I Paid a Stranger $10 to Design My Living Room

oh wow you would dig this i like this a lot you love an angry this is crazy like she basically turned all right so a few months back we remodeled this open area of our house that we use as a living room slash dining room and by far the biggest obstacle for me was designing for a room that's just so oddly shaped now i went into more detail about it in those videos but long story short you walk into the foyer foyer anyway here then we've got this fireplace focal wall that's at a 45 degree angle here this really awkward nook here that's a result of an addition that somebody did in the 70s and this huge cut out in that wall that looks down into the family room that they added on then these angled steps that lead into the family room and this other bump out here that's for a laundry room that comes off of the kitchen which is what this doorway leads to bottom line it's a really weird room with lots of angles and nooks and at least for me it made it really tricky to design for so when the sponsor of this video fiverr reached out with essentially an open invitation this is immediately what jumped into my mind i wanted to see what solutions other people would come up with if they were faced with this same challenge so that's what we're gonna find out today now real quick just in case you don't know what fiverr is basically they connect businesses or really anybody that's looking for some sort of digital service with freelancers who can provide that service so if you want to find out more about that head over to the link that you see on the screen here it's also in the description to check out the services available to you and get 10 off with the code 4i's so obviously we're going to be looking for people who are experts in furniture layout or floor plans but that said the scope of what you can find there is way beyond what we're gonna be using it for okay so i'm gonna look for five different designers and i'm gonna give them the same brief i'll basically explain the situation what we're looking for and then i'm going to encourage them to be creative with their recommendations i'll also give them an overhead drawing of the room with all the dimensions as well as a few isometric drawings of the room and a 3d model to hopefully give them just a better understanding of what the space looks like and other than that i think i'm just going to leave it pretty open because i don't want to bias them with too much information going in all right let's hire some designers okay i'm not sure what to search for so let's try space planning and i'm going to say that was a decent term because it looks like a lot of these drawings are furniture layouts oh furniture layout that's a good one okay a lot of these look pretty good too i'm not really sure what i should search okay this one looks promising imari emery i'm bad with names actually you know what apologies in advance to all of the designers whose names i'm probably going to butcher right now anyway it looks like for 10 bucks i can get space planning and furniture layout which is exactly what i'm looking for she's only got four reviews but 4.9 stars so i feel pretty confident and don't know 10 isn't really that huge of a risk so let's see what 10 bucks will get you all right julieta julieta i'll say julieta looks like the only difference in the basic standard and premium packages is the size of the room so i think i can go with the 20 option which is for 650 square feet actually okay i'm feeling good feeling loose and i think i'm ready to uh spend a little bit more all right so this one siri i'm guessing if your safety is at risk ask me to call emergency services or someone you trust anyway she's a little bit more expensive but she's a level two seller with 49 reviews and three in the queue does that mean she's better i don't know but only one way to find out right all right i'm gonna be honest this might be overkill for what i need but i'm kind of intrigued she's got a whole book thing here includes some renders a shopping list i don't think i personally need this but i just want to see what the experience is like see if you get more for your money so 155 bucks let's do it okay i'm officially off the deep end now i'm gonna go big for the last one here i found this designer living bright she's won awards she's an nkba trained designer i don't know what that means you know what nkba means new kid block aspiring as soon as joey mcintyre is dead that's aspiring to be a new kid on the block what do you think chris i was gonna say the same thing yeah exactly i was gonna say new kids on the block attitude oh gotta get it tammy what do you think no guesses all right we're back i'm here with my wife dolores she has no idea what's going on so i think we're gonna start by showing her what you guys just watched she's won awards she's an nkba trained designer can i guess what do you think it means national kick-ass national kickout the national kick wait did you find out what it was what it stands for yeah first is the 10 one which was emery or imari what do you think it was uh imari probably maury i'm nervous what i don't know let me see it looks like she actually did a couple of renders too okay what is that like plants those are like probably curtains and plants i would say we're sitting right here is that a cat that's a pillow i mean i can kind of yeah i kind of see it like that's its ears right there and that's like a little paw coming that looks like a fat it's like a little kick so then that means that cat would be on its butt like going like super manning into the air basically i would say this is like the most safe layout like this is what 97 out of 100 people would do the room and essentially this way i don't know because i think most people like to push it against the wall and so this is in the middle so that's i appreciate that yeah at least they would get the idea of like okay i can push things away from the wall i could do a little like some seats right here what's that like squirrel those two little dots are they like probably like a little side table well here let's see so she did a couple renderings it looks like so yeah those are like two little side tables that's kind of cool is that like a barn door no i'd say it's just like a wooden pattern just uh you didn't send them real life no i did not send them a photo that's pretty yeah she was able to like extrapolate for 10 bucks pretty good yeah all right here we have julieta for 20. or julieta i don't know what's your julianna so options so i guess she's going to give us options so option is essentially what we just saw except for she built that into like a tv thing which is kind of what we had when we first moved in and we were not using the family room yet we were poor it looks like she made this like a little desk right here behind us option b looks like it's kind of the same thing but got rid of the tv or maybe there's a tv here in that one or maybe there that seemed a little weird to have a tv right there in the dining room whatever you could just ignore that put a tv here above the fireplace and this works and then it looks like she made this into like a little desk kind of table area yeah that's not bad option c i'm guessing so now she switches so she's got a circular oh that's kind of cool like i never even considered that no so basically turn this what is now the dining area into the living room turn that into the dining room area and do a round table i don't hate that like i mean i don't think this would be a great tv watching area personally but like it's not our main tv area anyway it's basically just for like spillover tv watching here's another option where they've got those switched actually seeing this makes me interested to see it if you flipped it rotate this around that way so you actually have the back of the couch right there but it's it's interesting because i like the ten dollar layout that's more than the 20. i mean but she gave us four so really these are only like five dollars each yes so now we have this was sorry hundred dollars oh wow you would dig this i like this a lot you love an angry this is crazy like she basically turned the whole room 45 degrees which how does she knows you she maybe she's on youtube a shoe rack i think a lot of people do that off of an entryway i don't think you have to be in the sneakers this is very intriguing there's a lot of i would have never thought of this yeah she really utilized like for a room with so many dead spaces and i mean when you think about what i had to do to utilize that dead space she's done it without that just with placing furniture in unique places so if i would have seen this before we did anything you would have tried this would have changed my my frame of mind anything else just that so 100 bucks just one thing but like i kind of think she knocked it out of the park in terms of really outside of the box i would have said let's live with this for a week and see what it feels like yeah for sure dutch by design so this was a hundred and fifty five dollars and this was a whole like booklet so i'm just gonna open it we'll kind of go through it so actually before we get into it this one was a little different like once you got into the 155 and the 350 one closer to like hiring an interior designer where she gave me a questionnaire and asked you know she really wanted to like get a sense of my taste she was giving us more than what we really needed but she was doing literally all the work for us yeah this is a portfolio right here oh okay so here she has the dining table up against that wall right and then she's kind of turned it into where we're sitting as like a little reading nook it looks like and then this is like the kind of like a small living room area it feels like this is a big dead area and then these are very well utilized but kind of small but maybe it wouldn't really be in real life i feel like this would be the layout for empty nesters like an older couple maybe that just like needs a little pocket of like maybe we'll do it in like 20 years maybe it is nice to have like an open area for the bulk of the time but then you figure if you were having a party right this could pull out towards the center of the room and open up into a bigger table or whatever so then then you are utilizing that space and then when you don't need to it's just like free area to walk through so there's something to be said i think for like not having to feel fill in every little nook and cranny that's what i feel like it's come compar mentalized into little sections so that's interesting it almost feels like you're at like an ikea or whatever where you're looking at like little rooms oh i kind of like that it is i like that space yeah okay here's another layout she did it's almost current ish that's not bad actually that's kind of a smart way to do that where because that whole thing was added on in my mind i always think of it as this like rectangle that you have to use but she's kind of looking at it more where it's like well it's really just that little tiny part of it that's unusable i really like the layouts with the walkway right here so here was the 350 dollar one i'm gonna do the main ones first this is actually close to what we really have i was gonna say i like it but probably because this is what our logical conclusion was too but i like the l shape right here oh i like this wall yeah that is pretty cool i like that these renders are really good yeah i mean that's probably a more normal way to utilize that little nook that works well i would say that this is probably for as unexciting as it is to us for most people if this was like your main area of your house that you're using i'd say this is probably the best layout okay but then she did also give us an alternative that's kind of what i was saying remember the first one turn this around and put the tv yes on that wall oh wow and then she made like a banquet in there oh that's awesome that was just no that's like a different part so there's seating there and then you could do chairs oh i like this a lot remember to bar yes i remembered to bar i wanted to build this table that would go through this opening and so on this side you could have regular chairs at it and then on the other side you could have kind of bar height chairs it'd be this weird pass-through shared table for doing homework or office work or what about this banquet then what do you i mean i could i see how it can work it's open but there's not an inch of dead space like she's used everything really well if you wanted to you could add something here you could add something here but you don't have to it still looks now i kind of want to put curtains up there i don't like curtains i mean i guess if you're looking at how it ties it all in it adds warmth i really like that wall i would live there you do live for a week in that layout and see if i really like it well maybe in three years we'll redo the living room again okay so let's uh rank yeah it's kind of unfair to rank to just rank them because this one's 35 times more expensive as the first one so i i guess okay before we rank them i would say overall i felt like i got my value for all from all five of them yeah for what it was 350 seems like a lot to spend on something if it got you to be like oh this is the way i want to do this living room rather than doing it one way and then changing it a few years into it like that's gonna cost you way more than 350 bucks yeah hypothetical this room's empty and we have to furnish it you just saw everything that you saw what do you want to do what do you want to explore first i mean i would do the 100 one so i think we're kind of on the same page there yes and i mean i did like this last one too me too i think her alternative layout but i think that i'm biased and i want to do the weird thing so maybe for most people watching this who haven't had our experience of living here for 10 years would probably look and be like no you're crazy do the normal one like it's the normal one because it's good what's interesting because when we redid the living room and we finally got a couch and it when it was up against the wall we used it but not as much and then once we turned it and it was different and it separates it felt like it feels like this is the living room this is dining room and we use it a lot more now right and i mean this does that even more right okay let's say we were selling this house and it was empty and so there were people that were moving in strangers you know nothing about them yeah and you were going to give one of these files to them i would not give them the one because i think it's too crazy people yes i don't need it i'd either give them the living bright one or honestly the juliette because it was 20 bucks and it was four different layouts i mean honestly that might be an interesting selling point for anyone who needs to sell a home but can't afford staging it you could just display like here are some options envision yourself in a b like put pictures and like hang them on the wall yeah like render like have like the like the 350 girl like those renderings were this could be you yeah that's actually not a bad idea i never thought about that as an alternative to staging someone take that because we're not gonna be selling our house anytime soon i don't think probably not bye bye hopefully that came out i hope so too because

Channel: Chris Salomone

Views: 495,025

Rating: 4.8753004 out of 5

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Id: 25-xKc1T1o0

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 24 2021