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Viewer Room Challenges

No matter what course I'm in if it's one of the ones I'm teaching on my own for my classes or here with creative life people can always give me design challenges that I get stumped are really almost him so this is a really challenging space now um it's ah an area we're going to be looking at a floor plan in just a minute on my head but here's just a glimpse of the floor plans so it's a laundry room with the door coming in from the garage a powder room that's actually really a pretty large powder room with some wasted space and a closet and then there's a hallway here that's not really able to be used either and she says she's willing to change a lot of things within this space but doesn't want to change the um the garage entrance now I went okay to move plumbing okay to move um the large vanity or make it smaller no addition are bumping into the garage or family right now wondering one questions she didn't answer for me is if we can actually move the door in the garage up or down the w...

all just a little bit cause it would really help so I'm gonna show you some suggestions for what maybe she could do and where I do realize that she's really not able to use all of our spaces look even this in the powder room oops there's so much wasted space in this corner next to the toilet like three feet of space so that powder room really does not need to be that large a really large vanity in a powder room in the back of a house you know, you could almost fit to sinks there, and then hallways often become really wasted spaces. Um the laundry room she also has the issue of if someone's opening the washer dryer can't remember which one it is on this side and someone comes in from the garage there's a collision there is and it's a problem because of the way that they're laid out and then she has the sink there. So how to take all of this space and really use it to its best ability? So let's look at goingto are more phileo trace app and take a look at what some of our options are here. The interesting thing is, most of the people that sent submitted, um, questions or dilemmas for us are willing to put some money and and are willing to let us move walls. A lot of times I have challenges where people are like you can't move anything, but I need you to improve the function and that gets really really difficult, so I don't hopefully you can see that it's a little bit light um so there's a closet here and she really does still need a coat closet and I don't think that space really helps us any because all of this space is traffic flow that goes to the kitchen in the family room we really can't start encroaching on that's it's not going to do us any good so if I were her I would probably leave the coat closet right where it is um now again, I don't have a scale here here and I'm not measuring this perfectly so this will have to be checked to see if it really works but there's probably a way to make her powder room smaller and it has a pocket door which she may need to leave but possibly move it down the wall but I'm thinking that there's a possibility that she could even have the toilet running this way in a sink going right here for a small powder room you'd want to extend the door if you can and let the pocket door feel moved over a little bit because you don't want to open a door if you can help it and be looking right into the toilet just for privacy reasons so you need a little bit of a buffer zone there but that gives at least two feet of depth of what was the vanity that's not even being used it all right now you know what I love to do and if if there's an ability to move the garage door in one direction or another, what I typically do is I thing look at the rest of the space as a just an open blank slate so I would start the door toothy new laundry room right here because all of that hallway and is this is all wasted space at the moment it's just traffic space. And if we've been able to remove the vanity, I like to look at this entire space now as the wondering which is a much larger space and if we could be lucky enough to be able to move the door from the garage even down to here, that would make me really, really happy because then we get all those air there's a window right here we get a really clean rectangular space to make the most of and then you could start doing several different things. Um, you could put the washer and dryer over here on this wall and it could have plenty of room to open in the front and then you could start a cabinet and go this way. The state could stay where it iss and the window could stay where it is and he could have uppers um, or you could do any number of configurations of that space but getting the door out of the way and having the room to use that washer and dryer doors opening is going to help a whole lot to not have that traffic then there's also then still a lot of room in the middle so you could use possibly some kind of ah not an installed but possibly a floating table. We've seen some on wheels that I really like that even had baskets or cubbies underneath because it can pull out into the middle for a folding station or it could roll right up against this wall and took out of the way. So I like to use those modular pieces that can be pulled out if you need them or be tucked against the wall for to not lose all of the space in the middle and that's just one option there's really a million other options you could move the washer and dryer over to this side and have the sink over here, but basically you just cleaned up the whole space and opened it up so that you have, um cleaner traffic flow here you haven't wasted the hallway space, you haven't wasted all that space in the bathroom and you're able to get some nice placement of the washer and dryer you could even probably put up or shut up er cabinets above the washer and dryer on that wall for additional storage, so lots of different options there if you're basically just dealing with a rectangle room right so any time that you're going to be willing to move walls or open up a space, my goal is to always get the door to a space that's not opening up into a cabinet or don't going right through the main function of the room get it over to one side or the other and then um then you're working with a really clean and simple and straightforward square a rectangle usually that allows you to create much more function that makes sense see has just can't make my own work, so hopefully that will help her rethink um sometimes I think you you feel like there is such a problem that you need to get rid of the whole closet and moved the bathroom altogether and a lot of times that doesn't really help it's just reconfiguring them slightly that can create a really nice washroom here, but if the door can't go there it macon go in the other corner down here and that could also work as well so the door may still have to come into to this side of the room this but then you still have this entire wall tohave a really nice run of cabinet tree, so at least trying to create some significant sizable spaces to be able to create cabinetry you might have this all is a cabinet with a uppers and maybe the washer and dryer are then can go over in this space with the cabinet above but either way just getting it cleaned up a little bit removing that traffic issue with the door ah and allowing yourself to easily be able to access the fronts of the washer and dryer x it's very mean it's a very simple change yeah very effective completely changes the spokes hallways are really bothersome sometimes and we have about five more minutes let's look att one more I think we may have time for it I mean she had a very specific question about your new space let me see if I can find that well but yes that well toby's from my husband no way might be a sequel bethany having well toby's closet also have a public entry into the hole it will not well they won't just be able to get well you'll get through it from double doors in the master bedroom reason I was joking saying is it from my husband he we've been there for six months now and I've been so busy and he's like are we ever even gonna hang anything on the walls and I'm like no we're not it's ugly it's not the way we want it it's just gonna look we're not gonna pretend to decorate the space that doesn't work for us yet we're just going to suffer a little bit longer until we can get it the way we want it so okay so let's, look at this, okay? So this is just a client who this was actually somewhat straightforward and simple, so she wants one of these spices, like we've been seeing that a lot of us have loved, like a corner bank hit with an eat in eat in kitchen. And so she just gives us several that she's inspired by and I'm not really sure what's keeping her from embracing this idea, maybe just a little bit of fear that she might not have enough room so here's her kitchen with an island and then, um, another view of her kitchen from this direction, but you can see back here there is a significant amount of space for something that she's wanting and maybe it's just a little bit tricky of how to where to stop and start and go underneath these windows. But I think it's an ideal space for something like this this is just the wall across from the island that doesn't really have anything to do with the bank it so thinking of a smaller a banquette with a small round pedestal table and then possibly three bar stools under the island and so she's just feeling like she's challenged with that, uh, I think that you could fit easily fit three bar stools here. Under this island and not really get into modifying it that much unlike the kitchen yesterday there's not a lot of space that enlarging the island's really going to help us that much but let's take a look on at her floor plan for the bank hit on my I've had I can't get rid of and sometimes the question is just where to stop and start the the space the built in and it's pretty straight forward here I think so probably what's keep getting her little confused is this is actually a window it's not an opening and this one but she's just worried about the balance and the layout of the space but from her measurements we have ten feet across here so that's quite a bit of space so if we're looking at a bank hit that goes here and runs under the window I don't know if you noticed in the drawing but the window sills we're pretty high so she should have room to run underneath that even with a bank hit back and just to make it look balanced for me personally it's just stopping under the window I would feel the entire space from here all the way over here even if she's only going to use a small table it still looks nice a lot of times I used pillows and other things on the back to make it more comfortable and it just looks like a nice even almost like a living space that even people aren't dining lots of people gather in the kitchen and you could have a lot of people sitting around this space otherwise you're just gonna have an awkward dead space like right here if the bench didn't go all the way over because it just stops under the window so you don't have to worry about fitting the bench to the table as muchas fitting the bench to the room and then bringing a round table or even possibly so a round table that overlaps could go in here and I would if it were me put chairs on the other side of this so if the cheer stay on the corner there's probably still plenty of room for her toe have are still she'll have to make sure that their space through here she needs about at least to clear feet of space and I've drawn the table probably a little larger than it needs to be said this chair would actually be moved in just a bit um and so the bank can't fills the space and went with ten feet this is only going to be about twenty one inches so a little less than two feet and if her table across was even forty two inches that's a little less than four feet where were less than six feet we have we should have four more feet from the edge of the table to the edge of this bar if I'm doing my math properly and that as we learned the other day as long as there's three feet from the edge of the table to the next thing you could easily put a chair in that space so so with my quick calculations this should be plenty of space for her and she should be able to make this work perfectly and that I would even I have and it looks like there is a lighting fixture on the ceiling that's what that little symbol means so I would hang ah hanging fixture that hung down like a chandelier that hangs down over this table to give it a sense of place but there's plenty of room and I think she didn't have to worry that it was gonna off it perfectly there was a beautiful floor in that space yeah I think this is a perfect solution for this and the reason that bank it is so nice in a space like this is think about this if you had tohave a chair you would need three feet from the edge of the table to the wall as we learned yesterday to fit a cherry in this is a space saver because it hugs the wall it doesn't have to move in and out like a chair it sits against the wall a banquette is only twenty one inches deep typically or that's a comfort chair depth to sit in for dining and the table even gets toe, overlap it a little bit so that you can die in easily. So you've eliminated at least two feet of space that you would need behind the chair to pull it in and out. So they're not just attractive and trendy. Right now. They actually are really functional in a space like this. And save that extra room that you would need if you were gonna have a table with four chairs sitting right there. And you concede, a lot of people there just want another solution.