Switching the Bedroom and the Home Office

photo: Eric Diesel

Readers of Urban Home Blog know that John and I typically spend Labor Day doing a large-scale home project. In 2009, this was updating the dining area and in 2010 it was the living room. We had not planned to do a project in 2011, both because with those two projects the apartment had more or less come together and because, with a potential relocation to or second home in Los Angeles, we were building our savings. But I have learned that decorating projects are never truly completed. Both by inhabiting the rooms and through exposure to design itself through professional events, retail and media, one always sees areas great and small that one would do differently, could improve upon, would refresh. So while I was happy with the design of our urban home, I was also aware of changes that I would make given the opportunity.

One such was the utilization of the rooms themselves. City apartments follow "lines," meaning that the layout of each apartment on each floor echoes that of the apartment above and below it for the height of the building, with allowances for some floors such as entry, basement and penthouse. Your apartment line affects everything from the prestige of placement for those who care about that to, as everyone cares about, cost. The layout of our line is an ell with the kitchen/dining area inhabiting the lower foot of the ell. Rooms open along the riser of the ell. Flow is very important in a dwelling. The floor plan should invite both occupant and guest to navigate instinctively. For example, in our apartment the living room is the first room one sees when entering the apartment. Framed as it is by a double-wide doorway, it welcomes one to step into it -- to settle onto the mid-century modern sofa in paprika upholstery, to pop a DVD from the shelves of them into the player, to filch a piece of candy from a golden dish.

When we first moved in, the placement of many rooms occurred naturally, but we struggled with placing the home office and the bedroom. A logical choice for the bedroom would have been at the very front of the apartment, which is both next to the bathroom and the farthest room away from the common areas. However, that room fronts the street and we were concerned about both street noise and light pollution from a nearby landmark bridge. There was a room at the back of the apartment whose placement beside the kitchen puts it at the bend of the ell but along the back wall of the building itself. This makes this room the darkest and quietest in the apartment. Though it meant guests would pass our bedroom en route from living room to kitchen and dining -- thus, I feared, disrupting flow -- we placed our bedroom there and put the home office at the front of the apartment.

photo: Eric Diesel

I never stopped wondering about the decision to place the bedroom here. While I appreciated both the quietude of the room and the quality of the light as it fed through three windows embraced by the stately branches of a maple and the protective tendrils of ivy, it was those windows along with the long, narrow dimensions of the room that made placing bedroom furniture such a challenge. Ultimately, though as a designer's challenge it held some interest, it turned out that there really was no way to design the room so that it was proportional, pleasing and, oh yeah, restful. Not to overshare, but it even made getting up during the night to take a leak into a mountaineering trek across the length of the apartment.

Meanwhile, the room we were using as an office was only slightly better suited for that role. Everything had to be designed around a room that is essentially a square, but in an office, the fundamental shape from desk to bookshelf to computer screen to books to file folders to the papers they store is a rectangle. Neither noise nor light pollution were a problem for a room devoted to working and learning, but we did learn during open-window seasons that the street is, in fact, a moderately noisy one. I learned to appreciate as a form of city music the steady hum of traffic feeding onto the city bridge less than a block away. I wrote countless columns looking out that "writer's window" -- you have often read my references to the hollyhock bush that grows just outside, to the intoxicating smoke of barbeque grills during warm weather, to the sight of skiers navigating snow banks during blizzards.

As I've written about, last summer I went and got myself some cancer (as of this writing I remain cured), and even despite the energy lost not just during that time but that nags to this day, this year I woke up one mid-summer morning and thought, "why not go ahead and switch these rooms?" Though we had done intermediary work in the bedroom, I had never been satisfied with its design. Further, the bedroom furniture was 20 years old -- among the first household purchases for a young and barely solvent couple -- and was definitely showing its age. Anyone who has been with me on my "rounds" knows that, as many design professionals do, I am in the habit of visiting home stores to see what they're showing -- and also knows that for years I've been lingering over the displays of new bedroom furniture. After confirming that our savings could withstand the assault, we decided to buy new bedroom furniture, and to switch the bedroom and the office.

Thus, a summer that began innocuously as one of picnics in the park, visits with friends and walks through the city became one of the paradox of relaxing by doing work. It turned out that switching two rooms was the largest task we've undertaken in our urban home since the move into it. For, as anyone who's just dropped their kids off at college will confirm, that's what hauling the contents of one room into another one is: a move. This project proceeded as a move does: over weekends, evenings and other days off from work, with plenty of hot baths, take-out dinners, frustrations and rewards. I documented the journey via my twitter account, dispatching routine updates I hashtagged "renovation weekend No. X" and tweeting photos of the project as it progressed. As a result of my sharing the project via this media, I got a design gig I was able to accomplish quickly and invest the proceeds from into my own decorating project, and some on-air attention from a deejay whose program kept us company for many of those working hours.

photo: Eric Diesel

In looking at those photos, it's amazing to see how much work went into this room switch, and how long ago those weeks of effort already seem, though they really were just a month or two ago. I remember the first weekend trip to pick out the furniture -- we rented a car, which Captain John bravely piloted along the BQE on a golden summer day. We chomped the ice left in our cups from our lunch stop and I fiddled with the radio to coax out some appropriate road tunes. We had agreed that if we were going to do this it was worth doing right. Accordingly, we made the commitment to obtain investment pieces, including a quality mattress as a reward for the airbed we were sleeping on while the project was underway. It was worth making a day of it to drive to a showroom and dedicate an afternoon to the decision. The old bedroom suite had been a sleek set in black and russet, a good style when first obtained and one that performed faithfully for the ensuing two decades, but for our new suite we chose larger scale, almost stout pieces in an espresso finish. The larger scale, deeper finish and chunky cut of the new pieces would be characterized by a marketer as "masculine." Perhaps they are; if so, that's appropriate for a bedroom inhabited by men.

But beyond gendering a set of furniture, the pieces anchor the room by scale and tone. Though there are obvious utilitarian functions, from a design point of view, that is what a bedroom suite should do: anchor the room, so that all of the design elements (which, by the way, include function) proceed from how those pieces inhabit that space. Remembering this when shopping for bedroom furniture will help prevent that unfortunately well-known sinking feeling of a set that looked great on the showroom floor but looks off when it's assembled and placed in the room. The sales staff should be asking you questions that indicate that they understand this -- asking for your measurements of wall, door and window, if there will be electronics to take into consideration, even about your window and linen treatments. We walked into the showroom knowing we were furnishing a square room at the front of a city apartment building. That meant we wanted pieces that had presence but an economy of it -- strong enough, if you will, to take on the sights and sounds streetside without being macho about it.

While we were in the showroom, John surprised me by suggesting we look at club furniture. It turned out that he'd always wanted a home office with a sofa in it, and he turned out to be right. Though the office already had a club chair in chocolate leather, we found a matching club sofa whose dimensions agreed with the new office. We already knew we were going to line three walls of the office with shelves, reserving the fourth for the desk, computer setup and file cabinet. Placing furniture in the middle of a room is a somewhat gutsy move; home decorators are often intimidated by it. But we lose so much when we design a room only along the walls. The club furniture looks just exactly right placed in an ell in the center of the room, lit by a mission style floor lamp that is itself an ell.  The lines and curves of the furniture and lamp reflect and reinforce each other.  Appropriately, they are attended by a table of photography, design and architecture books just right for dipping into by lamplight. And this is the vista, framed by the doorway that once framed the running board of a bed, that greets the eye as one passes through the apartment.

photo: Eric Diesel

Neither room required many touches to give it personality. The office remains the goth room, where my collection of mortuary and cemetery collectibles harmonizes nicely with John's collection of arcane lab equipment. The famous collection of haunted houses and witches still marches along one wall but, as a haunted house should, the darkness of the room invites welcome. There is room for greenery in the form of palms, plants which have a clubby feel and which, as all plants do, contribute their living energy to the surroundings. This echoes the green light of the trees and ivy just outside the window, and will give me as much inspiration as I write as that not-forgotten hollyhock did. On the walls are scientific prints and pictures of witches, stage magicians and talking boards. There is even room to realize a lifelong dream with the placement of a wine library, both book and bottle. The fundamental color scheme of the library remains black and parchment as inspired by ink and paper, but has been adjusted for its new surroundings by the inclusion of green from the plants and scarlet from the wine.

In the bedroom, most of the accessories we already had were a fine fit with the new furniture. Inspired by the intimacy a bedroom connotes, I have always used the bedroom as the primary display area for photos of friends and family. The disparity of the images -- from fragile "types" of early ancestors to parental graduation pictures, from snapshots of good times with friends to professional family portraits -- is both highlit and unified by mismatched frames all in black, and mattes handcut in the same orange paper.  These migrated easily to their new surroundings, as did the vintage dresser and boudoir lamps we use for ambient lighting. I make a photo assemblage of every musical event John and I attend, and these are arranged on the wall as an evocation of good times. We are film buffs, and once they arrive from the framer's, the remaining wall space will be devoted to posters of some of our favorite films, which will harmonize with an assemblage I made of our emotional visit to Rudolph Valentino's grave.

The new nightstands proved to be narrower than we had calculated for, but the narrower top space provided an opportunity to obtain new bedside lamps. I was sure someone could use the lamps currently in service if we added them to the pile of furniture and accessories to be donated.  I took my time with the decision regarding the new lamps -- again, every sales person from Crate and Barrel and West Elm to Mxyplzyk and Delphinium knows me by sight as someone who talks to them, often sends recommendations their way and does his share of spending while he's at it. I found gear-adjusted metal lamps at Pottery Barn, which have a steampunk quality that agrees with the vibe of the room. They look perfect topped with drum shades in a color I can best describe as red curry. This color agrees with the coffeehouse colors of espresso and cream -- enlivened by autumnal shots of pumpkin and persimmon -- that comprise the room's color scheme and is echoed in the new linens that a new bed deserves.

As for the noise, that is, in fact, an issue, but it is one we can manage. The simple purchase of a noise maker ameliorates much of the street noise, and an investment in handsome wooden blinds helps block out both street noise and street light. Due to its placement in the line, these walls are strong enough to support a tv, so once it arrives a modest set will be anchored to the wall. That will add to the quiet livability of this room, elevating it from a room just for sleeping to one that, along with its partner at the other end of the apartment, contributes to that flow of daily living that is the fundamental reason homekeeping exists: transforming structure into home. It took a lot of work, but the results were worth the effort. Though there was a period of chaos, harmony -- even serenity -- was the reward.