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| This is a view of the living
room in a typical Oak Park home. The clients, a young, well-educated
professional couple and their young son, love to read. The husband
collects 20th century first editions, and the whole family uses this room
on a daily basis. The problem was that the first thing you saw when
you entered the house was the tv, flanked by small bookcases - not the
message anyone wanted to send guests. We moved the tv under the
stairs on a custom-built cabinet that stores the components and all their
DVDs, and created a proper focal point that tells a story about who they
are and what they value - an impressive bookcase that can how hold all the
first edition collection, and more. The walls were painted a soft,
golden yellow, and the trim, added at some later time, was
simplified. We kept their existing sofa, but had it recovered and
re-styled a little to make it more in keeping with the period and history
of the room and the other pieces we added. The morris chairs are
bow-arms by Hile Studio,
and the little table in between is a copy of a Limbert
piece that we have made for us. |
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| This is the entry area in the
same house. I'm not sure how it was originally configured, but the
existing problem was that there was no sense of arrival, not to mention a
clear function for this area. The bookcase only served to confuse
the issue. By adding paneling in oak,
based on the detailing of the staircase, and staining it to match the
existing woodwork, we created an entry space that was both a part of and
apart from the main living space, and looks as if it were original to the
house. The added window bench stores boots and provides a place to
stop, if only for a moment. The custom dresser holds gloves,
scarves, hats and other outerwear. Hooks have since been installed
for coats on the rails of the paneling to the left of the window. A
rug, proportional to the space, helps to delineate the "room."
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| This is another view of the
living room, showing the beautiful Prairie-style staircase that was
probably added a few years after the house, a modified Victorian, was
completed. The stair dominates the space, both visually and
actually, because the rest of the elements are sparse and small in
scale. All you want to do in this room is go upstairs. There is a consistent density
to the room now, and the furniture layout permits multiple
types of activities, from watching tv or movies to reading or
conversation. With the various elements now in balance, the
staircase does not seem to overwhelm the room as it once did. The
walls are not as stark as they were either, but have been painted a rich,
buttery yellow. |
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| These are two views of a great
window bay that was being underutilized, primarily because the bench under
the windows was too high for sitting on. All you could do was perch
on it, and so it became a structure for storing their son's toys
under. Fortunately, the master bedroom, directly above this area,
had the original window seat at the original height, so we were able to
copy the details for the new one here. A table, a pair of chairs, a
seat pad and a leaded glass chandelier complete the new spot, which they
use for puzzles, games, morning tea and watching the world go by. At
night, the fixture is clearly visible as a welcoming beacon from the
outside. |
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| The picture on the left is a
view back towards the front door, showing the paneling from the
"entry hall", and just the edge of the window bay seating
area. The room, paradoxically, now looks much larger than it first
did, because there are three distinct areas that have been created through
the placement of furniture and rugs, as opposed to one area with too much
space around it, like it was before. The picure on the right is a
closer view into the living room. I am including it because the
green velvet couch is my clients' old couch, reupholstered and redesigned
slightly to make it look like those wonderful old sofas in the downtown
men's clubs from the 1900's. All I did was take the skirt off,
change the legs, and make the seat a single bench cushion rather than
three separate cushions. The structure and shape is the same as it
was, as you can see on the left in the very first picture of this charming
house. |
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