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Student Problem Space Submissions

So let's look at some of these challenge spaces then so we're going to go out and think about some of these spaces and we're going I think switch back and forth from pinterest too the ipad app so that we can actually look at and draw on some of these faces but first let's take a look at pinterest so these are the submissions from people that are listening to us on the web and watching us and maybe some I don't know if any of these are also people that have submitted some of the people well your sister may be submitted one so we might see that australia way might see that at some point but this this one is about a kitchen and so I was really pleased with I don't know people were just already savvy with their photography skills or if they really took our advice on how to measure their space and had a photograph their space but really nice job buy all of these submissions on really looking at the space so some people have news little tools like a little aps to put there floor plans togeth...

er other people have just drawn them for us like this one but really really nice oops really nice job there right of getting all those little details into uh the iss is not to scale of course, which is nice to remind us but this that also means that not to scale, but the measurements are correct. Hopefully in that based on everything that she took in. So they give us a little description here, ref drawing, but would like more storage space. So this is a kitchen breakfast and family room altogether, and a lot of you were dealing with these kind of spaces and dishes are stored in a guest room because she doesn't feel like she has enough storage. Desk area is a problem. It's really just become a catchall, maybe a technology start charging station willing to change the tile cabinets, stained floor so she's open to doing quite a lot. She she likes the countertops and it's really where they live and entertain in their house. Um, here's the breakfast area that it's just almost part of this space. So it's in between the two zones and sometimes I talk about combining zones. But here I don't think we're going to talk about doing that, because with the bay window, it really sort of creates a perfect place to have a table and chairs somebody I'm going to show you in a minute. We're going to draw some solutions on this, but just I'm getting our bearings here, here's, if you're looking into the family room, this is what the furniture layout looks like they have the tv above the mantle and but it just doesn't feel like it's very cohesive to her it doesn't flow and feel that comfortable tow her, so they just want everything to work together better and then have better storage in the kitchen. Um here's, an area of pantry that looks there's think that and we'll see in a moment there's a disk feel on that because we see the chair sitting there, so this is the area that's really problematic for her and frustrating to her cause this desk is just to catch all, so they're not really using it as a desk, but it just becomes that landing spot for everything it feels really cluttered and she doesn't have storage for dishes so that's a problem, and then she has one of these interesting thing it's with situations where people put an odd shaped window in right so they have thrown in this odd shaped window and has several things that make it not work that great to me, including the fact that the molding has to stop on either side of it, so it really looks like an afterthought, but not a lot that we can probably do about that because from the outside of the house would probably would be a really big undertaking to take the window out now if they're open to that again, this is something that's a little challenging with ease because I'm not able to sit and ask questions so we're working with what we have ideally, I would prefer not to have this odd shaped window that extends above the moulding there, but at least it does bring some nice light into the kitchen and then let's see what sales is important to the space um just looking back over to this one just a view of the other wall, so things just feel a little cramped and cluttered and then an island like this it feels a little small to me you actually have a little more room than he thanked you for this island as faras traffic flow goes so it's a small thing cabinetry underneath it is not very substantial, and so it doesn't really maximize the use of an island like that. Um anything else and just one last view of looking in to that space so she needs all of these places to work together. So let's, go over to my an ap if I can figure out how to change this myself oh, there we could actually get help I didn't have to do that all by myself ok, so let's bring in the image of the floor plan here that we have to work with and were able to move this around a little bit get where we want it and change it toe white so we can see it better. Okay, so several things happening here that I think are important to think about um first of all, the kitchen cabinet layout in general is pretty much probably the best configuration for this space there's no reason to get crazy doing anything different in an l shape or u shaped kitchen really are usually the most functional, so dealing with this in this shape is actually not a bad thing at all and I think her sink was right here which I really loved tohave a sink under the window because it's nice to be able to stand at the sink and look beyond that so all positive things happening there her refrigerator's on the end which also is also great for a kitchen and easy to access. One of the things I think she really needs to think about is enlarging the size of that island because there's a lot of space here and so she could have a double with island, probably from what she has right now and still be ableto have barstools tucked underneath um bed not mess with the troops miss with the traffic flow too much there, so if bar stools you know if there's a space underneath that the barstools kentucky and I think she could probably even get three of them possibly another one on the side and I do love the idea of having the side of the island look like it's solid panels all the way up to here because we were looking at it from the side of the kitchen and seeing that it's just an overhang it really makes it look scampi right and dinky and doesn't have enough weight. So if the side of the island all of like solid paneled cabinets even though this section is actually a little bit of a false front right here it's still going to look a lot more substantial and nice and she could get some additional storage in this island for some of the things that she's having trouble storing so particularly things like platters that she's not using all year round would be great to even have other sense of doors underneath here that you do have to have to move the bar stools to get to him. But you have probably double with cabinet here so you could have storage all under here is well so that already would start adding nice storage and would improve the scale of the space if it were me she does have a closet right here that we could see in one of the pictures and then we also saw a closet right here next to the desk what I would do with that disk spaces I would take in the closet and the desk together and make it all look like a beautiful piece of cabinet tree almost like a china hutch or something to that effect but with solid doors or could be glass if she had a lot of beautiful dishes to store but that entire space would be perfecto have more storage um along the wall and not break it up with that closet so I don't know if that was part of the pantry there was enough their closet here so hopefully and I can't ask that question but hopefully she would be able to get pantry storage and possibly this other closet and have if not she could still have a portion of this be pantry like here and this dish storage but it would look so much more cohesive than that little bitty desk squeezed in and the cabinet next to it right? I think another thing I would think of that we can't really show on this floor plan is because she has that window that is so tall and it's breaking into the molding if she's willing to change the cabinet tree I would redo the upper cabinets and like with sally and I were talking about yesterday I would take the cabinetry all the way to the ceiling in that kitchen because her cabinet stopping the eight foot mark and she has that closed soffit area and it even accentuates mme or the fact that that window is so tall, so if a leased the cabinetry came all the way up, she would also have another twelve inches of storage for dishes all the way around the perimeter of the kitchen, so we've added three spaces already for storage and she storage challenge and won't have, uh to store her dishes any longer in the guest bedroom, right? So we're going to say fur these upper cabinets that go all the way around the space really that those need to go all the way to probably is a nine foot or so ceiling height? I'm not sure what they are, but in general this is where you don't get crazy trying to change and do some funky, quirky format because the room really is laid out the kitchen in the most functional way we see the the stove is right here, so her work triangle is just going from here to here to here, which is not very far away and it's actually really functional. A lot of people start getting into worrying about cutting off the corner champ oring the corner a rounding the corner of an island for the most part you might not wanna really pointed edge on the countertop, but I like to keep him squared off so they just don't become dated looking or something that's all as I would typically keep it pretty simple and square and not worry too much about that just kind of have to maneuver it a little bit get used to it being in there with a square corner again, maybe not a really, really sharp, um, surface on the corner as far as they're these other spaces, some other things to think about. I think this is the best space for her table, the place she has it now, um and there's, really, this space is becomes a little bit of dead space right in here, but you just don't worry about that too much because there's not really anything you khun do there that's very functional, and it is a major traffic flow, so I wouldn't worry about it. I wouldn't worry too much about trying to fill every single space, but some ideas for this other room that might make it feel a little more cohesive and like it works with the rest of the room better maybe if it will fit, she could think about switching places with the sofa and moving it over and friends that can get this pin too right in front of this window, possibly because I just think that having a couple of chairs in the middle like this really sort of opens up the space, it doesn't block it so much like a, um, a sofa does. And actually even I think we could back those up a little bit. Let me back him up just a little bit. Um, again, on the fly like this. This is the conceptualizing part. So when I'm doing something like this in my office and I make sure that we put it on cat or do real measurements to make sure it fits. But this is that kind of loose concept piece of the drawing. So maybe we could have a couple of swivel chairs, even with ottomans. You have room for that. You could probably still have some kind of a coffee table there. Or if you'd prefer, you could put a bench in front of the fireplace and then probably even still have another share over here. And this is when you start bringing in a rug to define this space, you could do a floor lamp here you could either do floor lamps, your table lamps if there's room here and probably a table lamp here too. But it just opens it up, is opposed to blocking it so much with the furniture she had. So it feels like it's more conversational. These chairs khun swivel in both directions so they could talk to people in both. Parts of the room, but really again, just giving her some of those things that she's looking for from a function standpoint, so yes, rug on underneath her kitchen table, would you keep that? There would probably get rid of a rug there potentially in this space and bring the rug like we're doing over into this space, because it makes it much more comfortable in cohesive, and then you have that kind of situation of competing or august here, and what it also does is it really accentuates all this open space because it draws a line right there in the sand like this is the dining room, and all of this is open space, so when you don't have that at all lips, um, it allows you to just sort of let all of that area feel like the dining space, and you can also, um, if you had a bigger table or relief for different occasions, you could open that space. Epsom. And maybe for that reason, you wanted to use something over in the living space, like small stools instead of a coffee table or some other place have some little ottomans or stools tucked around that can pull into up to the table to be additional seating so that's the kind of multi purpose peace on dh this actually could even be a little longer potentially and she could possibly if she didn't do panels on the end of this island if she put like um feet or legs and on the corner and I've used that idea several times maybe had a panel that came to here and then it stopped and had a nice big leg there then you could actually get a fourth um a fourth bar stool on the corner so just so you know thanks for her to think about for sure I think we definitely improved the storage there don't you guys think okay let's look at another one okay, we got a pinterest um let's see so I guess this is the winner number two that we look back okay so she put in some concept pictures of things that she just liked the feel of the space so I was looking at a couple of these this one in particular caught my attention she doesn't have a fireplace but I'll show you the room in a moment but really long narrow space and this is one of the ones what we're dealing with a piano so we're going to see that in just a second so most of those were just things that she loved small great color combinations and again the color is the easy part that's the pretty part once you get the function working for you it's easy to bring in all kinds of color s o here's pictures of the space so it's a long, narrow room she has ah, baby grand piano in the corner um, kind of a little bit of a recessed window and then we have a view of the other side of the room hears fromthe long end of the rooms, which has a sofa and another chair in there and, you know, using most of the space, but we've got all of this space in the center and it feels like everything's shoved up against the wall, right? But some pretty things have started to happen, and they're things that that I think I really like and, um, that are interesting. And then there were just a few other images of things that she happened toe like so several of the images, images that she liked had either really relaxing color palettes or even more drama with, like, a blue and gold, but she kind of has that gold based started with those pieces of furniture she had in their rights would be easy to transition to something that looked really warm like this space from a color palette standpoint. So let's, go out to back to our app and look at some options for this space, so I turned our floor plan the other direction to help us see it a little bit better um and there's several things that are already working for her pretty well here in concept is she's on the right track and most the time people are on the right track and they just stop because they just it's not coming together exactly right? And I just can't tell, uh, if things air going in the right direction, so they just get paralyzed. So, um, here's, what I would think about doing so the piano feels like it's a little bit shoved into the corner for me, and I think she has enough room on that end of the brehme sorry drawing skills to bring it out a little more into the corner and turn it towards the space a little bit because there's, not a lot you could do down here anyway with that piano, they're really kind of blocks off that space, so we'll talk about that in a moment and what we'll do to remedy that. But really, I see this space as sort of two zones, the piano zone, which is really kind of, um, over, sorry, like over here and then more of the rest of the space, and usually I try to break dreams into quadrants like that, so it helps me get them more balance, so if we're thinking about this room in that way I would think about having the sofa potentially moved down a little bit more towards the entry and it looks to me from this drawing which may not be accurate that that would actually make it a little more centered on the window but if it's not perfectly centered on the window that's really fun sometimes you just have to do something that looks balanced because you can't really necessarily look at the window and look at the sofa at the same time so you're probably not most people are not going to notice that so we'd bring it a little bit more towards the entryway on dh have table lt's just like she does flanking it with lamps and start to make a really balanced approach to this space great place to put some kind of a statement piece of art or something important on this one it seems kind of like a dark room so this is a room where I would definitely think about putting a light on the artwork because they would add some other ambience and warmth in this space she had a nice chair that there's no problem continuing to use it if she wants to I would just bring it more square with the sofa because it just cleans up what's happening here when there's a lot of things going on and it fills in some of the space and it allows us room for something like a pretty really pretty rectangular maybe even brass and our gold gilded and glass or something kind of glamorous, so I'm gonna put those little lines, which means a glass top on the coffee table and then I think the's chairs that she has here are probably a little bit under scaled they look more like a dining chair and you don't want it to look like you just necessarily brought the dining room chairs into the space, so I would think about something that was a little more substantial, but I like the layout she has going there. One of the things I would suggest to her if she felt confined by the window and just put the window treatment in here and that I would actually bring the window treatment out onto the wall cause it'll add a lot of depth and dimension to this base, so I would potentially even take the window treatment out farther than I normally would just to give impact and have it running from part of the wall onto over the edge of the window with a really pretty piece of drapery hardware. There doesn't matter that the windows and said a little bit it gives it a lot more, um substance and dimension there and then she probably still has room for some kind of a table or even a chest here and again I would probably put some kind of a lamp there and even a lamp here cause layering and delighting a mixture of lamps and layered lighting add so much into crist to the space. Now, over here, there's really not any need or a lot of room for furniture in the corner, it's kind of an awkward space to get teo, I wouldn't worry about it a whole lot. I would maybe take this opportunity to also put something on the wall here, so probably not a large piece of art in a large piece of art I usually with mix it up so maybe ones a collection of our grouping of something or some kind of a hanging or an artifact or something a little different, and one is more of, like a painting or, you know, a mix of medium, but when you start, then looking at this space and I'm going to take the background off so that we can see it. It starts looking much more full and much more balanced and pleasant and filled in right now, a couple of people asking toby, why specifically, you didn't feel it was right to turn the piano around so the play would face the room of climate. You like to do that from a music standpoint from because the sound is better, but this is such a small room we're not gonna have trouble with the sound really getting into the space and really being able to hear it well and it's just more attractive and less of a barrier tohave the keys into the room and the back of the piano that's how exactly how I have my piano I just think it's more pleasant it's more inviting and invites people to come up and sit down at the piano and actually play as opposed to being this gigantic barrier with the you know, the lid of the piano kind of really being this um elephant in the room innocence um so I think it's just more pleasant this way, but a lot of her issue is just about scale and being afraid to add more things into the space. But if you look at it from a traffic flow standpoint, there is plenty of room to get to all of these spaces um the chairs and really make it usable and then the scale of the furniture. So a lot of times you can have bigger scale than you think. Now I'm not suggesting we go to the as we once called it jolly green giant furniture, the gigantic pieces of furniture this is not a huge room but just really maximizing the use of the space layering in lighting on dit makes it much more comfortable and I would probably if it were me go ahead and as opposed to sitting situating a rug just under the furniture, I would bring it all the way around the room just to make it feel like it was cohesive and like the piano was part of the space, so it also will cozy up that cold corner because it was just cold hardwood floor down there we might feel like it looks even mohr empty but something about using a rug and this is another trick I would use as opposed to a, um solid rug when I have open space like this just the same way I love to use a pattern wallpaper on a giant wall if we have opens floor space, this might be where I would have some kind of pattern on the rug, even if it's subtle like a little cheque or a medallion or something that would allow it to give some dimension and fill in some of those spaces just like wallpaper keeps you from having to hang a lot of art on the wall. If there's some pattern and interest going on on the rug, you don't feel so much the need to put a piece of furniture there does that make sense? Does one thing that struck me when we saw the original photograph? It looked like it had a very low ceiling I don't know if they gave you any dimensions probably only eight feet tall. Yeah, I was thinking because I used to have my piano open, but if you actually I don't have it closed, but have it on the first day on the first, which is that there's usually a small exactly build some height, definitely a small leg or really tall, and it looked like it was opened on the to keep it a little bit lower for that feeling. So do you all see that the improvement, justin again? It's? Not about getting crazy with the layout it's usually keeping the rat layout really simple. And then when she can add a lot of beauty in this room with a drapery fabric with artwork over the sofa with beautiful pillows with embellishments on the on the sofa, maybe gorgeous lane. So there's, so many opportunities to start adding style and interesting pattern into a space without it having to be part of the layout. My piano actually could be some great ideas, but we'll get another one so many good ideas, and I'm just sitting here wishing I had a sketchbook. So, isn't this app really fun? That it's a really great way to start looking at this?