Place Mark

It's a Plan

Here's my best effort so far at an overall plan of my apartment. It is not perfectly to scale- in fact, I may have the proportions of the kitchen wrong. I kept failing when I was  starting with one room, trying to slot the others into place.

Starting with the hall made it easier, as each room-more or less- is on one side of the hall or the other. Now I'm going to start on a detailed plan of each separate room, with all it's wall outcroppings, windows, closets, doors and built-ins at the right places, and the right sizes. Then, I think I can use this general plan here to assemble the individual rooms into an accurate layout for the whole place.

It is quite confusing, as there are lots of odd corners, and it wraps around bits of another apartment, as well as a staircase- not mine- which I haven't actually been able to find from the outer hall.. Note that the sunroom/porch thing has a low window looking, darkly, on that staircase. And then there's the big hunk of enclosed solid wall between the dining room and pantry...I wonder what's with that...maybe pipes? The apartment's entrance hall has a little glitch from which the kitchen and "maid's room" doors are entered. And the kitchen door is set at a slant! These oddities and my own sort of directional/volumetric dyslexia have made this quite a challenge for me!

Square One

Hope you had a good holiday...I had a nice one, myself.  I am sorry to have taken so long to get back. I'm actually feeling a bit shy about displaying my space in its state of not very pulled together, but unpacked.

I have distributed my belongings through the apartment, not entirely at random, but not far from it.  Nothing is very thought out- I've been primarily concerned with getting everything out of boxes, and respectable for Christmas Eve dinner and other festivities.  Which were lovely. And  I am very happy, and comfortable here,  looking forward to sorting things. In addition to getting my books and closets in a fairly coherent state. I want to suss out what needs to be done that can be done without much money, as well as what to plan for when I can get some more saved up.

What you see above in the bad flash photos (to be redone in the event the sun shines on Pittsburgh again) is my living room, hastily unpacked, pictures stacked in corners, with my paltry last minute efforts at holiday decoration on the mantle...a few pine cones, 3 children's miniature Christmas trees, and some berry branches. The  pictures are also au naturel,  I haven't plumped- or even straightened- the pillows, or anything else. The cylon action figure which came with my Gallactica XMas box set remains propped against the dictionaries.

I have hung very few pictures so far- I don't think I want as much on the walls as I've had lately- I'm enjoying the space between things a bit more these days..though I don't think I'd like anything truly spare for actual living in.I did pay special attention to hanging the picture over the mantle and over the row of cd storage thingies, and am pretty pleased with how they look in their respective places- I was missing looking at them every day, and am glad to have them up.

Among other things, I think I need 2 more substantial, but not huge  chairs to go on the right hand wall as you face the sofa. There should be some sort of table thing..or maybe that little stripey cube between them. The green chair should then be moved to the left of the coffee table (where there is more room than appears in the photo), opening up the entrance to the room from the hall. What do you think (besides "that woman has way too many books and they are messy", which I take as a given)? See the funny plugs on top of the mantle on either side?

Soon to follow- I'm working on a floor plan (I think I finally found the axis of the design in a long wall that runs through the place, Lynn...which is helping me see how the very odd layout was put together.) And a  bit with a plea for suggestions on eventually turning the worst room ( formerly the "maid's room") in the apartment into a viable second bath.

A very Happy New Year to you, and I hope you will be back to visit me here often in twenty-ten.