designpartition
I'm renting a small apartment which has one bedroom, near the front door there is a large open space that could easily be converted to a bedroom/office with the addition of a partition across a wall.
Is there a way I can do this without making my apartment look like a surgery?
Bear in mind I'm renting, so structural changes wouldn't be good, It'd just be nice to be able to wall the room off when I felt like it.
Here is the room layout:
So based on advice from ratchetfreak in comments I took his advice and went with the 'corridor' effect on the 37" wall (pic below). As the room has two doors it gave me an interesting perspective on what the 'walking into the room' vibe was. For door #1 (the bottom door in pic) I felt like the closet made the room feel smaller on entrance. For door #2 (left wall) I was really surprised that walking into the room didn't feel like the closet was overbearing.
So my end analysis is that a closet jutting into the room across from a doorway is fine. Also, that a corridor effect makes a room feel smaller on entrance. I prefer option one, although we ended up going with option two because it really was the only place the closet would fit.
Most installs I have done we have trimmed around the fireplace. There are several ways to do it. If your fireplace hearth sits on flat ground we try to meet even - which is almost impossible unless you did the floor and hearth all in one install.
Most of the time we trim around the fireplace first and then cut to the trim. This is very very very time consuming because you will potentially have a lot of boards meet the trim and they need to be within 1/32".
An easier way to do this, especially if the hearth material is not as even, is to add a riser then maybe an optional board (or partial board). So you would layout your wood and just get as close as you can to fireplace then nail down the riser around the fireplace. The corners take some work but this is pretty easy. This looks really good if it is brick and you can get (or notch) the riser so its back sits in a mortar line.
And a note on floating - I would probably use a riser. Because you could set the floating wood 1/4 inch from fireplace, giving it a proper gap, and then staple the riser just to the underlying floating wood. It would still be floating then.
Best Answer
You can get divider screens that are made of several reasonably lightweight panels connected together with hinges (like the IKEA RISÖR). Something like that could be used to divide the room. I've also seen people use freestanding shelf units to divide a large room, that are open on both sides (like the IKEA EXPEDIT), and then fill the shelves with books, decorative vases/bowls, and collectibles.
Neither option really creates a wall, but you're looking for something more temporary. Anything tall enough to go to the ceiling will either need to be really wide for stability, or attach to the ceiling, which I don't think you want to do.
Note: The linked products are used as examples of the type of furniture I'm writing about. They aren't meant as recommendations for specific products.