Designing a Study

[MissRibena]

Hi everyone

I'm just looking for inspiration/ideas and recommendations for a chippy if I'm lucky. I have a 13 x 13 ft (sorry metric-lovers!) room with a fireplace to use as my study and I'm having difficulty finding ideas on kitting it out with shelves, desks, cupboards etc. in keeping with my old house.

Most of the pictures of studies that I see are either designed on a space-saving-under-the-stairs kind of way or they are ultra-modern. I want my one to be a cross between a living room with no telly and a library but with space to study (with lots of desk space) and work on my PC as well as use my sewing machine.

Any of the built-in furniture people I've spoken to are into kitchens and don't have experience of what I'm looking for so it looks like I'm going to have to completely design it myself and then try and find a proper carpenter to do it for me.

Has anyone ever done something like this? Where do I start? I'm afraid it'll either end up a total haymes or that I'll get scared off doing anything at all.

Rebecca

 

[Valhalla]

Hello,

I'm in the process of re-designing some rooms in my own house and I love getting blank pieces of paper and drawing different designs etc. I think the drawing bits are the easy and you should really decide what materials you will want to use.

For example, do you want the room to look like an old style study with rich wood shelving and desks etc, or would you prefer modern looking wood? Is it more important that everthing fits well and is built into specific spaces? Its these descisions that will dictate the price of materials and of course the price of labour. Going for high quaility wood would require the use of a quailified carpenter, but standard sheeting could be installed by a good handyman.

 

[Vanilla]

We designed our study around a picture in a magazine that I saw and fell in love with. I gave the picture to the carpenter working on the house, and said, thats what I want! Needless to say, it caused a great laugh and everytime I went near the site there was a great cheer of 'any magazines today, love?' and Mr.V was asked to keep me away from the magazines...


Wish I could remember the name of the actress in the article ( it was an 'at home interview' in In Style). But it was a gorgeous room. Along one wall were two bookcases at either end and in the middle a built in bench with piles of comfy cushions. They were actually painted cream ( i.e. the bookcases and bench) and a mirror hung on the space behind the bench. The room had high ceilings and on top of each bookcase was a simple mould, but it was lovely. You could imagine the two bookcases at either side of a large window too with a window seat in between. In the middle of the room were two comfy couches facing each other and a coffee table in between with a gorgeous rug and facing the bookcases was a writing desk.

In our study, we put shelving along two walls, but had no space for more. If we had had more room I might have gone for bookcases on three walls- we compromised and had doors on the bottom half of the cases, and shelving on the top. One of the remaining two walls is where I intend to hang loads of family photos in various types of frames when I get time. ( for good value in photo frames btw check out TK Maxx).

I envy you being at the design stage- may have to build another house at some stage...