Reading or drawing a floorplan is like learning a foreign language. In fact, we've heard about universities that used to give foreign language credit to architecture students in recognition of this special skill.
Drawing a floorplan is part of Week 2 of the Green Cure, and Stringy's right on top of it.
If you're wondering how to begin, or what to put on your floorplan, here are a few tips, starting with a little guided imagery.
• Imagine your home is suddenly shrunken down to the size of a loaf of bread. Fortunately, you happen to be outside at the time. Pick up your newly teensy house.
• Imagine that you have a large knife, with which you're going to slice your home into horizontal pieces, one for each floor. (Remember, this is just in your imagination.) If you only have one floor, you get to skip this step.
• Now imagine putting each floor of your home on a counter, so that the floor is flat on the counter.
• Pick a spot about halfway up the walls, or above the desks and tabletops in your shrunken, imaginary house.
• Grab the imaginary knife and slice in half, like you're making a layer cake. Set the top half aside.
• Look down. There's your floor plan.
Now your task is to transfer what you're looking at to paper... and to preserve some sense of scale, so that when you draw your ideal plan, you can know that everything will fit into the room.
The easiest way to do this is to measure the outside edges of your home and transfer these measurements to graph paper. (Let each square equal one foot.) Then sketch in the furniture. You'll find that with practice you'll be able to get the proportions right for everything you're drawing in the room as long as you've drawn the outline of the room correctly.
Floor plan newbies: does this method work for you? Expert floor plan drawers: what are your tricks?
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
I like to sketch the furniture on a separate piece of graph paper and then cut it out, so I can move it around without erasing.
view dancingspring's profile
I create my own "graph paper" in Excel, manipulating row height and column width to universal 4-pixel squares (which allows for 1 square to equal 1 inch). I then "outline" my floor plan onto the document using the borders tool. It takes about an hour to get a room done, but I can then print out a half-dozen copies and sketch in a variety of furniture layouts done to a perfect scale.
view Lissa's profile
I just found this great tool that lets you create graph paper of all shapes and sizes....
http://blackwhiteyellow.blogspot.com/2007/09/graph-paper-generator.html
view Jess2nola's profile
Okay, I'm no good at this.
I can't decide whether to put in a loft - in terms of time and money and light - when I'll be leaving in a year. And yet it would be SO nice to have the space to lounge in my room. I think I will say I don't want to spend any more than $250 and call it a day. Which probably means it can't be done, but - you never know.
I would love to hear more thoughts about the pros/cons of building a loft bed, as well as ideas for arranging the room if I don't. I am lost.
Thanks to everyone for your ideas - keep it coming! I feel like this blueprint room planning part is what I'm weakest at. It's hard for me to picture things ahead of time visually. I am happy about the colors I've chosen, though (see lower righthand note of my "styletray" collage pic).
view betsbillabong's profile
Where are you leaving for, in a year?
If it's possible you'll stay on in New York (but not in your current apartment), or that you'll be moving to another East Coast place where you might still face space constraints, I'd seriously consider it.
If you'll be moving to McMansionville, Suburbia or California or something, I'd only do it if I could buy someone else's pre-constructed loft on craigslist or something (with serious assurances of No Bedbugs). Or the Ikea one.
Are you crafty enough to turn a wooden loft bed into a regular bed frame later, and is that something you'd consider worthwhile?
view the opoponax's profile
Hey Opo,
Good questions. My life in some ways is a serious question mark right now. I'm an artist and composer finishing a doctorate and applying for academic jobs. I may not get one, in which case I will probably stay in NYC for the time being. However, as much as the place I live in is kind of great and insanely cheap, it's hard renting just one room in somebody else's apartment, especially post-40. I used to have my own one-bedroom cottage when I lived in California. I would love to have my own place.
If I do get a teaching job, I could be living almost anywhere... although I would never ever live in a McMansion. But in that case they would be paying my moving expenses (yay!) so I could bring it with me if I wished. I'm pretty sure I won't be living in a huge house a year from now!
So: who knows? There's someone on Craigslist selling a Fjelldal loft for $200 or best offer which is tempting. But I have to check - I think I have a queen bed which could make the whole thing too difficult.
I found this entry really inspiring, though:
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/042105/smallest-coolest-apartment-contest/apartment-18-hillarys-light-n-comfy-hangout--002605
I'd much rather have wood than metal in my apt though. And unfortunately I don't think that the loft would fit horizontally, but would rather have to jut out as my bed currently does. Maybe it's all too much trouble...
view betsbillabong's profile
Hey, there's my floor plan, cool! I took measurements of the inside of the room, but if I'd been doing the whole house, I think the outside would be easier.
Then I sketched it onto graph paper - this took a couple of tries to get the scale right :) After that I scanned it into Photoshop and drew over the top with much cleaner lines.
The online floor planners are pretty good for getting the outline of your room, but I find the furniture choices too generic. I really like dancingspring's idea of making your own separate furniture cut-outs so you can move them around.
view stringy's profile