Above The Garage

This client hired me to stage this room for a real estate listing, but after seeing how much potential the room held, they almost didn’t want to go through with the sale of the home. The objectives were to

  • Showcase how a new buyer could maximize space in this floor plan, with a pitched roofline - at just 3ft. off the floor - so the average adult cannot stand up along the perimeter of the room.

  • Create a useful space, so it’s not just seen as a giant storage room.

  • Decorate the walls when traditional picture hooks & nails weren’t an option.

Far left corner has a metal bed frame, with blue bedding, and moving left to right along the wall there is a surfboard, an old wooden chest, and a church pew.

The "before" panorama view of the room.

In the right corner of the room sits the church pew - with an amber color wood stain and blue dot patterned upholstered cushions - a set of golf clubs and complete black drum set.

The homeowner already owned all these unique furniture pieces, but they were just placed around the edges of the room. I gave them the focal point they deserved.

A hand drawn aerial floor plan uses scaled cut out pieces of paper to represent the furniture in the space.

The scaled floor plan shows the overhead view of the proposed new layout.

Masking tape along a cement floor marks the outline of one of the slanted walls from the room, with the outlines of big posters taped within the shape, to visually see how many posters would fit on the wall.

This trick allowed me to estimate how many record sleeves & band posters could fit on the wall, so I knew how many to thrift when I sourced them for this space.

Antique Art Deco metal bed frame with blue bedding. A white night stand table is on the left wit a pendant light suspended above. To the right is exposed wood-grain open storage for some wicker storage baskets and a blue yoga mat.

The bed frame was rotated 90° and pulled away from the corner for a more inviting look by creating space for bedside tables on both sides.

A sloped wall at the edge of the room is decorated with record sleeves, a Beatles Band Poster, a Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon album poster, a Bob Ross "Happy Accidents" poster, and A Starry Night by Van Gogh poster.

3M strips were the key to showcasing record sleeves as artwork along this downward-slanted wall. The homeowner loved this idea because there was no alternative to hang traditionally framed artwork in this space.

The owner's instruments and this one-of-a-kind rug tied together this lounge area, creating the perfect band rehearsal space in what was previously just regarded as additional storage for the main house.

The beauty shot! This showcases the final layout in its entirety - and through this image, you really get a scale for the size of this space!

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Living Room: Designing for Real Life