Client: Sarena

Room: Living Room

Background:

In our initial discussions Sarena indicated that she would like me to design her craft room. As Sarena has a relatively new house the room was just a blank canvas with a large craft table in the middle. I was with Sarena when she purchased the table and so I was looking forward to designing the rest of the room.

Upon arrival at her house for the meeting she advised that she had changed her mind and that she thought the living room was probably the room she would be doing first.

Overview of existing room:

Layout:Medium sized living room that is part of an open plan living/kitchen/dining area. There is a large window and a large sliding glass door that leads to the back garden and garage.

Existing room

Furniture:There is a small older style TV that sits on a small black TV stand. There are some other coffee style black tables and also a small white cupboard next to the door that is used for bag and keys. There is a large modular corner lounge which fairly new. It is currently covered up while her puppies are still in training.

Cupboard for keys and bag, lamp, lounge fabric.

Power, Gas and Lighting:In the corner between the window and door there is a double powerpoint. In the other corner there is a double powerpoint and gas outlet. On the wall behind the TV there is a single power outlet and an antennae point.

Accessories: There is a lamp in the room that is fairly new and fits with the requested colours. There are also some pillows with some random colours.

Requirements:

  • Do not add too many soft furnishings or places that can gather dust as Sarena suffers from Asthma.
  • Keep somewhere for Sarena to place her keys and bag as she walks into the house.
  • Keep the lounge. There isn’t any other configuration that it can be put into so the position of the lounge will also remain the same.
  • Some of the other existing furniture can be reused if possible.
  • Purchase new TV and storage cabinet for the TV wall. Sarena likes IKEA BESTA Range. There needs to be something under the TV. These need to have solid doors. The centre one may need to have a glass door to allow remotes to work with the DVD player etc. On the left hand side the cupboard will store DVDs. These cupboards can have glass doors. The TV cabinet needs to be off the floor so that she can sweep underneath, either wall mounted or legs.
  • The TV can be wall mounted but needs to be visible from the kitchen. We discussed the need for conduits for the cables if the TV is wall mounted. Sarena is happy with a conduit on the outside of the wall rather than embedded within the wall. We also discussed the possibility of leaving the TV on the TV bench. This will be fine if the TV is high enough to clear the lounge when standing in the kitchen.
  • Sarena likes to have guests over and they sometimes sit in the living room to eat so she needs to either keep the coffee table or have an alternative solution. She doesn’t want a coffee table that sits in the room permanently as she uses the floor space for the dogs to play. This means the tables need to be able to be moved easy and stored somewhere.

Colours:

Feature wall behind the TV / Lounge colour and fabric / Accessory colour range

Budget:

Although Sarena doesn’t have a fixed budget she does want to keep the costs low. The BESTA furniture is the main cost outlay and she will be able to modify the solution to fit her budget at the time as BESTA is available in a variety of materials and colours (eg solid or glass doors and shelves).

Any trades required for electrical work, handyman tasks or painting will be done by family members and so she will not need to seek direct quotes for these.