Decisions, decisions, decisions, and lots of floorplan drawings.
Before the renovations can start I want at the basic ideas of what we are going to do to be finalized. Since this is pretty much a gut renovation in parts of the house there are just so many decisions and so many options, it makes your head literally spin sometimes. And when you are doing it for yourself and not for a client, it can spin out of control.
This week the tricky decision is do we add another study/small guest bedroom in the living room? Or leave it to be one big open hotel lobby type area? And even trickier, to connect the planned open kitchen/dining area with the TV room…do we remove the pretty old wine cellar that can be a bar, or the existing fireplace?
So I’ve been doing a lot of this…
…and my contractor Javier has been doing lot of this.
Measuring and taking notes. And discussing ideas.
I finally decided to wait until the hallways by the living room come down so I can see the big open space in real life, before making the decision about a den/study addition. So that leaves me with the tricky TV room decision.
To create that open modern California lifestyle I want, the opening needs to widen from the kitchen into the TV room.
Right now its connected by a narrow door. But that means I either have to remove this pretty old wine cellar from the dining/kitchen area…
…or the fireplace in the TV room.
The wine cellar eats up 6 feet of space in the corner and we don’t have a wine collection. But it’s pretty and could be turned in to a double bar that serves the TV room and dining. Definitely a fun feature!
I had made plans to remove fireplace, since it was not centered in the room, and if it stayed the TV would go above it so is was not ideal. But the last two days here in LA we finally have had lots of rain and a fireplace suddenly feels so cozy.
Aaaarrgh….
Then I started looking at these double sided fireplaces and that would then give us a fireplace in the kitchen area too.
We would have a wall dividing as well, but could be cozy with a double sided fireplace. I’ve never had installed one before.
Have you?
Could be really pretty with some kind of white tile fireplace in the kitchen.
Here is another pretty double sided fireplace.
And here is a modern one.
Could work well with this inspiration picture for the TV room.
But then the bar idea is fun…
There is something festive about bars.
And by removing the fireplace it would allow us to do built ins on the opposing wall for TV, since we wouldn’t have to work a fireplace in to seating plan.
Aaaarrgh… again.
But it’s fun. Just need a few days where I don’t need to do anything else but work on this. But I know it will more likely be some late nights.
What would you keep?
Fire place or wine cellar?
