When Carli Kessler’s clients, a newlywed couple in their 30s, moved to Columbus, Ohio, from Texas for a job change, there was no question out-of-state friends would start rotating through their door. The problem was, the only place to put them was up in the attic. The unfinished space was one vast room with sloped ceilings and creaky floors. The couple tasked Kessler, along with Stone Pillar Construction, with squeezing a bedroom, full bathroom, and a living area in the attic by reworking the collar ties and raising the rafters.
“[The wife] is a big Sunday lounger and loves to watch shows and have friends over,” says the designer. The dark, cave-like space was begging for an extra-large projector screen but the challenge was figuring out a furniture layout that would maximize the guest count for movie nights, Super Bowl gatherings—you name it.
For Kessler, the only route was to go custom. “Walking up to the attic and seeing how long and narrow it was, it doesn’t really lend itself to traditional furniture. I was like, we’ve got to go long with this,” she says. Ahead, she shares how they constructed the ultimate hangout space.
Stick the HVAC in a Cabinet
The goal: create a chic looking sectional that can fit six to seven people comfortably. In addition to the couch itself, the designer would have to account for the HVAC system—it needed to remain accessible from the corner of the living room. Her fix? Add a cabinet at one end of the built-in sofa. “It has a removable shelf in there so that if, for whatever reason, they ever needed to get back there, they can,” she says.
Bump It Out
Kessler drew up a plan for the sofa and handed it off to the carpenter who constructed the entire piece out of white oak. There were two key details that allowed them to work within the awkward attic space. First, they bumped the cushions out from the wall by about six inches to ensure no one accidentally hits their head on the ceiling when they get up. Then, to disguise a few visible gaps along the floors (they’re from the early 1900s, so naturally they’re a bit crooked), they tacked a small strip of molding onto the base of the structure.
Smooth Tricky Transitions with a Slope
There was something that wasn’t sitting quite right with Kessler when she looked at the built-in cabinet and sofa together. “It was very harsh looking to me, it felt like an afterthought,” says the designer. After spotting an angled sofa designed by Zoe Feldman on Pinterest, Kessler decided to slope the side cushion, immediately softening up the whole thing.
Commit to a Single Fabric
Kessler focused on layering different shades of green (her client’s favorite color), opting for Schumacher’s Gainsborough Velvet in Malachite for the sectional—pillows included. “Choosing matching pillows allowed the sofa to speak for itself,” she says. She also loved that it was the perfect complement to the wall color, Pigeon by Farrow & Ball.
Mount Lights Where You Can’t Fit Art
There wasn’t much wall surface to hang a lot of art around the sofa, so instead she leaned into sculptural sconces from Lulu and Georgia, peppering three of them around the couch. “I needed something above there to dress it up and these sconces almost act like art, in my opinion,” she shares. Lights, projector screen, action.
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