loft style living room ideas
(gentle jazz music) - i've known donniesince i was 15 years old. we went to high school together. we went from a long-distance relationship to 500 square feet. long distance relationships prepare you to be able to work through many issues. and so one of those issues that can arise living in a small space,
is that there isn't much separate space. so when people say well you could just goto your separate spaces, the only separate space is the bathroom! - when i first bought the place, i thought it was justgonna be my bachelor pad. i had ikea furniture, i had agigantic entertainment system, all the things that abachelor could really want. but when nicole movedup and we go married,
it ended up evolving. - well we decided thatwe that we wanted to be able to stay in this space as long as humanlypossible for two people. and something needed to happen so that the space was more functional. and we needed some sort of division to make it feel like wehad more than one space, and i could feel like i was doing my thing
while he's doing his thing. and what we settled on was this loft where we have our bed up above, and just having the bedoff of the main floor, already gives us so much morespace than we had before. - design took a little bit of time and fabrication took a little bit of time because everything was custom hand-made. we took the standard system,
which is basically stud wall construction and we replaced these wood members with these huge concrete panels. and the spacing of our concrete panels then became storage space,closet space, work spaces. and then we locked everything together with a platform sleeping on top, which structurally madethe whole loft sound. - i love the top of the loft
because i like to workon my bed, i always have, and so i can go up to the topand its a really nice space that's above everythingand i can work up there. my favorite part about theloft is the custom ladder. one of our dreams was always to have arolling library ladder, we just didn't know how we would get it. - we found a guy who works outof a space called techshop, here in san francisco.
he's a local craftsman andhe custom built a solution just particularly for thisloft, and it turned out amazing. we always dreamed of havingmore people come and visit us and the murphy bed helpedsolve that problem. - [nicole] traditionalmurphy beds are a lot thicker and so they would haveeaten up a lot of the space that we have under the loft. but we have these amazing architects who custom built a murphy bedthat would be a lower profile
so that wouldn't eat up thespace underneath the loft. and when it's tuckedaway it's a whiteboard, which is really great for our space because it's right nextto donnie's standing desk, so he'll draw out his ideas for his apps, but i also use it for shoppinglists and packing lists. what i love about this standing desk is it puts him right in the corner where he's out of the way
and he can put on his headsetsand rock out late at night. when i want to go to bed up top, i don't even know thathe's down there working. - the closets for me, are huge. i love personal organization and i love closet systemsfrom the container store, the elfa shelving systems. we measured and wegained a ton of storage. almost, in a way, it feelslike a walk-in closet to me.
it's definitely the biggestcloset that i've ever had, so i'm really happy with it. - i decided i would givehim that closet in the loft. but that's 'cause i've gotall these closets back here, so my closet's still bigger. throughout the loft thereare spaces above and below, where we've put indifferent cubbies and boxes that pull out of varying sizes. both of us, at times,work out of our home,
so it's really important for us to be able to have places to put papers and all sorts of business stuff. - it forces us to organize and categorize. so that's probably been oneof the coolest side effects with the cubby holes and theboxes that we keep in there. when this place was a bachelor pad, i never had really muchspace to entertain anybody. so the addition of the diningnook has been really cool.
- they built this really greatbench into the loft design and then we have a dining table that pulls out from a side console and folds into thisreally great dining room. we could probably geteight people at that table because it has multiple sections. it's also a second desk andit tucks away to the side when we don't want to have dinner. because we have a lot of windows,
there isn't a lot ofwall space in our unit. and the wall that we had our tv on before, got taken up by the loft. - so what we have now is an84 inch projection screen tv that pulls down from the ceiling and when it's tucked away, youbarely even know its there. i love it because we can watch it from down in our recliner chairs, perched up on top of theloft, its a dream come true.
what i think the loft hasdone for our relationship is actually just made us closer. that's been one of the biggest blessings. - the best part is really to see the clients actually using the space. when they actually stand at the desk or when they climb upthere and sit and watch tv, we're happy with the way it turned out. - [nicole] this loft was really our way
to extend the life of this unit for us. i would say having thisloft changed our life. - [donnie] it took aone-dimensional bachelor space and made it amulti-dimensional family space. - what i imagine will happen is that we'll have ourfirst child in this space and we'll stay hereuntil the kid is walking. and that's one of the reasonswe have the murphy bed, because when i'm nine months pregnant,
i doubt i'm gonna climb up that ladder.