Yesterday I finally decided that I needed some outside professional help. I decided to hire an interior designer to help me with the space planning of our home. I’ve been staring at the floor plan of our house for so long that I know I’ve developed a kind of tunnel vision, which prevents me from seeing the potential possibilities that my brain won’t let me see.
I’ve been thinking and playing around with floor plan ideas for our house since at least 2015, which was two years after we bought this house. The first floor plan idea I could find on the blog was in this post from September 2015 (almost exactly nine years ago) where I proposed this layout for an addition that would include a new master bedroom, laundry room, and family room.
That was before I came up with the idea to turn the garage into my studio and before we added the carport. So I’ve been thinking about our floor plan for at least nine years, but these past few months, my mind has been racing more than ever. And when my mind is racing and won’t calm down, that’s when I know I could be making big mistakes. It’s that tunnel vision that gets me into trouble. I may think I’m considering all the possibilities, but because my mind is racing, I know I’m not thinking clearly and I’m probably overcomplicating things.
So I decided I needed an interior designer to help me with space planning and spent about 45 minutes on the internet trying to find someone to help me. The problem? I live in Waco, Texas. I think I found a total of three licensed interior designers in Waco and to be honest (and I don’t want to be mean), I wasn’t impressed by any of them.
One of them is a name you would probably know if you watched the show I mentioned in yesterday’s post. I haven’t heard from her in probably a decade, and her website hasn’t been updated in years. Another seemed to be more focused on commercial design. And the third just didn’t impress me. The rest were decorators, home staging companies, contractors, and home stores that claim to offer design services (probably not the kind of design services I’m looking for). So while I was ready to hire someone to help me, there doesn’t really seem to be anyone to hire in this area. That’s one downside to living in a small town.
So I decided to challenge you all. Many of you know our house better than any designer. You know what it looks like. You know how we use different areas. You know how rooms come together. So show me what you can do! Show me your space planning skills.
I know many of you have offered feedback in the comments sections of previous posts, but I am a very visual person, and sometimes those written comments are hard to follow, understand, and visualize. And when there are a lot of written comments with a lot of suggestions, my visual mind tends to get overwhelmed and confused. So if you want to share your ideas, I want to see them laid out on a blueprint.
This is what our floor plan looks like right now. I removed the small bathroom and sunroom since they are going to be torn down anyway. So what you see as the back wall of the master bathroom, hall bathroom, music room, and kitchen in the floor plan below is the actual original back wall of the house. It is absolutely load-bearing and any of those areas can be an exterior wall.
So if you want to show off your space planning skills, you can print out that image, draw on it, scan it, or take a photo of your ideas and then email it to me. Or you can use photo editing software to make changes online and then email it to me.
I’m really interested in your ideas. I know several of you are REALLY good at this, and I want to be able to see your ideas on a floor plan rather than trying to visualize them based on a written comment. Here are the things to keep in mind…
This is what we need:
- A master bedroom attached to the current master bathroom. I love the front corner room as a master bedroom because it is the brightest room in the house in the morning and the coolest during the day.
- A large master closet. But if the front corner room is our master bedroom, the closet CANNOT be in the bedroom. This is non-negotiable. I can’t have closets taking up space in that bedroom if that room is going to be used as our bedroom.
- A laundry room, which must have space for a water heater.
- A workout area that can accommodate at least three pieces of workout equipment (48-inch rebounder, small treadmill, and Matt’s Theracycle).
- A place for a dining table and at least four chairs, preferably expandable to eight chairs if necessary.
- A place for Matt’s recliner where he can sit and watch TV during the day. I need to be able to access one side of the recliner (it doesn’t matter which side) with Matt’s Hoyer lift to get him into the chair.
And this is what I would like to have. Although they are not requirements, I would very much like to incorporate them if possible:
- A pantry off the kitchen.
- A larger family room that seats 15 (chairs can be brought in) comfortably. Right now we use the front living room and have to move the couch to the back every week, and I’d rather not keep doing that.
- A guest bedroom.
- A full bathroom that is convenient to the guest bedroom and can be used by regular guests.
Please also note:
- We’ll need to expand the house to fit everything we need. That’s obvious, but I’d rather avoid the huge addition. Adding some space as needed is fine. Adding the equivalent of our entire first house in Oregon is not fine.
- I’m open to the kitchen staying where it is, so there’s no need to expand.
- The wall between the existing breakfast room and pantry is non-load bearing, has no electrical installation and can be completely removed without the need for an opening.
- Everything has to be accessible to Matt, which means no zig-zagging traffic patterns.
- The music room is the most used room in the house and there can’t be any furniture in the middle of the room. That’s where I transfer Matt to his wheelchair using the Hoyer lift, and that room works perfectly for that purpose as is.
- Using my studio as a training area is not an option. My studio is my studio.
- Matt doesn’t want or need a play room or area.
I think that’s all the information. Now show me what you’ve got! Let me see your space planning skills and how you would fit all of this into our current space with some extra room. If you’d like to send me your floor plan idea, my email is (email protected). I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
Addicted 2 Decorating is a space where I share my DIY and decorating experience while remodeling and decorating the 1948 home my husband Matt and I purchased in 2013. Matt has multiple sclerosis and is unable to do physical labor, so I do most of the work around the house alone. You can learn more about me here.
