Bad Bones

How do you turn your house into your dream home when the interior architecture of the space is fundamentally flawed? That’s the question I’m currently mulling over. See, I bought this place because of the location, the land and the price, thinking I’d renovate into something that was more to my liking. Turns out it’s less renovator’s delight and more renovator’s source of frustration. 

The layout of the rooms has no sense of flow, which is something that’s hard to explain; you just have to experience it to understand what I mean. All my friends agree. The kicker is that the way the house is built, it’s going to be pretty difficult to knock out walls and create a new interior. That’s why I’m trying to look at the problem in a new way. How can I work with what I’ve got to create a space that flows harmoniously? Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

One area I’m focusing on is how to spatially optimise the bathroom layout design. Melbourne has strong enough designers, surely, to do something with this weirdly skinny room, and maybe even find a way to fit a bathtub into it. I’ve seen photos of similarly small spaces where this has somehow been done. Perhaps a raised platform could help, and maybe we could get a skylight in there to open it up to some natural light. 

Next after that will be the kitchen, which is the most cramped little galley style situation I’ve ever seen. It’s like, who thought it made sense to put the door there, of all places? Kitchen installations, I’m told, are the real slammer of renovations, so I have wondered if I should get onto it first – you know, get it out of the way. But then it occurred to me that the kitchen is higher stakes than the bathroom, at least in my humble opinion. If I mess it up, I’m kind of screwed for the rest of the house, because it’s the centrepiece of the action. 

Wish me luck.