Photo: Jordan and Barry aka The Brownstone Boys revealing the carriage house, as seen on In With The Old, Season 2.
It’s more important now than ever to have flexible spaces in our homes. That guest bedroom might need to double as an office. Maybe you don’t have a dedicated space for dining but still need a place to eat. Or maybe you host guests occasionally but don’t need a separate bedroom that is unused the rest of the time. This is true for most people no matter how much space you have.
Multi-functional spaces and transforming furniture are one of the biggest and necessary trends we see taking over in 2023.
This past year, we worked on our largest project to date. A unique building that started it’s life in the late 1800’s as a carriage house. Once horses no longer trotted the streets of Brooklyn it was turned into a garage and then a junk shop. We transformed it into a modern day carriage house home for a family of 4. It was the largest undertaking we have worked on to date and was an absolute dream to help this family transform this historical structure. When we initially met Heather & Rene (the homeowners) and we began discussing their needs for the space we discovered that even though the house would be big for Brooklyn standards with 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, one common conversation kept recurring. They needed to make the most of the space. They are hosts. They have a very large family located throughout the states (including Puerto Rico!) and as they built their forever home they needed space to host large groups of family that doubled as space the family of 4 could use when they weren’t hosting. They didn’t need a 4th bedroom 365 days out of the year, but they wanted space for working, watching TV, and spending time together as a family. We wanted to make sure they could squeeze it all in.
The solution was designing rooms that were completely flexible and using furniture that transforms for multiple uses. During the holidays their home turns into a 6 bedroom house. When not hosting they have 3-bedrooms, all they need for a family of 4, with a family room perfect for snuggling in to watch TV and a family game room with kitchenette and access to roof terraces. How did we do it? By using the perfect pieces of transforming furniture from Resource Furniture.
The family TV room with a full bathroom is on the first floor of the house where the living room and kitchen are as well. Just past the interior courtyard the much of the house is built around there is a door that is usually left open. On any given day if you walk into this room the first thing you will see is a comfortable and beautiful couch and shelving unit. It looks built into the wall it sits on. You might be invited to plop down on the couch and pillows and pull the throw up over your legs to watch TV in this cozy space. What you might not realize is that this entire unit transforms into a comfortable queen bed complete with a REAL mattress (not a foldable one that comes out of a couch). Hidden behind the couch in the shelving unit is a wall bed that very easily pulls down to become a comfortable place to rest for the night. It’s the Swing from Resource Furniture. One of our favorite features is the way everything can remain in place on the shelf as it lowers to the ground. Swing is a vertically-opening wall bed with a queen bed and a nine-foot sofa with retractable chaise. It provides the choice of an L-shaped or straight sofa configuration. The Swing Chaise is easy to open and operate and integrates seamlessly with Resource Furniture’s shelving and closet systems.
In this home we have another completely transforming space for you! On the top floor 2 levels up from the ground floor, past the floor of 3 family bedrooms, is a family game room flanked by roof terraces on both sides. It has a kitchenette, a full bathroom, and foosball table…a paradise! Once you come up the stairs and take in the beautiful light flowing in from 2 sides, the next thing you might notice is a wall of shelves that look built-in. On them are displayed family photos, books, items collected from travels, and some life with some plants. Next is one of our favorite things to show people in this entire house. Hidden on the right side of the shelves is a small lever. If you slide it down and pull gently the entire book shelves begins to rotate around. As you continue to spin the shelves around everything just remains in place. Nothing has to be removed from them making the transformation very fast and easy. Eventually the shelves have completely rotated so that you no longer see them or any of their contents. Instead there is a queen mattress that is tucked away and ready to be pulled down into place in a simple tug with one hand. Once the bed is pulled down into place 2 night stands can slide out from under the mattress. In about 30 seconds our beautiful shelves full of family photos and books is a comfortable and inviting bed you would have never known was hiding inside of it. This is the LGM from Resource Furniture.
LGM is a rotating wall bed with a queen-size bed, pull-out nightstands, and a full-height bookshelf system. It’s available with optional cabinet doors for closed storage, or an optional five-foot fold-down desk which our unit does have. So with this piece of furniture this room can have 3 uses. Primary it’s used a family game room with an attractive shelving unit. It’s second most frequent use is as a home office by flipping up the desk built into the LGM. Finally on the occasion they are hosting a large group it becomes a full guest suite with a kitchenette and full bathroom. We envy any guest that get to stay in this space with such a comfortable bed and 2 roof terraces!
We are still struck when we enter these rooms set up as family spaces that they can also be bedrooms and we are equally as struck when we enter them set up as bedrooms that it can be family spaces. That’s the secret to making a successful multi-functional space. Designing it in a way that it feels fully committed to the use you currently need for it and then again when it transforms. You don’t want your family space to look like it might also be a bedroom and vice versa. Resource Furniture does a beautiful job of that. We also appreciate that they spend as much time making their furniture beautiful as they do making it functional. So you aren’t sacrificing design for the ability to make the furniture transform.
We talked about 2 spaces that we made multi-functional with Resource Furniture but the possibilities are endless. We had an absolute blast visiting one of their showrooms seeing all of the amazing flexible pieces of furniture. Our minds were racing with ideas for all kinds of spaces big and small. We pictured a small studio that can be a bedroom, a living room, a dining room, and an office all using these amazing pieces of beautifully designed furniture. Multi-functional spaces and transforming furniture are one of the biggest and necessary trends we see taking over in 2023.
Reposted from The Brownstone Boys Blog - View the original blog here!
