How can I make this room work as bedroom and study?

[Peoplecoveredinfish]

Trying to make this space work as a bedroom/study/dressing room/bathroom set up. The ideal solution is obviously to take out the massive chimney breast and combine the corridor, but that’s a lot of scary work and we will probably be here for five years. It definitely needs insulating and probably the old plaster coming off and re-plastering anyway though, so it’s not that much of a stretch unless I can find a really simple solution.

It needs to have

A double bed (not with one side against wall)
at least two metres of wardrobe space
dressing table
separate desk
arm chair or sofa
good size bookshelf
enough floor space for yoga

I’m totally up for knocking in doorways and refitting the bathroom. So I keep coming up with all sorts of creative solutions, but I think they are all as much work as taking out the damned chimney breast in the end! 🤣🤣🤣

Why do you need a double bed and a sofa? Could you manage with a sofa bed or does someone use thus as a bedroom. Are you in a flat or a house as to me it seems an odd place for a chimney breast off a corridor. I've taken two down in my house above each other, but they are messy & usually very dirty to remove and we had to ensure the chimney stack going to the roof was supported.

The chimney breast goes between the corridor and the small room, I suppose because of the configuration of the rooms below. Victorians were odd folk.

I know they are messy to remove and need support. That’s why it makes sense to
do it before we move in if I’m going to do it. And while I’m chiselling off plaster anyway, which is even messier.

This isn’t the whole house - but it’s as much as I’m dedicating to a study suite for DD16. I know we could buy something better arranged, but this is what I have and so long as the work is less than the stamp duty, it makes sense to use the space I already own in an ideal location for college and possibly university.

Put it through Chat GPT or Co Pilot and see what AI comes up with.

You can do that? That’s insane!!! (How?)

I mean how can I set the parameters? Like ‘I can move the bath because I can replumb the drainage easily, but not the toilet because of the soil stack’ and I can put a doorway through the wall, but not the chimney’ or even ‘this is a window, the bed can go in front of it but not the wardrobe’. Surely AI can’t do that, can it? 😮

Yes, you can. Upload a similar pic but with dimensions of the room and label the chimney stack. Use prompts something like this:

Arrange this room to include a double bed, sofa, a double wardrobe, bedside tables, a chest of drawers, and study area with a desk, chair, and a bookshelf. The bed must not be against the wall. The bath can be moved or replaced with a shower. The toilet needs to remain where it is. Recommend suitable IKEA furniture to ensure everything fits properly and is harmonious. Budget is £1500.

Obviously tailor it to your own needs. You can also include the furniture you already own - e.g. ‘include two Ercol bedside tables’. Once you have a first draft it ChatGPT will produce something you can either ask it to refine or it will suggest refinements for you. It won’t be perfect but it will, if you’ve done it correctly, give you something you can work with.

Do you know which if any of the walls are load baring? That will really impact how much flexibility Vs cost you have. I've had a couple of houses of this age and they can be either in this area of the house.

One simple option is to simple knock the two spaces together with an archway/steel (assuming load baring) removing/moving a door to the center. One space then becomes the bedroom, one the study area or the study becomes a sport of anti chamber for the sleeping space.

You can put things inside a chimney breast. I've done this with a bathroom sink and a built-in oven; you could certainly use it as desk space or your bookshelves. Or both, depending on number of shelves needed.

Jeez, I have a pencil and graph paper and a menopausal brain! I'm extinct! 😂

Do you mean just the room with the bed and chimney or the adjacent room as well?

This isn't what you wanted - but you can't have what you wanted, unless you are including the empty room as well? In that case, the world's your oyster!

We got a chimney taken out and it was brilliant. We are in a bungalow which helped. They started at the top and worked down, amazing how little damage they did around it. It gave us so much more space. Well worth it.

Does a teen need a double bed and a separate sofa? I was in a single through university and right up until about four months after I bought my first house. Much of that was spent with a "daybed", which is a single bed with three raised sides that can approximate to a sofa if you roll the duvet up and lay it along the long raised side.

Instead of framing the specifications as a series of solution proposals, such as "must have a double bed", frame them as functional requirements, such as "must have somewhere to sleep". If boy- or girlfriends are to stay occasionally, you frame that as "must have occasional sleeping space for sexual partner". This helps you think of unconventional ways to fulfil the functions.

If you think "must have double bed" and "must have yoga floor space", you demand a huge floor area. If you think "must have somewhere to sleep, must have place for girl- or boyfriend to visit, must be able to do yoga", that frees you to ask "is she really going to do yoga with her girl- or boyfriend over? maybe the bed can expand to take a guest and contract for normal use like Ikea Glamberget?" and "is she going to sleep and do yoga at the same time? Perhaps a double Murphy bed could work?"

Not a clue. But there's no point knocking it about unless it can be made to work in theory. I don't actually think knocking them together would help much. She's wanting a lot of furniture, arranged in a really stupid way. Because she's 17. That's OK, it's her space. Also, I end up with a ridiculously long redundant corridor, which can't be incorporated into the space....because of the bloody chimney breast.

There are two more huge bedrooms, but to add another bathroom on the existing stack means the two small ones and the two large ones have to work together with the bathrooms between. (I loathe terraces!)

@GarlicFind and @OneCyanHiker Yes, both rooms. I left the bed in to give a quick idea of scale.

@KerryPippin Thanks. I'm sure it's doable. I hate getting builders in. They're so bloody patronising and won't listen. I'm happy doing most of it, but I'm absolutely not mucking about with a chimney breast (DD has never heard of a chimney breast before, and now the whole project is known as 'the boob job')

She's wanting a lot of furniture, arranged in a really stupid way.

This is why you need her functional requirements, not her solution proposal.

@selffellatingouroborosofhate

She already has a double. I don't think she'll bother with the sofa much either. She's autistic and change is hard - some control it makes it so much easier and everyone is happier. I suspect once she sees the space, she will change her mind about the massive sofa she's picked out that she's supposedly saving for, but it's ALWAYS easier to let her find out for herself.

I THINK we have a solution. She's compromised on the en-suite (which I thought would be a dealbreaker) for closing off the corridor. Which means if I move the bathroom door, I can get away with leaving the chimney breast in. It does mean moving the bath and sink, but I can do that fairly easily and it makes sense to leave it as a family bathroom longer term.

(I know it's stupid that she has her desk in the bedroom and the wardrobes in the study bit. I know she'd have more space if she slept in the smaller room. Kids! 😂)

You can tell her that till the cows come home. It won't make the blindest bit of difference. There are loads of things she has to suck up, so where I can, I go with her vision. Even if it's stupid not mine.