Since most of my clients live in New York City, many of them come to me complaining that their apartments feel like storage units, with some furniture thrown in to the middle of their “stuff”.
This client was a voracious reader and had a bedroom that was filled floor to ceiling with books covering virtually every inch of wall space. She felt that while she loved her books, she didn’t really like having them in the bedroom.
During Construction: Stage Two
She said she wanted something warm, inviting and sexy – something that was feminine but someplace that a man would feel comfortable in – “a space that wasn’t too girly”.
I covered the walls in a sumptuous dark brown (Benjamin Moore “mink”) and flanked the enormous windows with an inexpensive pleated, pink, polyester “silk” taffeta, with a chocolate velvet trim one inch off the leader edge. A beautiful upholstered headboard in a neutral color, inexpensive chandeliers from IKEA ($39/each) and some accent tables completed the look.
Stage Three: Completion
But to solve the problem of the books, I came up with an idea. Stripping the sheet rock off the wall on one side of the hallway I was able to take advantage of the previously unused space between the studs. Those few inches may not sound like a lot of space, but they allowed me to create a nice deep unit, while retaining the hallway’s width (36”/standard) at any given point.
It also allowed me to give her a small pantry opposite her kitchen, and in New York where space is at such a premium, that was something that she really needed.
There’s a beautiful chandelier in that hallway from IKEA as well ($7) that throws a starburst of prisms across the ceiling, and a chocolate brown velvet swag for those moments when she wants the room to become what she now affectionately calls “her man cave”…
Last 5 posts by Tom Zemon
- What to do with a small bathroom space - August 1st, 2009
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Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] This is really cool: A couple years ago, my cousin Kerry did a major overhaul of her New York apartment. The transformation was startling (I got to see the Before and After). You just can’t believe what was done with a one-bedroom. Kerry rivals me in her book collection. The situation has reached critical mass. Getting rid of one damn book is NOT AN OPTION – not for someone like Kerry, not for someone like me. She had them literally stacked to the ceiling, everywhere. So. She called in the big guns to “make it work” – and take a look at the awesome process, (as well as Before and After pics) in this profile piece by designer Tom Zemon. [...]