The Wall

We rent a one-bedroom apartment that is a decent size by New York standards, about 850 square feet. The living room (not pictured here) is L-shaped, with doorways leading into the kitchen at either end of the L. This creates a circular route through the apartment for Silas's romping.

Our original plan was to put a wall through the corner of the L, turning each leg into a separate room. However, that would have ruined Silas's ability to run around in circles and would have put a wall between the two big windows that currently light up the entire living room. So Meredith had the brilliant idea to leave the living room as is, and instead put a wall through the middle of our bedroom.

Here's the "before" picture of the bedroom. The room is about 19' x 11'. In other words, we have created two extremely small bedrooms, one of which (mine and Meredith's) has no window.

In our building, you're not allowed to put up a wall by yourself; the management requires us to use the Living Space Company.

Living Space specializes in pressurized walls, which are walls held in place by rods pushing against the floor and ceiling. You can see the rods in the picture below, poking out beneath the wall (to the right of the door -- click on the photo for a bigger version). In theory, a pressurized wall can be removed without a trace.

The wall came in three sections pre-cut to fit the room. The crew simply put the sections in place, cranked the rods to apply the pressure that holds the wall up, affixed molding to hide the rod ends, and, finally, touched up the paint job. The whole thing took about one hour.



Here's Silas getting ready for bed in his new room. It's small but comfy.