Furnishing a Chicago Apartment: The Layout

Hello friends!  It's been a while (does every post start like that now??)

I just got back from a weekend in Chicago, visiting my best friend, Kira.  She's about to move from a super modern high-rise apartment on the river, to a really charming spot in Gold Coast.

Luckily, the new place has an amazing layout - tons of light (which is essential for those long, dark, Chicago winters), and it is in the most amazing neighborhood.  It's all tree lined streets and darling brownstone walk-ups; a block from the lake, and it's brimming with restaurants, shopping, bars, and coffee shops.

It's amazing.  

The challenge is taking a completely empty apartment, and turning it into something really fabulous. This is where I have been enlisted to help.

This is her first apartment of her own, and while she already has some really good stuff (bedroom furniture, art, occasional furniture and accessories), she's also going to need to invest in some major pieces to complete the main living spaces.  Since she moves in just a few short weeks, we want to get ahead of everything now, and put together a game plan.

The first thing I like to tackle is the layout.  Over the weekend, we brought a measuring tape to the apartment, to get a sense of what can fit, and where everything should go. Each room is BIG, and based on cable hook-ups, doors, windows, and electrical outlets, it's set up for a good floor plan already.

Starting today with the living room, here's the layout we're working with:

The living room is open to the kitchen with a bar - perfect for barstools, and has an entire wall of windows letting in tons of natural light.

She needs this space to function as both living and dining areas so with the cable hook-up running along the left wall, the ideal layout looks something like this:

Since the living space is where she needs the most new furniture, we need to prioritize what she buys first.  Here's what's on the list of essentials and first priorities:
      - New sofa
      - Coffee table
      - TV
      - TV stand

Also on the list, but less essential or decorative are:
      - Dining table for hosting (and chairs)
      - Additional living room seating
      - Lighting (table and floor lamps)
      - Curtains
      - Possibly a rug

With this list of furniture, and a broad layout in place, I put together three layout options that could work for using this space as dual living and dining - good for hosting dinners, and get-togethers.

Option I: really good for entertaining - the benches are low to the ground, so they don't block off the view of the living room as you walk in.  They are also really awesome for entertaining when you need extra seating, or if you wanted to tuck them away for more standing room, they could easily go underneath the sofa table behind the couch.

Option II has fewer seating options, but brings in a desk to this space as well.  Since Kira will be working from home several days a week, I thought it might be nice to have a dedicated work space that isn't a) the couch b) her bed.  Having a desk makes for a more productive work day at home, and also helps you unplug - shut the laptop, put it in the desk drawer, and leave your work for the day at your desk when it's time to watch bad reality TV.

In this scenario, I didn't include a desk chair - I figure one of the kitchen table chairs can double as desk chair, and can be brought back over to the table if company is coming over.  The large side chair here could also be substituted with the dual stools.

Which brings me to Option III: the desk is gone, the additional seating is brought back, but the kitchen table has changed.  

I scooched everything in the room a bit closer to the windows to accommodate a slightly larger rectangular table. This can a) seat more people and b) double as a desk during the day while she works from home (whereas I find working at a circular table kind of annoying - there is not enough room on the sides of your laptop for note taking, or an extra mouse).

Each layout obviously has it's pros and cons, but which do you like best?

Side note to all this: There are more posts coming on this apartment - tackling questions like how to hang curtains in a tricky space, and more exciting... a few inspiration boards that detail out what pieces to buy to fill this gorgeous space.

Decisions Decisions

Don't hate me for this post, but I really need to think out loud about the layout of our room.  Hi my name is Becky and I'm an over-analyzer.

As I try to plan for our bedroom make-over, I'm on the fence about re-arranging the furniture.  As it stands, the room has a few REALLY annoying features that are making it difficult to decide on a layout I'm happy with.  We have a very inconveniently placed steam heater that comes out of the wall a solid ten inches... so that's awesome. Not only do I not want the heater blowing directly on us in the middle of the night, but I don't like the idea of the bed sitting so far off the wall with that awkward gap.  That means that that wall is out.

The wall between the bathroom door and closet door is not nearly wide enough for a bed, so that's out as well.  That leaves the wall between the windows and the wall directly opposite.

This is the current set up of our room:

In this set-up, the bed is directly to your left when you walk in, so there is a direct pathway to the bathroom.  I actually never even had to think about the layout when we moved in - our movers put the furniture in the room this way, and since it made sense, I left it.  Now I'm on the fence about whether or not we should switch it up.

Here is the other layout I was thinking of...

The main problem I see with Layout II is that when you come into the room, you walk directly into the bed.  I also don't like that the bed can be seen from the living room, and I don't like that it obstructs the flow for guests that need to pass through the bedroom to the bathroom.

Now that I've said what I don't like, let's move onto what I DO like - In all my "dream rooms", I love when the nightstands line up with the windows, and the bed is nestled between - it creates really nice symmetry, and "frames" the bed.  In the current set up (Layout I) I do not like that our bed and nightstands are up against a blank boring wall.  I don't really know what to do to make that "emptiness" behind the bed and nightstands go away.

The other problem is that, the closet door swings wide open into the room (even though I keep it closed when I'm not using it), so the area right outside the closet has to stay empty so we can open the door up.  You might be wondering what the problem with that is?? Well, in order to keep this space open for the closet door, the bed and nightstands are no longer perfectly centered on the wall - they are just off to one side, and not lined up with the windows on the opposite side of the room... am I totally losing it or does it matter? (I think it matters).

Now that I've got it all down on paper, there seems to be more con's to switching to Layout II than there are to keeping it as is, but even so, I'm still not loving how it looks, and I feel stumped for ideas.  I'm hoping that once the paint is on the walls, things will feel less empty, but I'm kind of at a loss!

I saw several rooms that used tall mirrors behind the nightstands and lamps to open things up, and give the feel of windows, but how many mirrors do we really need in one bedroom?  Remember those existing Quadrefoil mirrors? Should I get rid of those for now and store them for another time? Should I seek out longer window-like mirrors and try something like this?  It looks great here, but I really hate the idea of abandoning my quatrefoil mirrors!!



The mirrors behind the nightstands does look pretty good here, but admit it - windows flanking the bed just look better!


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centsational girl


centsational girl

Oh I am so confused now!