How Best to Set Up a Furniture Rearrangement Question?

June 11, 2008 2:08 PM

How can I best set up a question regarding furniture rearrangement (in terms of spatially rearranging things, with measurements) on the Internet, and is Ask Mefi the best source or are there other communities that would be better? Are there Flash tools that let you post furniture floorplans and let others come and rearrange things? Alternatively, for advice simply on arrangement of furniture, how much might a professional's advice be, and would an interior decorator be the profession to turn to? (Do they still call themselves interior decorators? It seems a '70s term.)

I am going to be living in a small studio for a while to come now. It is a great landlord and a pleasant building. I have no use for a one-bedroom and also would prefer to reserve funds (funds that would then go for increased rent) for other quite important targets at the moment, not to mention I don't have people who could help me move at the moment.

The problem with the studio is space and outlets, however: I have only two outlets in the main living area, limiting where certain things can be placed (computer, TV/DVD/cable, etc.), and electricians have advised that new outlets can't be added without major renovation.

I think I've done the best for what I've got, but it does need fixing. And recently I realized I have two furniture-space crises coming down the pike: (i) I've been sleeping on a twin air mattress for a while. I plan to replace that with a "full" bed, but have no idea how that might be introduced to the space without seriously getting in the way. And (ii) my bookshelves are overflowing and another one needs to be added, but there's utterly nowhere to put it. (I had considered a futon, but I think that after a certain age, it says that something's a little weird about you if you're still on a futon. Or is that just an idea I picked up from "The Office"? Dunno.)

I'd like to turn to hiveminds for advice -- either Ask Mefi's hivemind or that of a "furniture rearrangement" community -- but I frankly don't know how to appropriately post the problem in a manner that people can give effective answers, given that it involves accurate measurement and rearrangement of things.

I already have all the measurements done, and have set up a little cardstock model with rearrangable furniture to try my own hand at moving things around. Is there a website -- probably something involving Flash -- where you can set up a sort of bird's-eye view of your apartment and then Joe Schmoe come in off the street and rearrange the things inside?

Alternatively, how much would it zing me, financially, to get a professional to walk in and say, "If you put this there, put this there, put this there, and replace this with this, your problems should be solved"? (I live in Chicago.)

posted by WCityMike to home & garden (12 comments total)

You could try throwing together a rough model of the logistics on SketchUp.
posted by mattbucher at 2:49 PM on June 11, 2008

Floorplanner.com does what you need.
posted by judith at 2:51 PM on June 11, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Any time I want to rearrange my furniture or move, I go the dorkalicious route and draw the room on graph paper, measure my furniture and graph and cut out the pieces and rearrange to my heart's content. It has worked quite well with 3 moves and 1 rearrangement so far!
posted by odi.et.amo at 3:03 PM on June 11, 2008

odi.et.amo, I've actually done just that (see the bit about cardstock?). But I'm not really happy with anything I've produced — thus trying to figure out how to bring the hivemind into it.

Judith, that looks extremely promising.
posted by WCityMike at 3:20 PM on June 11, 2008

FWIW, I think they're called "interior designers" now, maybe because architects (like my dad) always used to call them interior DESecrators. :/
posted by GardenGal at 8:02 PM on June 11, 2008

Ooh ooh let me try! I like this game!! Do you have a couple of pics of what we're working with?
posted by mu~ha~ha~ha~har at 3:08 AM on June 12, 2008

> Ooh ooh let me try! I like this game!! Do you have a couple of pics of what we're working with?

Not yet. I do plan to ask that as a separate question, but this was more a meta-setup for that next question, asking how I might best present it. I'll transfer my existing floorplan over to SketchUp or that site and then post it along with my question. :)
posted by WCityMike at 4:02 AM on June 12, 2008

When you're working in sketchup, it will make you think in three dimensions, which is great because there's often a lot of free "air space" that isn't evident using the plan view. Maximize your use of the upper square footage of your studio and you may find something that works. Build up when you cannot build out.
posted by mightshould at 6:48 AM on June 12, 2008

Apartment Therapy takes questions like this. They have experts (the people who run the site) and also open it up to the commenters, who spend a LOT of time thinking about things like this. Try asking there.
posted by CiaoMela at 10:43 AM on June 12, 2008

:) But they are entirely connected. (I'm not trying to just jump to the fun bit!) Like how high is your ceiling? Where are the windows and how does the light come in...? And how big are your books?
Hang on. I am jumping to the fun bit. tsk! I do that to my brother - He needs the plan so he can see it precisely and I need the plan so I can show him precisely what I see. Sorry, I got all excited and skimmed. I knew exactly what you were talking about but missed the point entirely! *sigh* If something useful comes to me... otherwise, see you in two weeks then.
posted by mu~ha~ha~ha~har at 1:47 PM on June 12, 2008

Hey, guys, it's up.
posted by WCityMike at 10:29 AM on June 19, 2008

Thanks to the originator(s) of the two legit ideas posted. Looks like this concept is crashing and burning, not only because of the deletion but also because the site only allows five designs, and we've got enough pranksters that empty slots are filling up with hardy-har-har stuff. Ah well. My thanks to everyone who did anything well-meant.
posted by WCityMike at 11:48 AM on June 19, 2008