Huge furniture in a small room - will it work?

One of the great things about blogging is that I get to show you how our furniture works in real homes... whether it's a big French-country style home or a modest bungalow or a tiny condo with a small living room... like this one. 

Me meeting my customers - a fun part of the job.

The homeowners had just moved into their new condo, another unit at 55 South Market Street in downtown Asheville. As I've mentioned before, these are small homes intended as a "foot on the ground." You don't need much square footage because you do most of your living in the restaurants and gathering places downtown. And of course, there's a shared lounge and patio.

But there are drawbacks to the small space. There's not much storage, for one thing. And for another thing, there's not as much room for furniture. My clients' beloved leather sofa really dominates the living room.

Their goal was to create a custom entertainment center that would bring more storage and functionality to the room, while balancing out the large sofa. They asked us to incorporate bookshelves, an electric fireplace, media cabinets and a 55" flat screen. We also had to work around an existing light switch and thermostat.

It was quite a lot to fit on one wall, but our designer came through. It helped that the customers requested a very simple design, with a straight countertop instead of a traditional fireplace mantel.

She included the existing furniture in the model, so we could see that the new custom cabinet would offset the sofa beautifully. The unit is nine feet long, but it's balanced by the doors and the couch, so it looks proportionate to the room.

You can get a better idea of the scale of the unit with this process photo in my workshop... it takes up my whole assembly wall. This is what sets custom-made furniture apart from the stuff they sell on Amazon... we can fit the furniture exactly to the room. I think that's what makes this big unit work so well in the small space.

By the way, you can see that we ordered the electric fireplace right in the beginning so I could build the cabinet around it and make sure it would fit perfectly.

And in the spirit of showing how things look in real life, we were pleasantly surprised by the electric fireplace.

I was a little worried when they sent me the link to the unit they chose... here's an animated picture from the manufacturer.

When we turned it on, it was set to the orange-and-blue flames and my first reaction was, "Whoah! Cheesy!"

However once it was turned down and put on the orange setting, it looked very pleasant and much more realistic. (The blue setting was nice, too.)

The design of this media center was deceptively simple, but when I put it all together and stepped back, I really liked it. The nice thing about simple designs like this is that they serve as a neutral backdrop to however you want to style it.

If you've got a small or awkward space, we can work with you to design a solution that fits your home perfectly. Give us a call to get started... and hurry! The daffodils are blooming, springtime is here, the phone is starting to ring, and our schedule is filling up fast.

Call or email now