dwellings and décor

On Sunday my husband was quite the decorator. He has been itching for some change and so he figured rearranging the apartment would help. He made the cutest floor plan and actually made it to scale and cut out little pieces of furniture. So adorable! I am so happy we rearranged because it looks great and I didn’t realize how much I needed the change too! I have taught him well! ;)

We have a very large sectional that is difficult to work with. Before we used the sectional to create a living room area separate from the other “zones”. We decided that we wanted the area to be more open so we moved it into a corner making the space feel more open and less closed off with unnecessary hallways. Our space is just not big enough to pull off the sectional actually sectioning off a space like a divider. I figured that some other people might be in similar dilemma and so I posted some images below that have sectionals in them to show how other designers worked with them. The first 6 photos are examples of sectionals placed in the corner and the last 6 are examples of sectionals being used to break off a space creating a divider between areas. Hope this helps!

Photo Sources:
1. spi-design
2. zkinteriors
3. kendallwilkinsondesign
4. okadirect
5. joeserrins
6. michaelabrams
7. furnitureseen
8. vicentewolfassociates
9. marieclairemaison
10. katehume
11. irinagraewe
12. johnsonmcleod

I hope everyone had a great New Years and didn’t party too hard. :) So I have decided to start posting more decorating questions after reading comments from the Homies Award 2008 Contest. I normally post my decorating questions on my Room in a book blog but now I am hoping to post a few decorating questions each week to provide some information that you may not have thought of before. So here is a question I received yesterday about a man who is looking for help on arranging his Piano in his new home. Below is the question and my advice. If any of you ever have any other suggestion please let us know. The more ideas the better!

Q. Hi, I have a living/dining room that is 12′ by 25′. On the short sides, one side is mostly windows and the opposite side has an opening in the middle leading to the servery and kitchen. On the long sides, one side is a long wall that has a window near the short side with the doorway. The other side is a wall, but with three openings that lead to the main foyer. When I enter from the front door, the first thing I see to my left is the first opening of the living/dining room. I have a baby grand piano that is 4′11′ and I am wondering where to put it. We are leaning towards placing it towards the windowed wall, and putting a dining table in the dining half of the room. Please help us. Thanks!

A. I would not recommend putting the piano near the window because outside walls can offer three main dangers to pianos:

1. dampness
2. temperature changes
3. direct sunlight

I have attached a floor plan sketch that is to scale of your living/dining space that will work with your piano. Hope this helps!

Q. I’d like to get some help with a furniture layout for my living room. It is incredibly long and narrow and the front door opens right into it. The room is also our “family room” where we watch TV. I am clueless as to a layout of the furniture. I don’t want to re-use a single thing that we have in there except for the flat screen TV that we have. I’ve attached some pictures for you. Please let me know your thoughts.

A. I have attached three different furniture layouts. I decided that I needed to put it in 3d for you to fully visualize the space. The first layout has a nice walk through into your space and I have created two separate areas. The area on the left is more for watching TV and the area on the right is for sitting and relaxing by the window. This layout has the TV where the cable outlet is so I think this may work the best. I have added a shoji screen because the table that the TV would sit on needed to be moved away from the wall. The shoji screen fills in that empty space. The second layout has the TV above the fireplace. I am not sure if this is too high for you but it lets you create a one unified space. I am wondering if you could replace the mantel with something smaller so you could bring the TV down further. The third layout is somewhat a mixture of layout1 & 2. It also has a shoji screen and it is more one unified space. You would unfortunanlty have to get an electrician to reroute your cable to other side of the room.

Her Response:

Hi Rachel-
They look great! I think I like the one with the TV over the fireplace best. The fireplace, I think, is the problem. I like the type of fireplace you have in the 3D models. If we were to take out the stone fireplace I currently have and change it to a wall version (for lack of a better description) and get rid of the stone hearth, that would look much better and also, without the hearth, it would add several inches to the floor space.

I’ll keep you posted on the progress. I really appreciate the quick turnaround!!!