apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

When I was in school something like this would have resulted in a large fine for fire safety issues.

Creative idea, but why make a dorm room even smaller than it already is? If my roommate truly had been this bad, I would've just switched rooms -- plenty of people did that! :)

University of Fire Hazard! holy cr*p looking at this the only thing i can think of those horrific fires that killed the students a few years ago at (I think) Rutgers.

please if you need privacy that badly then apply for a single!

My dad did this in the bedroom that me and my sister shared when we were younger with a pocket door and everything.

Not sure if I would waste so much time/money/energy on doing it in a dorm that I'd be moving out of in a couple months though....

"Mommy my roommate keeps breathing, it bothers me, do something about it."

Maybe we should refer back to the page on odeedoh about what happens to overpraised children.

jeeez

Huh?

You're in a dorm room for something like 9 months -
- Try being an adult instead and learn to get along with different people.

It isn't merely "against the rules" it is a major fire code violation.

Getting caught by dorm administrators is hardly the concern. A surprise inspection by the fire marshall is much more risky. The marshall will be within the law to:

--evict the residents until the room is returned to compliance
--demand that the construction be torn down immediately, not necessarily by the occupants and not necessarily in a manner that preserves the materials for reuse
--impose a hefty fine which the university would be quite rightly allowed to pass on to the occupants. It varies by jurisdiction but where I live the fine would be around $2,000. That will put a huge crimp on most student's university experience.

I'm surprised and disappointed that Apartment Therapy is not only encouraging such conduct but is apparently quite clueless about basic building code laws. Surely it would be wise to have at least a few people on staff who have a basic understanding of the building profession.

This can't possibly be legal.

Why not just hang up a dividing curtain? Besides, there's already a wall essentially dividing the space most of the way, which is way more than could be said for my dorm room, which was a room with two single beds and two desks in it. Some people even had bunk beds! No one tried to wall off their roommate. I don't know, there's something a little bit "Cask of Amontillado" about this.

We weren't even allowed to hang tapestries or loft our beds... this is ridiculous!

That being said, my freshman year room was a "divided double," which was essentially exactly what they ended up with here. But it was built that way in the first place.

Well, I think it's hilarious. Go crafty students!

Wow. don't everyone get their undies in a bunch. This is college, remember?

COLLEGE, WOOOOoooh!

There is also no shortage of free time for the college freshman. If you've got the itch to do some crazy dorm remodeling, go for it!

I

I really like it. But I really like my privacy. If I would have to share a dorm room and this would be possible, I would do this. Fire code violation or no fire code Violation.

Boo to this idea. This will create more problems with your roommate than solve them, not to mention it defeats the entire purpose of living with a stranger your first year!

Yeah, yeah, breaking the rules...please don't tell me no one broke any rules in college. I think it's a brilliant solution. One I am incredibly jealous of not having for those long 10 months.

If I could have gotten away with this in my freshman year in the dorms, I think it would saved my sanity. My roommate was horrid.

i also think its hilarious... but my question is moreso how did they put this up/take this down without anyone noticing major holes in the walls??

Maybe it would be a violation of the fire code, but I lived in a dorm for 3 years, and never ever saw a fire marshal. However, if you don't want to share a room, why don't you just get a single?

I work @ a University, and this would result in heavy fines being posted to your student bill by the housing department.

The space is already pretty well divided: it's ingenious and quite fun, but not really necessary.

That said, there's a real difference between violating the fire code and breaking the rule against using tape to hang your posters. The "woooh, college, everyone breaks the rules" nonsense is pretty much horseshit.

I work @ a University, and this would result in hefty charges being posted to your student bill by housing.

people are so uptight about rules. this beats the sheet curtain system my roomates and I used. good job.

I don't think AT actually expects students to actually be doing this... it's for interests sake. I agree with Justin M., everyone unbunch their panties. We all know about the firecode and fines.

i know that sharing space upon first entering college is a real shock to alot of people, but this is a little extreme. One, from a money perspective (you're only going to be there 9 months max), an eco-perspective (you're only going to be there 9 months max), and the fire safety issues. It's not about being uptight or creative, this is a fire hazard. As a previous RA who had to check rooms when fire drills were going on, this is only one more impediment to us knowing if everyone is really out of the room in the case of an actual emergency. And it cuts down on noise? so does that mean you're 60% less likely to hear a fire alarm? I'm guessing there's still only 1 door to enter/exit the room, so there's still no real privacy if someone needs to leave their specific area. I've lived with complete strangers and good friends, and really, if you need privacy in these situations, you're just going to have go somewhere else. Period. You (or your parents) do not need to pay a huge fee (which will come, trust me) your construction fees just because you want a bit more privacy. And I also guarantee that this will not be taken down in the manner that you want it to be. It will be building maintenance, security, or your RA during one of your school breaks who has to do "room sweeps" before they leave for their holiday breaks (will be in a rush to get out of there!). I do feel bad for students in tight spaces, but it's just something you have to learn to deal with. And not to be too cheesy, but you might make some of the best friends of your life if you just take down those walls!

i spend most of my freshman year trying to get away from freshman roommate. c'mon, who's dumb joke was it to put an engineering student with an art student. I wanted to kill him in his sleep with all his paint brushes!

Isn't there only 1 door into the room anyway? To enter or leave you'd still have to interrupt the other person if you're on the side without the main door.....

Kamaraderie's comment should serve as a reminder that it's a bad idea for anyone to live in a dorm, shared or unshared.

There is no way this would be allowed.

"...it's a bad idea for anyone to live in a dorm, shared or unshared."

So are you suggesting that we tear down all the school and military dorms and replace them w/ chic little studio loft apartments? Riiiight....

I spent 5 years in the military dorms - half that time sharing a room with at least one other person...
...including sometimes people whom I despised, but you learn to deal with it - it's part of growing up.

Not a snowball's chance in he** this would have been permitted.

My freshman year, my roommate was a narcoleptic who snored--LOUDLY--and who would never wake up, even to her own alarm clock. She slept through everything, including fire alarms. She also didn't bathe enough, and the smell was telling.

I would never have considered a wall, but murder did come to mind.

I quite like this idea - not for a dorm room but for a normal living situation in a maybe oddly shaped flat or to divide a room two siblings have to share as plumeria pointed out.

I wish I would've had that when having to share a room with my sister. It may've helped cut down on the arguments going on.

I have to go with Max and others - this can not be legal. Do the occupants realize once administration finds out, they will more than likely be kicked out of the dorms while the janitorial staff gets to take hammers to this wall? AT, you suck for putting this up seriously - what next, encourage people to steal?

If you honestly can not stand your roommate, chances are you can switch out with someone else...and if you are that easily annoyed, beg your parents to pay for a single. Or maybe you should have went to a college closer to home and lived at home.

- first of all, a huge part of the 'dorm experience' is learning to live with a stranger. it's supposed to help you grow as a person. maybe it will even help you become less passive aggressive. but if conditions are really that bad, most schools will let you change rooms.
- if you are *that person* who has no interest in living with a roommate and intends to wall off their room, literally or not, either apply/pay for a single or live off campus, (and yes, this is something you should have taken into account when selecting your school). don't force this on the roommate that will get stuck with you.
- I don't think fire marshalls visit dorm rooms. I've never seen one or heard of anyone else encountering one.
- some schools would impose hefty fines, but at others you may be able to get away with this. at our neighbor school (full of engineering students) students regularly built custom loft beds and made other extreme modifications to their rooms without penalty. as long as those cinder block walls were still standing at the end of the year, it was fine. they might have had to hide/change a few things over winter break for dorm sweeps (mostly contraband lighting and bongs) but it was pretty much a live and let live policy there.

I guess you can't really blame kids who were raised by indulgent parents in McMansions for not being able to handle roommates. They don't know how to share and compromise and so building walls in dorm rooms seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

The addition to our house will give us some space that we are considering either 1) enlarging our children's shared room or 2) giving them a playroom to share. After asking friends and family for their ideas, it was suggested we add a bath and give the kids their own bed/bath suites so they wouldn't have to share. That this was suggested as an improvement was awful to us! Cutting up the space even smaller than it is and giving my children less opportunities to share our home spaces seems very short sighted! If we did (which we ARE NOT) this, I fear we'd be raising future college freshmen who will demand the project above.

As for college dorms, they could easily create two small singles in the same space as a double. And sound-dampen the walls.

Or, replace the concept of dorms with student apartments -- small affordable studios. The price of dorms rooms is way inflated, compared to a normal rental market. (So, yes, bepsf, exactly that, tho not much chic, but definitely little.)

To all those "it'll help you grow as a person" commenters: I fell seriously ill the one year I shared a dorm room in college due to chronic sleep deprivation (due to a roommate who studied late into the night).

And nightly 3-am fire drills (because people pull the alarms) is not a problem that getting a single room can solve.

Dorm prices aren't inflated everywhere, fuzzyegg. In expensive areas they can be a true bargain.

In college, my first roommate was a drug dealer. Fun times. I eventually moved in with a new roommate, the next year I got my own room (at my expense, not my parents) and never had a roommate again.

fuzzy egg - Almost anywhere, it's really much cheaper for someone to rent an apartment with a friend or two than live in the dorm. A lot of people around where I live do do this because of how expensive dorms have gotten - it's completely ridiculous.

dtremit - Near where I live, for a dorm you'd be spending approx six thousand for 9 months in a dorm (about 665 a month or so). Granted that tends to count an average food plan - but go just off campus and you can rent a decent apartment with your best friend (two bedroom at that) and spend less than $300 apiece. Then there is no moving around if you don't want to - you can decorate for a four year plan instead of 9 months.

I regret putting up a king sized blanket to visually block out my 3 roommates (we shared one giant bedroom with two bunk beds.

Later I realized I looked like a nutcase.

Ha. I think it's hilarious. What college student would actually take the time to do this? I want to shake that person's hand. I hated sharing a room and considered it a punishment inflicted on us simply to see what would happen, but as i recall in college I was broke, unable to get school power tools into my dorm room, and certainly wasn't about to spend that much time on something that wasn't a party or a class. RQinGeorgia is right, roommate murder is simply a cheaper and less infrastructure intensive option. I did use our window as a door a lot of the time though, and that was definitely not allowed.

My nerd buddies did stuff like this though- I recall a wall made of some 10 or so thrifted tvs which all played simultaneously, a drinks robot, and in later years the recycled campus projector which had an oddly purplish color, but did make for a puke inducing 9 foot screen in a 12 foot long room (we sat about 4 feet back from the screen. I almost did throw up once in a movie with an action sequence). There should be an AT post compiling the crazy things groups of people have done to their dorms. If only to see which flatmates truly do have the largest collection of shot glasses.

People seriously. Calm down. The longest this would have lasted at my school was till the christmas break inspection. To truly not get caught you'd have to use cinder blocks and match the wall color. Mwhaha.

Nice! People are SO uptight.

And some kids suffer from an amazing sense of entitlement.

Amen slowdown.

A college roommate can become a life long friend or a never-ending one semester curse, that said I have experienced both, so when diplomacy fails build a wall.

To avoid the dreaded 'fire marshal' inspection (more likely the RA to be feared than anyone else), I solved this dilemma by making a 'wall' of tracked pivot-able framed screens that provided privacy and some degree of acoustic filtering.

If you lack the know-how to do such, visit your school's theater department, specifically the scene shop, should be no problem finding someone to design, construct and install this poor man's Hadrian's Wall.

And remember, never, ever room with a best friend from high school, way too much to be learned about them while living in such close quarters.