Welcome to the doom and gloom of Jan! Christmas is done, the decorations are down and suddenly our houses are looking really bare and quite depressing. I always find the new year is the time I look around my home and decide on the projects I want to tackle in my home. For me this year I looked at the family room, the chaos room and the site of board games, dress-up and lego stacked to the side of the room finally became too much! Now luckily for me I’m a designer, so I have design solutions for every situation constantly rattling round my head and I always knew what this room needed. So I have now drawn up joinery plans to create some much needed storage, with gorgeous lighting and some fun elements for the kids and my joiners are cracking on. For non-design/normal people, this can be a big headache of where to start and seems too overwhelming to even begin!
Now 2023 might also have been the year for when you were planning your next big house move to gain more space, better flow and function or maybe just something more attractive. I imagine many of us with the economy in its current state are rethinking these big plans. Left feeling slightly depressed with a home they were hoping to leave behind but are now stuck with for the foreseeable future. Even without the economy crisis, the cost of moving is huge, forget the huge mortgage costs, you have estate agent fees, solicitor fees, moving fees and of course stamp duty. So if you can make your current home work, then this could be a better option and luckily for you I’m going to tell you how.
EXTENSIONS
So first up the most obvious transformation and probably the projects I work the most on are: extensions. If you have the external space and planning permission is likely to be granted, then extending your home is a good option for providing more space.
My biggest design grievance is that extensions are only successful if the internal space layout is right. I have seen so many times a very expensive square box added to the end of a home without actually helping the layout at all, and in some instances it makes it worst. The central spaces in the home are now even darker than before as they are further from the light. Extensions are expensive, you need to make sure your internal layout is working it’s very hardest to get the most out of this very expensive extra square footage you’re adding. Plonking a dining table in your new extension and enjoying some extra dining space in my opinion is a gigantic waste of money. When we work with clients, we take our clients through a very important step called our “Drill Down Chat”, where we literally find out exactly what they want from this renovation, why they’re doing it and what every member of the family or household needs to get out of this change. This then allows us to completely maximise this very precious, extra space in our space planning phase. As I have mentioned before, sometimes the space is already in your home and it’s just how you configure your home that makes the difference.
SPACE CONFIGURATION
Which leads me to my next transformative change, re-configuring your existing rooms. Walls up and down in the wrong place can have a huge impact on how you feel and move in your home. We have all seen Kirstie and Phil walk round homes knocking on internal walls to see if they are structurally viable to be removed. It’s true if you’re current home is made up of lots of pokey rooms that don’t get properly utilised, then combining spaces can make a vast difference. The common change is the wall between a second reception room and kitchen, by removing the dividing wall you can create (with the right internal layout) a fantastic family room, where you can all be together and have space to spread out. The same can also be true of putting up walls. The common, long living room is a very difficult space to achieve a successful furniture layout and it often results in one half becoming wasted space. This is often a perfect room to divide up, giving you an extra space to turn into a study/playroom or spare bedroom or even all three with the right storage! If you want flexibility on how the space is used then uniquely design doors or dividers give you the flexibility of having the space open or closed off.
STORAGE
I am a huge fan of built-in bespoke furniture, now it isn’t cheap but again designed in the right way it can make the biggest difference to a room. This year in our projects, we have added libraries with hidden desks, bars and coffee stations, alcove beds with hidden teenage gaming areas, joinery framing sofas, beds and doors and my personal favourite the hidden bed. The hidden bed was a great multifunctional use of the back of an unused living room. There is a mid-install, sneak peak below (stay tuned for the reveal). This house in Maida Vale wasn’t huge but it did have some wasted space. By adding a hidden bed with lots of storage and bookcases either side it can now be used as a study during the day and a guest room at night, wait till you see the wallpaper we chose!
If you don’t want to see a row of floor to ceiling cupboards then hide them with a clever wall treatments like we did in our Devon project, it’s beautiful and useful! The point is that joinery not only offers great storage solutions to clear away the clutter, but it can hide furniture and allow you to create dual or even triple use spaces. And if you light them as well, then the impact in a room is off the chart, amazing!
NEW ROOM LAYOUTS
Sometimes you just don’t have your room layout right. When you’ve lived in a home for a while, it can be hard to see your rooms with fresh eyes. I have walked into many clients homes and instantly known their existing layout is wrong. Just because we see pictures of rooms laid out in certain ways doesn’t mean that all rooms follow the same churned out layouts. Spatial planning is vital if you want to change your space and maximise its use. Here are a few changes we’ve made to rooms:
Combined a kitchen island/table. Usually, the kitchen island is its own entity and the dining table is then positioned further down the room. By adding the table onto the island, it keeps everything inline and concise, freeing up more space for another use.
Add a banquette to the kitchen space is another good space saver, dining tables and chairs in the middle of rooms take up space, move it to a wall, create a stylish banquette and you also gain so extra useful storage.
Move the bed away from the wall. It may seem odd to have a bed in the middle of the room, but it allows another space behind the bed to be created. In our new construction project in Epsom, this is rather grandly allows us to create a mini art gallery for the couples collection. But this space can also be used to hide a secret dressing room or even an ensuite.
Furniture on wheels! Now I know this seems like a funny idea, but half the problem with a room is that once you’ve put something there it’s fixed and your space is then defined. If, however that fixed piece becomes moveable, think how flexible that space then becomes. Sofas, tables and even kitchen islands can be moved out the way, desks can be wheeled out during the table and hidden at night, the options are endless and your home will feel so different and unique as you move everything around!
FORGOTTEN ROOOMS
Even in the smallest of homes I have found sad, unforgotten rooms that are left to fill with clutter and chaos, claiming to be the storage room or the dumping ground!
We know how expensive square footage is, so we cannot afford to leave these, poor sad rooms behind. The transformations of these spaces are endless. Our recent Surrey project had a very sad, unloved basement. A room to dump the laundry, kids kit bags, running machine and endless boxes; it was very unloved! Although we added an extension to this home, as their kids got older they still really craved an adult living space where they could relax with friends and escape the buzzing open plan space. And suddenly it was clear that the forgotten room was the place to do it. Below are our joinery concepts demonstrating the power of incredible joinery and a rich jewel colour palette. The rooms is being completed as you read so I can’t wait to share with you the transformation.
COHESIVE DESIGN
Finally, sometimes just changing the aesthetics of a room is enough to give it a new lease of life.
When I’m working in a small space, I will often paint everything the same colour and that can be light or dark. This allows the walls, ceiling and woodwork to blend into each other, creating the illusion of space. Being considerate with the design of a room is so important, it can be so tempting to be drawn to online purchases without taking time to decide the concept and layout you want for your space.
If you’ve read all this and you still feel overwhelmed, then contact us and we’ll lead you through the whole transformative journey. Contact us: info@sadiepizzeyinteriors.com or visit us at www.sadiepizzeyinteriors.com.
