Issues & Answers

I should have taken pictures of the floors after their second coat of polyurathane today, but just plumb forgot. It was another 10+ hour day of cleaning, dealing with the plumbers, polyurathaning the floors and running errands, and them coming home to pack up the house.

The suggestions I received were all great. There are a few issues with the room that I want to address:

• There’s no real focal point in the room, and I think the space could benefit by having one, and that’s the issue.
• There is a bump-out that was the original fireplace and is now the HVAC for the up-stairs. It measures about 4’ 8” across and sticks out about 12 inches. There’s not really much I can do with it now. My friends at Housewerks are giving me a fireplace mantel, but we’ve yet to find one small enough to fit the space – most are five feet! Totally crap artistic shot, but you can see how the bump-out looks.
• The house is a ‘shotgun’ style layout, meaning you could shoot straight through from the front door to the back. I’d like to preserve that line of sight. I am also averse to putting any furniture along that wall because you’d have to walk around it to get through the space.
• While I think the space is large – 14 x 24 feet, I realize that it’s pretty small to most people!  I am most likely to use it primarily as a living room, and sometimes, as a dining space. I have the gate-leg table and six dining room chairs, including the four folding lyre-back chairs.

The pieces I have for the space are:

• slipcovered sofa
• two ottomans
• two slipper chairs, a la Billy Baldwin, also in white
• serpentine-front chest, with mirror
• four panel Chinese silk painting
• one tall and two short white book-cases
• gate-leg table
• several table lamps

I don’t think the 30-drawer shoe file is going to make the cut for the front room. It might be relegated to the mud room, or my work space. This is a partial floorplan suggested by I Love Limegreen who said to make a little entryway using some of the book cases. I gotta figure out what to do with the rest of the space though!

The bedroom situation is thus: The front room has a westerly orientation, two big windows and a huge closet. NONE of my previous houses have ever had this much closet space. Since it’s the room where I will probably spend the least amount of time, if current habits prevail, I think it’s the best choice.

Nutbird mentioned the street noise, but since the street only has three houses on it, I don’t think that’s going to be an issue. The proximity to the bathroom was also brought up, and since it’s a total of 20 feet along the hallway, I think I am fine! A few houses ago, my only bathroom was on the ground floor, behind the kitchen! Now that was a pain – especially after a few cocktails!

I want the largest of the three rooms as a workroom, since I will be spending a lot of time there. And the guest room, which is not frequently used, is the smallest. It also faces the east and south, so gets a lot of morning sun.

The program I am using for the layouts is Floorplanner. It’s pretty simple to use and you can lock things like windows and doors in place, which is helpful.

Play around with it and see what you come up with for me!