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Diningroom study with a pile of papers on the chair and notebooks on the table. |
Is your
study a spudy, a bedroomudy, a loungeudy, or even a balconudy? Or do you, like
me, just have a wandering laptop that travels with piles of papers that invade
every room of the house?
When I had
bought my apartment but not yet moved in, I spent an inordinate amount of time
roughly drawing the floor plan and filling it with sketches of furniture to
decide how I would live in my new space.
I soon
realized that I was drawing the furniture smaller and smaller in order to fit
more in. By the end I could have had a hotel dining room and lounge in my 3m by
7m living room - but only if the guests were Barbie and friends. But what
magnificent ceiling height they would have had. I could have built stairs and
added an extra mezzanine floor.
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Laptop in the Lounge. Spot the pile of papers. |
Back to
reality and 15 years later, I have never found the optimum layout and usage for
this apartment. In my old place one extra metre of width in the living room
allowed for a study area as well as a dining area and sitting area. Here the positions of the doors and windows just make it awkward. If you could throw
out all your furniture and start again, you could buy or have made to measure
the perfect set-up for the space, niches, and quirks available. But I, like
most people, can't afford to do this.
The bottom
line is that in a flat with a defined footprint you can't have everything. I
can't have an open balcony in which to enjoy some outside space and also
enclose it for a study. I can’t rent out my spare bedroom and also have it as
my study. I can’t chop off some of the living room for a study area without
compromising on dining and sitting space. I can’t have a tranquil bedroom only
for sleeping, dressing and reading and use a corner of it for the computer. And the computer in the bedroom would entail the dressing table becoming the desk. So it ends up being a choice between a grown up bedroom with a dressing table or a teenage bedroom with a desk on which to do my homework. I'm 53. I refuse to have a teenager's bedroom.
Dressing table or work station. Not both. |
If I lived
in a house I’d consider an attic conversion or a garden extension. Sometimes I
go looking for building inspiration and
see all sorts of wonderful solutions for that extra, elusive room. Designs
where the windows are positioned for your convenience and comfort. Designs that
accommodate all the niches and quirks of your particular abode. Irresistible property
candy. In my next life.
Meanwhile I
sit with my laptop on my knees and dream of the day all my papers and bills
will be out of the living room and my nomadic computer will have a designated
place to call home.