Getting good things in small spaces is what Adrian Ramsay is all about and in the feature article in the latest Your Investment Property magazine he gives us a great example of this in how to design a bedroom.\u00a0 We discuss that with Adrian.<\/p>\n
Transcript:<\/strong><\/p>\n Kevin:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>One of the challenges we find in real estate as we have a requirement to put things in smaller places is just how can we creatively use these small living areas? I was fascinated to read the feature in the latest\u00a0Your Investment Property<\/em>magazine, which came out about a week ago. It was an article around my next guest, the CEO of Adrian Ramsay Design house. Adrian Ramsay is in fact the CEO of his own company.<\/p>\n Good day, Adrian. How are you doing?<\/p>\n Adrian:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Good day, mate. Yes, really well, Kevin.<\/p>\n Kevin:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Yes. Good article in\u00a0Your Investment Property<\/em>\u00a0magazine about the bedroom.<\/p>\n What are some of the key things that you find in getting good things in small spaces?<\/p>\n Adrian:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>I think that you have to look at the whole space. for starters. One of the key things there is keeping a color pallet that actually transitions comfortably. Not necessarily exactly the same, but just keeps it a gentle transition. Because what happens is your eye doesn\u2019t have to adjust to a sudden change.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean you don\u2019t use feature walls or something in your coloring, but like if you were chopping your floor up into three or four different surfaces, you\u2019re more likely to run into problems than if you keep it consistent. Or if you have hallways and living rooms, if you\u2019re keeping the shades tonal as they run down through those, your eye extends down the line.<\/p>\n Obviously, light is always a huge one, and the other one is getting variation in your ceiling heights. Something I learned from looking at Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s work years ago now was just the way he would steal a bit from one room and put it into another room in the form of like a bulkhead. So he might add some space into the living room and take it out of the bedroom, but only 300 mm from the ceiling down or something like that.<\/p>\n You\u2019re more likely to do that one the opposite way around, by the way. You\u2019re more likely to add the 300 mm into the bedroom because it\u2019s going to be the smaller room, and then make it a bulkhead in the other room.<\/p>\n And in doing that, it extends the ceiling in one part and it reduces it in the other. But it doesn\u2019t actually change the volume from wall to wall. It changes the effect of the volume in the room.<\/p>\n Kevin:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, you deal with bulkheads, I think, in step one of the article. But they can also occupy a lot of space, can\u2019t they?<\/p>\n Adrian:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>They can. You have to be really careful with them. Often, they become service ducts and stuff like that, and suddenly you have plumbers or electricians or air conditioning guys designating what size they\u2019re going to be. So, you have to be very mindful of where you position them and how you position them.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve often used them as a way to, say, take power off a power point to put lighting above a bed when I don\u2019t want to rip off wallboard, I don\u2019t want to chase into walls, and I don\u2019t want to chase into ceilings. Because in a lot of apartments, the ceiling is actually the floor below. It\u2019s just got a spray coat over it. It doesn\u2019t have battens and there\u2019s no extra space.<\/p>\n So, I\u2019ll often use something to bring myself up the wall with a small buildout on the wall, but then a low bulkhead in the ceiling so that I can spread the lighting around.<\/p>\n Kevin:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Yes. The article is just fantastic because it gives you so many great ideas on what you can do inside a very small space. And I have to say that there\u2019s some really creative furniture that\u2019s come out that allows us to put a lot into a very small space, Adrian.<\/p>\n Adrian:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Totally agree; there is. The furniture market has really met this, and one of the things that I see has happened there is (a) we have a lot more urban, inner city living, so the furniture market has\u2026 In Australia, different from overseas. Take somewhere like Europe; they\u2019ve always had small spaces.<\/p>\n You have to remember that in Australia, we have the second biggest homes in the world outside of America, so if you\u2019re looking at that and you go \u201cEurope have shoe-horned themselves into tiny spaces and the Japanese have done the same,\u201d and then when you look here, this new urban density living that we do in cities with apartments and stuff is actually relatively new to us. It\u2019s been a holiday home before, it\u2019s been an investment property, but now we are going into our urban density as city dwellers more and more.<\/p>\n And because of that, the furniture market has responded to it by going \u201cHow has Europe dealt with that before?\u201d And other big cities. And then they get clever about it: storage solutions, the way the pieces are made modular so that they can fit into lift-shafts, all of those things.<\/p>\n Kevin:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, you have to bear all that in mind. I noticed, too, that wallpaper is making a bit of a comeback, and I\u2019m really pleased about that because you can get so much feature into a wall with design and with color, can\u2019t you?<\/p>\n Adrian:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, I totally agree. Wallpaper has been a cold climate off the back of Europe and also Melbourne, Victoria, Tazzie, those kinds of places, and places like New Zealand. At one stage, it meant you didn\u2019t have to finish the wall behind it, so it was cheaper for the plasterer. He\u2019d just bang up a bit of plasterwork and then he\u2019d put wallpaper over it.<\/p>\n And I think that mainly the trend has been off the back of the show\u00a0The Block<\/em>. Those guys are obviously working in New South Wales or in Victoria, and with that, what they tend to do is they\u2019re using it as a feature thing. And even up here in Queensland where we tend to paint things white, there\u2019s a big call for wallpaper. We\u2019re using it more and more and more.<\/p>\n And when we\u2019re designing a whole structure \u2013 not just a redesign or a remodel but if we\u2019re designing a new home for somebody \u2013 then when we get through the actual design phase of the bones of the house, then we\u2019re doing the interior, we\u2019re going \u201cThose walls need to be plastered for this and these walls need to be plastered for that,\u201d and we\u2019re featuring wallpaper in our design brief right from the time that we start drawing from the slab.<\/p>\n Kevin:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Yes. Now, the renovation that\u2019s featured in\u00a0Your Investment Property<\/em>\u00a0magazine \u2013 which, as I said, is out right now \u2013 your budget for that was $200,000 and the total spend was $220,000. Is that quite normal, the 10% over? Is that how you would do it?<\/p>\n Adrian:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>I have a process that I developed over the years, which I call design magic, and I say, \u201cLook, there are things that you\u2019re going to be looking for that you want extra.\u201d If you have a budget of $200,000, start out that you\u2019re going to spend $180,000.<\/p>\n Kevin:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>I was going to say $180,000, yes.<\/p>\n Adrian:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Bring your budget back, and once you\u2019ve done that, then you have the opportunity to actually go \u201cI have that extra piece.\u201d I say to clients \u201cYou\u2019re not going to keep that money; we\u2019re still going to spend it. Don\u2019t think that you\u2019re going to the Bahamas; that money is actually going to get spent in here, but it\u2019s going to be when you ask us for something extra.\u201d<\/p>\n Our budget over-runs in that particular one was we spent an additional $24,000 removing the asbestos from the place. They came with a $200,000 budget, we trimmed it, and then we trimmed it back at the time to about $190,000.<\/p>\n And then I said to them, \u201cLook, when this is being renovated, we have asbestos in these different areas, and I know that for you guys in particular, you had feared about how much asbestos is in it.\u201d Now, we had asbestos ceilings, asbestos in most of the walls, and don\u2019t forget in that case, we were actually doing a four-bedroom apartment as well, so a big apartment.<\/p>\n And so I got onto the guys and we got the builder to getting various different quotes. And our asbestos removal quotes ranged from about $40,000 to about $18,000. We went with the guys at about $24,000, so that was our biggest budget over-run, but it wasn\u2019t actually something that we\u2019d ever budgeted to do.<\/p>\n Kevin:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Just very quickly \u2013 we\u2019re going to have to move \u2013 in removing asbestos, is it more expensive to do it in an apartment block than it would be on a single house?<\/p>\n Adrian:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Oh, yes.<\/p>\n Kevin:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, I thought it might be.<\/p>\n Adrian:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>There are a lot of complications, especially because by the time you\u2019re doing an apartment block, you have to air monitor the whole space. We shorted out the entire building a couple of times with the amount of water that we were using, and you have to be water vac-ing it, everybody is going in and out through a sealed space, and there are guys sitting there with monitors. So, the cost of doing it over a regular house\u2026<\/p>\n And also in a case like this, every ceiling was asbestos as a spray-on, so it had to be scraped off the ceilings and made damp for the guys in the space suits when they were bagging it and removing it from there. And asbestos removal costs have gone up considerably.<\/p>\n Kevin:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, those asbestos ceilings, they were great in their time but horrific to rectify nowadays.<\/p>\n Adrian:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Yes, just awful.<\/p>\n Kevin:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Mate, great talking to you. Thank you so much for your time.<\/p>\n Adrian Ramsay has been my guest, he\u2019s the CEO for Adrian Ramsay Design House, and you can read all about his renovation in the latest edition of\u00a0Your Investment Property<\/em>\u00a0magazine, which is our right now. It\u2019s the July issue. It comes out in June. I don\u2019t know why they do that, but that\u2019s what they do anyway, Adrian. They like to be one step ahead of us.<\/p>\n Adrian:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Get a jump on the month. Maybe they\u2019re trying to get the profits in before the end of the financial year.<\/p>\n Kevin:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>That\u2019s a good idea. Mate, great talking to you. Thanks for your time, Adrian.<\/p>\n Adrian:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Awesome, Kevin. Thank you. Take care, mate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Getting good things in small spaces is what Adrian Ramsay is all about and in the feature article in the latest Your Investment Property magazine he gives us a great example of this in how to design a bedroom.\u00a0 We discuss that with Adrian. 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