Splitting One Bedroom Into Two
I’d love some advice about splitting one bedroom into two. I’m considering apartments (like the one pictured) with one bedroom that could potentially become two if necessary. In the bedroom on the right, I could put a wall up in the middle to create two small bedrooms, and create a doorway to the second bedroom…
I’d love some advice about splitting one bedroom into two. I’m considering apartments (like the one pictured) with one bedroom that could potentially become two if necessary. In the bedroom on the right, I could put a wall up in the middle to create two small bedrooms, and create a doorway to the second bedroom from the living room. Two major concerns:
– It’s in a pre-war building, and walls are plaster. How difficult / costly would it be to cut out some of the wall to create the second bedroom door?
– Radiators are both near the window in the bedroom. So if I put a wall up across the room, it would cut off heat to the other room. I imagine this would affect how the room is categorized (can’t be considered a legal bedroom without direct heat source?). But I guess it would be ok with me as long as the room were warm enough. Seems like these pre-war buildings are always too hot even. But if it’s not warm enough, I’d imagine creating another heat source inside the room would be very difficult and/or costly. Maybe impossible. Thoughts? It’s a co-op, so it’s not like it would be my whole property to rip apart and install new heating elements.
Not to sound callous, but it does make more sense to find another apartment that has the requisite number of rooms and room layout you want.
Why? Because I believe that however nicely you were to do the reno, future buyers (like me) would always see this apartment as an unfortunately cut up one-bedroom – and move on.
Thus, you will spend money on the renovation to, in my opinion, lower the value of your apartment. Yes, two-bedrooms command more, but not, I don’t believe, when they look like a badly cup up one-bedroom, with two inadequate size bedroooms.
If you really must live here, I’d use a temporary wall, and live with the access through the other room problem.
get a real 2 bedroom, why make 2 small bedrooms.
….or look in a neighborhood where you can actually afford an honest 2 bedroom, or even 1 bed + office (aka kids room)
just a thought!
What I have seen done and what I think is the best bet is not to subdivide the bedroom, but rather the living room.
What you do is you put up a temporary and partial partition at the end of the living room. The partition does not go all the way up to the ceiling. The part with the windows is used as a bedroom, and the living room is used as a living room.
I have seen grandmothers living in a room like this, while the parents and children took the regular bedrooms. The living room still gets plenty of use during the evening, when you don’t get light from the windows anyway, so it hardly matters.
Alternatively, if you are looking for space for a child, I would give the child the bedroom while the parents take the living room. I would put a double door that can swing open during the day and lock at night onto the living room. I would invest in a very expensive and beautifully designed sofa-bed from a place such as Roche Bobois. I saw this done in an apartment in Switzerland, and it was so lovely you would never know the parents were using the living room as a bedroom at night, and everyone was very comfortable.
It appears that there is a window in the lower right hand corner so as long as it meets the requried light and ventilation and min. size it would be doable.
Nice layout. My thoughts: For whom is the second bedroom intended? If it’s for a future/existing child, perhaps you could get away with just a temporary wall across the middle of the existing bedroom, with French doors between the two. This would allow light, heat and air to better circulate between the two rooms (although it does look to me that both would have windows in any case – I think there’s one on the side by one of the closets).
Upside: MUCH cheaper than your proposal with NO structural work (temporary walls are held up by pressure points so no nails go into the existing walls) meaning NO board approval required for construction (adding a second bedroom may be another story, but since it’s only temporary much less likely to be an issue – depending on the occupant – if it’s to get a roommate that might be a different story). Also completely reversible – removed in a day with no traces left.
Downside: Entry to one bedroom is through the other; no closets in one bedroom (but this last point isn’t different from your original idea).
See 1Wall2Rooms.com for more temporary wall info.
Good luck!
I believe the bedrooms would be legal size (more than 80 s.f., min. dim. of 8′ in any direction).
Good points are raised about fitting a queen sized bed in…but you could install a pocket door to create more clearance.
It looks like there would be windows in both rooms, which is good, but you have to make sure they’re big enough to meet code. (each room need glazed areas of windows to equal at least 10% of the room size, and for fresh air, you need the operable portion of the windows to equal 5% of the room area).
Even if you meet the light/air provisions, you also have to make sure that all the windows are legal. Basically they have to be 30′ from your property line or from another portion of your building. From your plan I’d guess that the double windows in the BR/LR face onto the street, so they would be legal. But what about the single window on the side of the plan? If that one’s not legal, then you can’t get needed light/air, and you can’t make a legal bedroom.
You used to be able to create a home office – which didn’t need legal light/air, but DOB doesn’t allow those anymore. But you could create a storage room. A storage room doesn’t need light/air, but has to be less than 80 s.f.
It’s possible, not costly, but also not legal. Having said that, I know plenty of people who do that to large one bedrooms and junior fours. If the co-op is anything like my own, you’ll have plenty of heat in the other room without the radiator being in it.
best to look to do this with a bedrm where there are windows on 2 sides so there’ll be windows in both bedrms.