Hi Everyone. Here are a few images relevant to my indecision.

I really hope you can help with this dllema. I am very greatful for this forum and the kind people who help out here.

Our family of 6 in living through a total gut and addition project. The decisions are killing me. Last night it hit me that our planned window seat in the great room might not be as good an idea as putting a couch under the window. This great room is the only room in the house that can seat a big group of people. We also have a small sitting room/ living room that will have a window seat (the living room window seat is north facing). As you will see in the construction stage (ignore bed, yes we are sleeping here) the fireplace is already installed so it needs to stay in the corner (or at least the vent does). I don't mind having the fireplace installers return to scoot back the fireplace a bit if that is what we decide. Here are some pros and cons to keeping the window seat that I can think of. Are there some I have missed? Do you think I should stick with the window seat or replace the great room window seat with a couch.

Cons of Keeping window seat

1) Window seat allows comfortable seating for fewer people than a couch (window seat is best for one sitting sideways). If we replace the window seat with a couch, we could easily get seating for 7 in this room. If we stick with the window seat we can accommodate more like 5 (assuming only one sits on window seat). This great room is our entertaining room, TV room, and fireplace room.

2) With the window seat the fireplace sits out further from corner and the TV shelf needs to be deeper than we need to tie everything in. In other words it eats up more floor space. Perhaps you can see in the photo how much space is wasted (there is stuff stashed behind it at present given there is so much space behind).

3)This will be our second window seat as there is one going in our small living room.

4)It is a custom piece of furniture that won't be inexpensive.

5)I do prefer to sit where few people can sneak up and startle me. As the plan shows now I would choose the window seat as the other seats have their back to passageways, dining room etc. Maybe others would feel the same?

Pros to keeping the window seat:

1)The planned window seat in the great room is in front of a warm south facing triple pane window with a decent view. The other planned window seat is in front of a new double pane north facing window, also with a good view. We live in Canada.

2)The triple combo of TV shelf, corner fireplace and window seat do look good together

Other thoughts:

Could we move the great room window seat to the dining room window?

At the top are are some plans, sketches and pictures showing the planned window seat. I don't have any showing the couch as this idea is a deviation from what we were thinking. Thanks in advance for your thoughts on the best arrangement of space for the great room and if your vote is for or against the window seat.

Carol

This post was edited by OntarioMom on Sun, Oct 13, 13 at 12:55

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