afters from the same angle so if you are a professional designer you want to be a professional designer you're going to want to have a portfolio of work and nothing shows your talents any better than a before and after, and you really want him to be from the exact same angle so that the people viewing them can go. That is the same room that's amazing that it could transform that way. But if it's not the same angle, it's hard to even know if it's really the same space, and then there's the piece of measuring the room. And this one gets really, really important, so making sure that you know exactly where the walls are, the windows are the electricals, switches and outlets, and all of those other important pieces are because those khun impact whether or not something can spit on a wall or in a space s o had to measure your space is really important, so you don't have to be a great artist just sketch out the floor plan of the room like, is it a square or a rectangle? Is close as you can imagine it, and then, of course, measure the length of each wall and ride it on, and I'm gonna show you a little tool in a second that will actually help you keep up with these measurements, um, and then so really then measuring from one into the room to the edge of your you're gonna want a full wall measurement even with all not counting all the doors and windows but then you want to start at one wall and you want to go to the first opening whether it's a door or a window um door j m onto the spit on on the wall and make note of for that is so that you have all the little increments it's really important you khun just having the full measurement of the wall doesn't help you sometimes because you might get teo a store or be in a place that you're designing and you need to know well, I'm going to stay situate the sofa right in front of the window and how long is the window and is it gonna work? Is it going toe hangover into the doorway? So you need to know where everything starts and stops all the way around the room and measuring doesn't duels it can be quite confusing when they measured to the trade or to the framing around correct. So when you when you get a client it were clients of yours is a measured when somebody's maywood on our inbox interiors that when they're sending us those measurements, so what do you say to them just to keep it really clear deci measure to the edge with glasses so that or do you say to them you measure too? Some people have a defence it either way, they just need to tell us what it is. And so sometimes I just to be clear, probably have a measure of the whole thing, like measure to the edge of the the window casing, and then measure the casing so, like they cooked to unite, they may say it's eighteen inches from the corner of the wall to the casing and the casings three inches and then the windows three feet and then another casing is three inches as much information as possible is always helpful. I'm probably typically looking at from the window casing to the window casing, not just inside, because usually like if we're using it for drapery or any other thing, we're going over the whole piece, but sometimes you need other in from, you know, that's, not necessarily the case, and you certainly need the height, the window sill height and where it stops at the top. So you need to do the same thing vertically thatyou're doing horizontally in the room as well. Um, so you can't have too much information when you're starting to deal with um, any of the details in your room, really and it's kind of, you know, it's kind of tedious but it's worth doing? Um, and then, of course, adding all those up and your when you add each of your go ahead and make sure that you do the math and have all of your measurements on a wall like to the door casing across the door, make sure they add up to what your total measurement was of that wall to begin with because that's, just a little bit of checks and balance to make sure you didn't make a mistake somewhere along the way, because have there been many times when my team and I have drawn these kind of measurements ourselves and we go back to our office, enter it into cat and start doing a floor plan and there's a a measurement that doesn't quite add up, we have to call the clients that could you re measure this space to this base? So just checking yourself in, making sure that they all add up? Um, again, I know this is tedious, but it really does help you, because if you can get the whole floor plan on paper, you can really start impacting the function in the room by moving different pieces of furniture around, planning for cabinetry and other things in this space now one thing that is cool that can help you with this is there's an apb this particular at does not do the measuring for you, but it can just allow you to store the measurements on it. So if you take a picture of a wall and then you make them do the measurements yourself, you can add the measurements in there and have them with you if you go out to shop. So some people are gonna be shopping, even for, um, curtains that are already ready made in the store. And so these kind of measurements would really help you, like we were just talking about any kind of furniture so it could be it could have all the measurements of a room right there on the photograph. It's called my measures, and it lets you keep them on there and they could be stored in your phone. So it's, really helpful anything in your house if you go to the the hardware store and you just want to remember how the fronts of your drawers looked or your cabinets and how many pieces of hardware you need and how much, how wide the the spacing was on the holes for the hardware, you could put all of that into this aft, and you would have that stored on your phone, which is great, this one, the next one called magic plan isn't after actually does take the measurements of the room for you and so you all that you do is, um, way it'll take the measurements of the room from corner to corner from the edge of one thing to the edge of the next thing, so it does the work for you, which is really interesting, and it takes a lot of that tedium out of what we were just talking about and when you're home by yourself it's really, really difficult to measure a whole wall with the twenty five foot tape measure and try to get all the pieces together so something like this is really helpful. Um, it's when I was looking at this as the first time out and doing the research, it said it was so detailed that even some law enforcement agencies are using it tio uh, for all sorts of dreams and buildings that they're using, I guess, for I don't know if it's crime scene's or what that they're using this toe teo measure spices that they're dealing with maybe it's for surveillance, maybe it's the fbi? I don't know, but it's it's touted as being very, very accurate so and then just a fuel few rules of thumb for some spacing of some items as you start moving into thinking about where things were good gonna go, so we've measured the space and the next steps or to start laying out your furniture so it's just a few things that maybe you don't know because you didn't go to design school and these are the kind of tips and things you learn there some of them are some of them are things I learned since design school but thinking about where to place the tv. So we've had some conversations about the television so far, and if you're thinking about putting a television over a mantle which has become really trendy of late, something that you should think about is the tv should typically not be higher than sixty eight inches off the floor of the sea center of the television that's because the average eye level the average eye level at least for americans is it is at this height about sixty eight inches, so between men and women that's what five feet eight inches tall so that's about an average viewing height for um most people. So if you have one of those soaring ceilings and a gigantic mantle and your tv is going to go up there and it's going to be eight feet off the ground is probably not gonna be very comfortable for you because you're next going to be in this position watching it unless it's such a large room that you could get far enough away from it that you could get a better viewing angle but that's not necessarily the case for a lot of people. So maybe you are. You need to make the decision that your tv needs to go in a cabinet beside the fireplace or on a different wall together across the garland. Is it fruit? That was my last house, and this was just one of the only images we had of my television was when it was decorated for the holidays. So yes, so that in this house that I lived in the previously that the putting the tv over the mantel was the best place in the room because we were dealing with, as I mentioned to french pairs of french doors that went out onto the patio, lots of door, lots of openings all the way around the room built in cabinetry, and there was really very little placed. There was only one other wall that could hold the tv, and it was the only wall that I could really put a cellphone. So I had to make a decision from a function standpoint to up with the tv on this wall and I have less seating or do I go ahead and put it over the mantle and in this case it worked we only had eight foot ceilings in this house it was about a nineteen, seventy six traditional home with not really tall ceilings and so it was a really great viewing height for the television but it doesn't always work this is one of the things that I see clients get an idea in their head and when I when I was saying earlier that we get accustomed to a thought and we don't let ourselves think out of the box or we just had we think oh I really really want that I find that a lot of men come to me and I saw someone else's house and it was so cool that the tv was over the mantle and they just love it that way and they haven't said in their mind that that's what they're gonna have and then I go over to their space and for a number of reasons it's not a good idea the heights not right you can't really arrange the furniture in a way that they could be comfortable and it's really hard for them to let go of this sometimes because it was so cool in another space and so I have to help them to understand that there's a lot that goes into the space that really make something like this work and often this doesn't work but you need to at least think about the height that was right off the bat. You can tell yourself, is it even possible by measuring another important measurement to know is that when you're dining, you need two feet of space on the table for each person to sit like with their plate on the table top. So when you're thinking about how big of a dining room you have and how many people you want to sit, you can easily do the math and say, if I'm going to seat eight people and two of them are on the ends that I need each side of the table to be at least four feet long so that I can have four people are three, six feet long, second have three on each side and one on each end tohave ten people at your table has to be at least four feet long, so you could easily start doing the math. So we have this happen a lot also where people come in and say, I want to see twelve people in my dining room, and we measure the dining room when we say you can only seat eight people in this room, and they're very frustrated about that, but it's just not comfortable tohave any less space than that for each person that's dining. At the front of the table on the way we move on to quickly, rachel genius is asking about the tv situation when you have it over the fireplace how do you deal with the wiring cables? But did you cut that into the wall? Yes, yeah, and so so there's actually speakers that are really hard to see. They're very invisible that air behind those urns that air put into the wall and painted the color of the wall and then the wiring is in the wall ah, and it was dropped down through the wall from the attic into this space. Thank you all that dining room if you didn't if you did wanna have massive cranking great parties around that dining table but you couldn't fit that poach anything I do. You ever put in a bench on one side or two sides like a u could do there now you know it's, not if it doesn't have a back on it it's not gonna be comfortable for sitting for a long period of time. I mean, unless you're sure they would love it because people would not stay very long and they would get really uncomfortable at the table and then they would be hurry home this is this is I'm totally maligned him, not my goal here all I said wass I have to look really nice I don't I don't think I'm teasing in return no, I mean, it is it's about the aesthetics for me rather than the comfort, but I love those chairs and they look very comfortable, but when you think so, these are comfortable and I like, if you're going to go to the trouble to have someone dine in a formal seated way, it's really nice to have a very comfortable chair, that they are going to sit and stay a while. And so, um, again, if you're if you're thinking about something like a bench they can work great for and occasional scenario, like a holiday where you just I want to bring a lot more people in, but it's not going to be very comfortable if it doesn't have any lumbar support it all because how many of us think about going to like a ball game and you have to sit on bleachers and it's really uncomfortable and that's? Kind of the same scenario is a bench, but it is in a pinch, it'll work to add additional seating. The other measurement that's important here is from the edge, the edge of a table to whatever's behind it, whether that be the wall that china hutch or whatever the nearest pieces piece of furniture is, you need three feet of space. From the edge of the table, so that allows youto have enough room for a chair to be in that space and push up under the table, pull out for people to get into the chair and sit down and move around that space, so if you don't have atleast three feet from the edge of the table, so the wall, you can't put another piece of furniture or anything else in there. So if you're assessing, say, whether I can have a table and chairs and a buffet or a hutch, you're going to need from the edge of the table to the front of the buffet, three feet, and then the space for the buffet, which is usually like twenty, the twenty two inches so these just start giving you some guidelines or rules of thumb to helpyou place something's in the front in the room, another great measurement to think of is the top of the bed. I should really be no more than twenty three inches from the floor to climb into the bed, so some of us have pillow top mattresses that by themselves or twenty three inches tall, I've measured them for clients that we have to find sheets deep enough to fit them, so if that's, the case, just know that that's a higher than average bed, and so particularly if you're thinking about aging clients or children or any you know anyone that might have trouble getting in and out of the bed, you're gonna want to pay attention to that height. So twenty three inches is an ideal height from the floor to the top of the mattress. A minimum of fifteen inches between the coffee table or ottoman or whatever's in front of a sofa are seating and the edge of it so fifteen inches, which is a little more than a foot, is what you need to comfortably a be able to get in and around a coffee table and sit down on a piece of furniture. So these air just great things that you're going to need when you start putting this stuff out on your floor. Plan it's great if you can find one if you have a king size bed it's a little challenging but it's it's best if the bench at the foot of your bed is only two to three inches shorter on, eh, is that for a number of reasons, just aesthetically, it can look away. It can look too small if you have a really short bench with this particularly like a king size bed, but also functionally. Um it's great if it's almost the length of the bed because you're using it a lot of times for things like me not think about even in my own house I I use it to put my suitcases onto packed we sit on it to put our shoes on my dogs lay on it, they get up then down on the bed on the bench um it's just really functional and it's almost the length of the bed. If it was a lot more narrow, I think it would not be dysfunctional, things would fall off of it and it wouldn't work a cz well with the bed, so if you can't find one that's long enough and there are some companies that make them now they used to be a little harder to find you could do two or three smaller benches that air bunch together at the foot of a bed. So but that's a good rule of thumb also just aesthetically toe look pleasing and proportionate two or three inches on either side. Okay, so, um, any questions about any of those measurements are rules of thumb that anybody has air those helpful t I saw some notes getting jotted down um so this is good technical like design school when I want info for function, anything boots is making a comment saying I separate on my rooms and then I have all my particular items and ideas for certain spaces rather than trying to lump them all together to work in interior idea's pinterest yeah I mean that's where countries I think does help now when you approach a project do you look at it as a whole or do you tend to look at it room by room? Well, I think that's really help awful to think about them room by room because an entire project could get so overwhelming is particularly sometimes when we're doing homes that air several thousand square feet there are so many decisions even just in one room I mean you think about just I mean the architectural layout, the furnishings, the materials like paint in law covering the window treatments, the lighting the and they're so there's hundreds of decisions in a single space so it is very helpful to look att them individually but then I also after that but still before I start the purchasing if possible look at them all cohesively and just make sure that they work together that they flow from space to space that the color palettes flow well together that the fabrics and materials and finishes all work well together and then also as a whole have I hit all of the need's on my checklist that we've just been deciding of what needs to happen in the space activities, functions and everyone's list not just mine so so you have to kind of do both but I think it is definitely helpful when you're in the manu schiff picking out or laying out a particular space it's really nice to just isolate that space for a while so that you don't get overwhelmed with all the decisions ah lot of people get that what we call analysis paralysis because there's so many little things to think about in the whole project that it can really stop you in your tracks and cause you to not be able to make decisions very well yeah that's a good get approach um okay, so why are all of these things really important? Our project? Well, kind of what we were just saying keeping the details from the beginning of the through the end of this process help us to be able to do what we were just saying if we've got all everything photographed and everything organized from the beginning to the end we can make sure each space works individually and also that it works as a whole and then later on if you do get to a point where it's bigger than you are the project's bigger than you are you bring in an expert of any kind and we're gonna talk about all kinds of x sports that that I recommend working with not just interior designers but if you decided to bring in a lighting expert or a kitchen designer you've got all of the information that they need and all of your legwork documented so that they can really take all the information and run with it and really help you continue to have a successful project, and then really, it is pretty fun tow have that before and after, even if it's just for yourself, that gratification of seeing where this came from, I we even do this just in our own office when we finish a project before we can even show anybody, because a lot of times were photographing these to submit to magazines, and we might not get the serum for a year or two, so just internally will pass around the before and after is in an email and just gawk at the change in the transformation, sometimes it's so shocking from how something was to what it has become and how much function we've added for people and how much more proportioned and you know everything, the balance and the scale is just so improved, so that's really, really fun. S so all of these air reasons why it's important to assess your space this way? Measure it, record it s o thinking about starting that checklist, here's, what you're gonna want to do in your space, these air, these air, the steps, and we've already talked about these, but just to make sure you're doing all of them as kind of a recap, you want to tour your whole home either physically or mentally, or both, maybe both maybe tour it and see what you noticed with your eyes, but also just go through that exercise of in your mind's eye, thinking of how close your eyes and thinking, how you move through a space and maybe what missing about it or what's not working about it for you and what is working about it for you? Because sometimes we want to make sure that we don't undermined the things that are working when we start changing to fix some of the things that are not working. So it's just a cz important to have a list of what is good as what's not working for you, and then that idea of taking inventory of what you already have, the pieces of furniture that you already have that you want to use, um, and that whole process of how it exists right now and all the pieces that are there, and then of course, assessing the way its beat the space is being used now by you and everybody else in the space, your dogs, your kids, your friends, the people that you entertain your family, um, how are they using the space so that's part of your checklist writing that down and then that creative freeform fun place of visualizing your goals and your wish list and what you really want it being just as loose as possible and then turning that into a more specific list of goals and ideas for your space um, and from there then you can go to making those fun inspiration boards to start gathering your ideas in one place and maybe or maybe you've already been freeform pinterest visualising and now you could start organizing those a little bit more. So this is moving you through the design process and again, this is exactly the way that I do this process as a designer even for myself or for clients um and photographing your space so you know that how it is right now and how what everything looks like and all the little details you're going to be dealing with whether it's a radiator or a floor event or a window or something on the ceiling you want to know all those details measuring your space. All of these things should start bringing it together so that you can then start into the actual placement of the fun things like furniture and and cabinetry and all the things we'll beginning into depending on your space over the next a couple of days so what kind of what kind of questions and thoughts do we have on this process so far we've had we've had a lot of people took my pinterest and the use of pinterest I had a question though that I'm thinking cause there's also a lot of talk about measuring here, you know, you shown us a lot of examples in all three workshops now of rooms that have very impactful ceilings where feelings can you know that you that beams or they pinch him? I'm wondering when you're trying to assist a space, perhaps sometimes you have a suspended ceiling that's hiding beams or there may be a pitch. How do you go about assessing a room that might look like a box? But you think maybe you could do something with the ceiling intensity mission? Well, sometimes you have to bring in experts for things like that so sometimes if it's beyond our capabilities to really know so that might involve me bringing over one of my favorite subcontractors like a builder or someone to help me if I think there is, you know, like what's under this will do that with the flooring, sometimes like so sometimes we can pull up carpet ourselves and see if there's an existing hardwood floor marble or something in a historic project, and sometimes we need other people to come on site and help us make some of those determinations I mean, like literally climbing into the attic and seeing if there's structures built so that's kind of what you're saying like getting into the architecture right and seeing what's underneath that people maybe have dealt with so really from your standpoint probably as either a design enthusiasts or a do it yourself or if you're not working with a professional yet that would come in more to this exactly what we just talked about talked about the wish list and if you're thinking this ceiling from the outside and the roof looks to me like we could have a higher ceiling and you're a vaulted ceiling, then write it on your wish list and pin images that support that concept and then when you get to the point of getting an a nest emit from someone that you would have actually help you renovate the space, a builder or someone they can come in and and determine if that's really a possibility or not, maybe you have a plan a and plan b in case you can't do that but that's a great example of what I would consider getting rid of the box or thinking out of the box and saying, well, ideally, I wish my master bedroom had a vaulted ceiling and I know there's not an upstairs above it and from the outside I know our roof looks like it's pitched enoughto have one, I'm going to go ahead and plan that as my favorite option here my wish list and then we'll take the next steps to see uh, if it's a possibility, a lot of times you can get you know you can come up with some sort of ideas like that that can be done depending on your budget and, um, the people that you're working with, the professionals you're working with just because my parents house is actually quite old, but some point before they moved in, it had bean modernized in in a really quite ugly way, but eventually they discovered that there was all their hidden features were actually still there, at least they haven't ripped them out so it's just a question going looking for them and sort of taking off this horrible boxes that have been put on top of everything. Suddenly there were all the beautiful moldings and all the things that we're missing, because sometimes I put the ceiling just instead of dealing with that, they deserve pulling it underneath, so sometimes I mean, that doesn't tend to happen so much now, but with older properties you khun go looking and you might make some wonderful discover that's very much true, I agree that's good now, anything challenges from our students of you, you've been thinking of what we've seen here and thinking through some of projects that you may be wanting to tackle tracy used going through ah, major home renovation already, but any other projects you've got coming up that you're thinking about this, you might want to be tackling? Well, I would love to sell the house and move that's probably it, like you start over in a new space that's probably not likely so, at least not right now. So just the corner of my bedroom, like I said, trying to make that little more inviting, I think it's, I can't remember what it said, something about thinking outside the box and using things that you already have around that I saw you light up when I said that when I said there might even be pieces of furniture, things you already have that I have, I have always done that even when we lived in the condo and had very little furniture, I've always been one for moving things around from room to room, and my husband would always joke, like, what happened to the table that was here, you know? And I use the term I'm shopping my own house, right? Because sometimes and sometimes the piece will get put away for a while and store downstairs because we're not using it, and then I'll pull it out later, and I'll be like, oh, this would look good in the office, like well and your needs change like we talked about this morning like your lifestyle and live stage changes and sometimes you put things away that aren't so kid friendly and then later on you're thinking that be the perfect piece for this so we have different needs I think what we know is that I knew exactly what you were talking about when you just referenced because I saw your face kind of lighted up at that moment you're like shopping my house yeah, I think that's a great great idea yes, you spoke about the measurements of you need at least this much space between a coffee table and the edge of seating but then something I'm thinking about with my spaces what's too much space how intimate dio chairs across the way need to be in orderto have it be a good conversation space I've got two walls that aren't I don't exactly know tomorrow I'll be able to tell you how because he read it and measure your staying. Yeah um and so putting a chair against the wall and again in the sofa against this wall it seems to be too much and maybe that's too far, but I don't know that I have enough space toe pull something exceeding grouping right or or to have a comfortable conversation area so that not everyone's in a line on the sofa but putting a chair over there in the corner it fills the corner, but it almost seems like it's too far for a conversation tricks I like tea well, there's a couple of tricks I like to use for that, and I'm sure that working, but they're in this content, so when I get to them, I'll just mention him again, but I think it's worth much turning now. One of the things I love to use and we've talked about in some of the other courses is room sized rug um reams rugs and I make either just by carpeting and have it bound or have custom rugs made, but I like to use area rugs that don't just come in the sander sighs as we see them in, like eight by ten, because a lot of times our spaces don't need eight by ten they need, you know, thirteen by, you know, eighteen or something that's, random and so I love to have carpets made that really fill a space, and it sort of gives you permission to move your furniture out and really use the hole space instead of situating it on just this little rug on dh then if you do that, you can fill some of the space in between with other that's multipurpose pieces that were going to get into talking about a lot more, but like little ottomans, or either two chairs with two ottomans which you're very comfortable and people can put their feet up and you could start thinking about the other pieces that can fill in some of that space in that way you're not just using a small portion of your house because I do see often that people are using just a portion of their room because they think I will I'll put this rug here and it's excise and my furniture has to get on it and there's all this space all the way around that's much not just ample traffic flow but really wasted space, so I like to give people permission to use all of their space. So I think it's not as much about worrying about how much is too far, but what other elements can you use to make the space feel cohesive? What kind of additional pieces can you put in that helped fill the space that air functional, not just filler? Does that make sense to start thinking about that? So when you put it on paper, if you could envision um a rug filling a space and how the furniture fits into that suddenly something like that makes the room feel cohesive like you're all in the same seating area, not that guy's way over there in the corner and your unit has to go on over there and you're all over here in the conversation area so think about some of those kind of tools, but other than that I would say if he really needed a measurement I mean I would think you comptel when you're sitting there but I would think three or four feet is quite a bit of space on the other side of the coffee table to the chairs and if you get much beyond that I mean if it's seven or eight nine feet, that feels like it's way out of the conversation area for me. So think about that, but you can certainly use tools to bring things together. Magdalena de has a dilemma, which I know you have a segment where we will be talking about the rental situation and ways to deal with spaces that anna's long term magdalena de has a classic one how to combine our bedroom with two kids bids and make it look nice and simple. I can't stand all the clutter we have to wait almost a year to be moved to a house that is that two kids and two adults and a roof sounds yes and happened before there was one great issue and I think it was of house beautiful actually where there was a house in new york where they had trundles that pulled out from under the master bed on either side um with mattresses so if the king says bit is the size of two twin bids then two then trend als could pull out from underneath the bed so something like that might be really clever now in the middle of the night if you have to get up to go to the bathroom, you gonna walk over your kids hit when you get out of the bed, but they're probably already doing something like that anyway, if the kids or you have other friends and clients whose children sleep in the master bedroom because they're just afraid to sleep, say in their room that might be upstairs so for a period of time there like kids air in our room and we don't want we're trying to win them out of the bed, so now they're in a sleeping bag on the floor um you know it's just it's just reality it's everybody may want to be embarrassed to say, oh my kid's still sleeps in my bedroom with me and ex age but it's just part of life and so something like that trundle might really work or thinking about something like a murphy bed or something that can pull down and store away or how about even am sofa bid if there was a sofa in the room and the kids could sleep on like a pullout, hide a bit and then put it away so I'm thinking just something that's more of a convertible kind of scenario but my beacon lhasa ble under would look really, but I think that the trundle idea is a possibility that's kind of a first. Magdalene clearly has an eye for style and she's obviously got a knife space, but she's really frustrated by the fact that she's in this temporary housing situation, certainly we feel your pain of magdalena. Definitely other questions directly for you, toby, about some of your own approaches to how you tackle projects. Pure design interiors is just simply asking that when you publish obviously published all the afters do you ever submit before images? People? Yes, we definitely do in magazines love to see the before and after. In fact, a lot of times, even if it's not a before and after image of a magazine, I'll submit the before images and sometimes it even has a bearing on whether the the magazine wants to publish it or not, because sometimes you see a space and you think, oh, that's a really pretty room, but when you see where it came from, you think, wow, I can't imagine that this was the before, and this is the after it's really kind of shocking the transformation, so certainly when it's that kind of scenario where we've made a big difference in the space, we definitely submit that before almost always actually the magazines and even ask us for them so another important reason if you are even theresa, you were saying you're thinking about changing too this is a career if you're doing your own projects, that would be a time that you would want to keep some of those before and afters to really show what you're capable of doing because it's their very eye opening to see what something came from and what it can be. And also don't forget you foryou designers out there if you have your own website that's a great place to publish before and after that, you don't need to rely on a publication toe tap both of those mary dp is asking toby when you do concept drawing, do you use a software product or you do simply go by hand or maybe one of your staff helps? Well, I do, but we do a lot of them and I'm gonna be showing you some of these even in the next segment sum of the software that we love to you. So I have a staff full of really talented people that have been to design school like I have, and so they fortunately have all these skills for cadd computer aided drafting, and we use programs like sketch up and ah lot of different things to get three dimensional drawings mainly particularly cat is what we use in the office but for me personally I'm not even teo, I'm not usually the one doing that, I'm at this conceptual stage, I'm drawing it literally on pieces of paper, I'm constantly carrying a sketch pad or memo notebook or any kind of paper around with me, and most of my creative work really happens the way we just saw like that very first image that thus it was the show house where I'm sketching on paper and I'm writing notes and I'm handing it off to someone to say, put this in cat and make sure all of it works for may. I have the skill to use canned but it's, just not on the list of things I get to do any more in our office. There's ah lot of other people that do that force, but I'm going to show you and a little bit and there's this really cool little trusty digital note pad that I'm going to be showing you on a little bit that allows me even to show you how to sketch right here on the computer, which is gonna be fun.