Owners of small Russian apartments are allmore often think about expanding the usable area due to . Indeed, such a technique will not only make the room more spacious and comfortable, but will also transform the appearance of the entire house, allowing you to implement the most daring design ideas.
A living room combined with a kitchen will help you save moneyspace in the apartment. Usually, designers are invited to implement this task. People simply do not know how to combine the kitchen with the hallway or living room correctly. But you can do the redevelopment yourself. In this case, special knowledge and skills are not required. But a lot of effort and time will be needed.
When is it necessary to redevelop
Combining 2 or more zones in one room is justified in the following cases:
The living room is combined with the kitchen if the apartment is planned to host guests frequently.
It is not uncommon to find this in Russian apartmentsa kitchen whose useful area does not exceed 7 m2. Naturally, after installing all the necessary furniture and equipment, there is very little space left in the room. Considering that the kitchen is not only used for cooking, but also for eating, spending leisure time, and meeting guests, this is clearly not enough. After redevelopment, you can get a room of up to 20 m2. A kitchen combined with a living room is appropriate in an apartment belonging to young people. For example, if the owners of the house are newlyweds. Frequent visits by guests, parties, and celebrations require a simple room. By combining the kitchen with the adjacent room, you can provide a place for dancing and additional sleeping places.
It is necessary to combine roomsget permission. In a small private house, additional walls only get in the way. In this case, you can combine not only the dining room and kitchen, but also add a veranda. This option is more suitable for a summer cottage. But the desire to combine several rooms can be dictated by fashion or inspired by publications dedicated to interior design. In this case, it is worth thinking and soberly assessing your capabilities. Not every apartment can be redeveloped, since it is necessary to completely or partially dismantle the walls. Do not forget that you need to get permission from the regulatory authorities to combine rooms. Return to the table of contents</a>
Advantages and disadvantages of the association
A kitchen combined with a living room, in addition to the obvious advantages, also has additional benefits. These include:
By combining the two rooms, light will come from several windows, which will provide good illumination of the entire space.
But when combining the dining room and kitchen, one should not forget about the disadvantages.
If you have decided that combining two rooms will do you more good than harm, then you should start with planning your future kitchen-studio. Return to contents</a>
Planning future work
Layout of combined premises.It is worth starting the renovation with drawing up . To do this, you will need a diagram of your apartment indicating the exact footage (you can get it from the BTI). As a rule, such a document is accompanied by a ready-made architectural drawing, on the basis of which you can plan the upcoming changes. Drawing up a diagram of the future redevelopment should begin with clarifying the technical details, and not thinking through the design. In this case, it is necessary to take into account the following nuances:
- The thickness and material of the wall, due to which will unite the premises;
- The presence of a difference in the level of the floor and ceiling in the premises that are going to be combined;
- availability of communication highways and nodes (water and gas pipelines, central heating batteries, electrical wiring).
You can divide the room into zones usingbar counter. Remember that it is prohibited to demolish or partially dismantle load-bearing walls. In new buildings, the kitchen is usually separated from the living room not by a full wall, but by a partition that can be remade. But in old buildings, such redevelopment is not always possible. When planning, it is necessary to take into account the wiring and cable installation scheme (for example, television or intended for connecting to the Internet), provide for the output of new sockets. Plan a new heating system and the location of stationary radiators (it is wiser to invite a specialist for this work). If you need to move gas supply pipes, then you must contact the gas service. A special license is required for such installation. Only after all the technical details have been taken into account can you begin to think through the design of the future premises. Return to contents</a>
Options for combining kitchen and living room
It can be done in different ways.But it is also necessary to take into account the zoning of the space, since the kitchen-studio should be not only convenient, but also beautiful. The most common option is the design of a bar counter, which divides the room into 2 zones.
Thanks to the furniture module"peninsula" can save space in the kitchen. This technique is quite simple and easy to access. Despite the fact that the counter partitions the room, it does not clutter it and leaves a lot of free space. But this option is not very convenient if a family with children or elderly people lives in the apartment. Since in this case a full-fledged dining table is needed. In this case, it is wiser to use a technique called a peninsula. Usually, this concept means a furniture module that looks like an additional workspace with storage drawers located underneath. As a rule, the peninsula is combined with the main module with a common tabletop. But this method can also be used to decorate a fairly large table. In this case, a round table designed for a fairly large number of seats does not clutter the space, since its corner is "inscribed" in the modular peninsula. In addition, the wall does not have to be demolished entirely, but the lower part can be left, which will rise above the floor by 50-70 cm. Such a partition, which can be decorated according to your own taste, will delimit the space, but will not interfere with the arrangement of furniture. The same wall can be erected anew in any place convenient for you. Elements equipped with internal lighting look especially advantageous. Return to contents</a>Options for combining the floor and ceiling Kitchen areaand the dining room can be decorated in the same style. But the most interesting are the rooms in which the owners managed to implement several style solutions. In addition, with the help of this method, you can hide some architectural flaws. Such techniques include:
In addition, visually unite the roomsfinishing materials will help. For example, the floor can be decorated with tiles (in the kitchen area) and laminate (in the living room area). And for the ceiling in both rooms, use the same covering. In this way, you will achieve a unified style and solve practical problems. Do not be afraid to show your imagination. But you should always remember that both the kitchen and the living room should be comfortable for people first and foremost.
