Condo News: A Change in the Plan

Kevin and I went in for our first finishes selection appointment. We were the first appointment of the day, but she had car trouble and was 30 minutes late so we didn’t really do much choosing. That being said, we learned some important changes had been made to our floor plan. When the designer pulled out our floor plan, the first thing I noticed was that there was an added area in the bedroom and the wall between the living room and kitchen was shorter. Initially I thought, “yay! More space in the bedroom” then about 0.1 seconds later thought, “Wait a minute, did we lose space any where else??” I told her that wasn’t our plan and she said we were supposed to have gotten an email stating they had to make some structural changes to our unit. I pulled out the copy of the floor plan as we knew it to be and made some comparisons.

This is the floor plan I blogged about a few weeks ago:

Unfortunately she didn’t have a copy for us to take – she thought we’d already been notified – so Kevin and I both took pictures. Here are the changes:

IN SUMMARY:
Kitchen floor:
Before – no tile.
Now – it’s tiled. We always assumed it would be tiled and this just got missed on the floor plan, so it’s not really an issue


Kitchen dimensions:
Before – 12’10” x 10’5
Now – 12’6” x 10’5”. We’re losing 4 inches of space in the kitchen due to the…


Wall between living room and kitchen:
Before – Thinner and longer
Now – Thicker and shorter. We’ve definitely lost some of our precious wall space in the living room. The reason they stated is to give us a wider doorway and to increase the light into the kitchen.


Bedroom Layout:
Before – The southern wall was straight and our HVAC was originally drafted into the stairwell.
Now – We gained 16 freaking square feet of extra space when they redrafted the HVAC back into our unit!!!

Let me just state, the beds in the floor plan drafts for every unit are double/full-sized beds (dimensions: 54x75 in / 137x190 cm), which is the same bed we currently have. When we bought it we considered getting a queen sized because Kevin is TALL and his feet hang off the end when he lies straight, but we didn’t have enough space in our apartment for a queen sized mattress and weren’t sure a queen would fit well in the condo… so his feet hang off the double or he sleeps diagonally lol

The 16 extra square feet are conveniently configured into a closet shape... I can’t be the only one to notice that. Well that got me thinking: While 2 double closets are great, I think we would benefit more from turning that new 2x8 ft nook into a closet and removing the original closet altogether, giving us about 2 extra feet in the bedroom, which would allow us to fit a queen sized bed in there.  The side of the bed that is beside the closet doors in the original plans would be beside a wall in my hypothetical plan, so we wouldn’t have to worry as much about having space there for getting into the closet because it would just be a wall.

After our meeting we took a trip to Ikea to scope out closet systems. We found some fantastic Pax wardrobe configurations with sliding doors.. but they’d set us back about $1000… yikes. Unfortunately I didn’t take pics, but here’s some other Pax eye candy for you


We also checked out some dark versus light kitchen finishes in Ikea. I’m team “white cabinets” and Kevin is team “dark cabinets”. Whose team are you on?

To be honest, after looking at multiple cabinets options, I’m kind of leaning towards dark lowers and light uppers…

I’d love to hear what you think based on the layout we have!

Other condo news:
Finishes Appointment
Construction Update and Security System
Our Floorplan
Condo Finishes Waiting Game


Images: Pax Wardrobe 1 (Ikea Hackers), 2 (Roncevalles Victorian Reno Diary)

French Door Cover Up

My new bedroom has a 15-panel French door...and the glass has no cover whatsoever, which is unfortunate because I pass by the door to do, oh just about everything.

Going to the bathroom = passing by the door

Going to the closet = passing by the door

Computer = door

Sitting on the couch = right in front of the door!

Refer back to my bedroom layout, you can see what I'm talking about...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a private person. I have no problem with my family seeing me in my skivvies. But on the other hand, my family is as nosy as me and I have more than one time passed by the door and been greeted with someone *coughMichelleandMomcough* pressed up to the door like this:

{via}

...or some derivative of this, and it has literally given me nightmares, so it's about high time I do something about covering up the scary faces creating some privacy.

I have a black-out roller blind from Ikea (I can't remember which one) that we used on the French door we had in our apartment, but I don't really want to put holes in this door. My interim solution is quite horrendous and involves a curtain thrown over the top of the door:

I love what Daniel from Manhattan Nest did on his set of French doors in his old apartment.

 I also checked around on Pinterest and saw this cool idea:

{via}

What do you think? Both are screw-less options and can be removed without causing damage to the door. Should I go the fabric route à la Daniel or should I put up a picture/map? Even as I type this, I think I'm leaning more towards the fabric route as it will still let in the light... But I'd still love to hear your opinions!

New Bedroom Layout

My new bedroom is an en-suite with a walk-in closet. I'm happy (and lucky) that my parents have a spare en-suite bedroom at their house. This room used to house all of the workout equipment before I moved back. Here's the layout of the room. 

The big set of windows face west so I get a lot of afternoon light (and heat). The room is above the garage so I can hear the door opening and closing, but I leave at least half an hour before anyone else in my house (6:30am!) during the week so it doesn't bother me at all. 

Because the south side of my room (where the bed is) is a bigger area, I initially thought I'd make that side the "living room" area and have my bed on the north side (where the desk and TV are), but that layout didn't work at all. I have the Ikea Brimnes bed and wanted to put the head of the bed against the wall where the closet (labelled "storage") is, but then I couldn't open up the drawers on one side. I tried to put the head of the bed against the small window, but then I didn't like that people could see my legs when I was in bed (the bedroom has a French door with no cover whatsoever). Ultimately the bed ended up where you see it in this layout. I'm not sure if it's gonna stay there though. I'm always rearranging. What do you think? Would you have laid out the room differently if you were me? 

French Door Headboard

The apartment we lived in had a solid wood bedroom door that didn't let the evening light into the rest of the apartment (the window was west facing) so I found a French door on Craigslist and had my dad and Kevin install it. It brought in so much light and made a world of difference.

When we moved, I replaced the French door with the original door so that I could take the French door home with me. I knew I wouldn't be able to install it anywhere else as a door (its dimensions are non-standard and we had to cut a quarter inch off of one side at the top to get it in the frame at the apartment), but I still wanted to use it in some capacity.

Enter Pinterest.

I love searching for inspiration on Pinterest!

I found these French door to headboard designs that look pretty cool.

I love this one because it's symmetrical, whereas most of the ones I saw weren't. Most French doors have a bigger wooden panel at the bottom and the door knobs aren't installed exactly in the middle. This is something that can easily be fixed with a wood circle insert and some wood filler (for the handle) and a circular saw (to remove the longer wooden edge), but I guess some people want to keep the entire length of the door.

{via}

I love the idea of this one! Installing a light where the door knob was - ingenious! But as you can see here, this headboard is asymmetrical....argh!

{via}

While searching around on Pinterest, I also found this DIY headboard that would be pretty awesome to make! I love the built-in lighting and built-in bedside shelves.

{via}

They would work great with the Brimnes bed we have from Ikea. While the bed is great for storage, having the two large drawers on either side of the bed means we can't have traditional beside tables because they would impede the opening and closing of the drawers.

{via}

I also really like how the bed looks with the corresponding headboard from Ikea, but I don't think I like the placement of the chest. It would need to be a good 10 inches away from the bed for the drawer to open properly and I don't think I have the space to add a 20 inch clearance on either side of my bed.

{via}

What headboard and/or bedside shelf choices would you pursue if you were me?... I need advice!