apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

We are using our formal dining room as the tv room. It's cozy and just off the kitchen for easy snack access. Our family room is off the kitchen on the other side of the house and we set up our dining space and a sitting/reading/game playing space in that room. We really like having the family room as a tv-free space.

We live in an 1,800 sq foot vintage Chicago apartment. We have a 20 x 20 living room with a bank of 7 windows over looking a community garden. I'm a writer and have turned this entire living room into my office. Heaven to sit all day in front of these windows.

We now use our formal dining room, 15 x 22 ft. as our living room/dining room. I love having these two rooms combined into one. One of us is lounging on the couch while the other eats at the table a few feet away. We keep our old clunker TV on a dolly in a closet and roll it into the living/dining room when we want to watch it. This room is the heart of our home. It's great.

thorndale - sounds amazing and would love to see your office! Send photos rebeccao@apartmenttherapy.com or upload some into the ATLA Flickr pool.

Our apartment has a front door that enters the big main room of the home, a space maybe 16 feet by 12 feet, with a big sliding door to the balcony (and stunning view) at the far end. At the near end, the kitchen, large and open to the main room.

We didn't want our office space right on top of the living room, and have not had a designated dining space in a long time, so we used an Expedit unit to create a room divider, and put the Expedit desk unit on the front door side of the shelving for our shared tiny office space.

The living room is on the other side, nicely apart from the office/kitchen/walkway to bedroom and bathroom doors.

My mother, who lives by herself, downsized into a small three bed/1 bath home with a small eating area off the kitchen and a living room. She enjoys entertaining and only needed one guest room, so she took the door off one of the bedrooms and made it into a formal dining room. She added some architectural details - crown molding, chair rail - and changed the closet into a little butler's pantry. It's perfect.

While the idea of adding different functions to different rooms is splendid, it's really hard to someone like me who lives in a studio that is less than 400sqft. I'd like to see more ideas for tiny spaces, as in how to make each area more defined and multi-purpose at the same time.

I'm a big fan of the kind of repurposing that you have done. As a dedicated small space dweller - I've gone from 400sf, to 300sf, to a miniscule 288sf! - repurposing or dual-purposing a room is just common sense.

In my 400sf place, I found I did more sewing than cooking, so I repurposed my kitchen as a sewing room.

In my current 288sf place, I've concluded that having a desk isn't worth the space it takes, so I'm using my dining area as desk space. Since I'm pretty much paperless and use a laptop exclusively, it no longer made sense to have a desk taking up a huge footprint when really, any flat surface would do.

chez shoes - would you mind sharing some photos from your place? I think many of us would love to see it!

we did this! we live in a two-bedroom bungalow. the finished attic is the second bedroom, and it's all one space. rather than having an adults' bedroom and a kids' bedroom, we use the attic as the bedroom for everyone, and the smaller main floor "bedroom" is now the playroom.

this works well for us, as our kids are small. they want to sleep near us at night and play near us during the day. when they're a little older, we'll bring our bed back downstairs and send their toys up!

it was hard to let go of the idea that both bedrooms *must* be used as bedrooms, but it has also been liberating. i feel like we gained space.

I did the same thing in my last apartment.........desk in the kitchen, dining table in the livingroom with huge windows and trees outside.

Not so uncommon - People do this all the time when they use a spare bedroom as an office, den or exercise room...