Vestibul, Rebedor: a spanner in the works

Late last week we got notice that fire department regulations now require an interior entrance area, a firewall of sorts. This makes sense: a fire raging up the staircase only has one door  to burn through to get into our flat. Unfortunately, it means we now need a "vestíbul" or entrance lobby room with two doors. This eats into our small dining room, rendering it useless for that purpose.

Our architect sent us updated drawings suggesting how to use the space, and moving the dining table into the living room -- where it  had been in his original drawings almost a year ago. The left over area, "rebedor" or hallway seems a bit of dead space -- how would we actually use it?

In the drawing the stairs are on the bottom in the center, the exterior door above the "4T". You should be able to click the image to see a bigger view.

Disconnecting the dining room from the kitchen breaks a design goal we had, but we really didn't want to launch into a complete redesign of the kitchen -- or worse, a full redesign of the flat's floor plan: if we'd known about the requirement for a vestíbul, we'd have laid out the place differently, but here we are.  A primary goal in the design of our old house in DC, the current house in Arlington, and the new flat in Barcelona was to minimize useless spaces like hallways and foyers.

We spent the weekend argu-- er, debating how to best use the rebedor space and trying to figure how to make use of the vestíbul.  The diagonal path through the vestíbul gives us completely useless space, so we asked if we could align the doors, giving us a "bump out" that we could use for coats -- or better -- our bicycles. We didn't have any space in the flat to put our bikes, and we'd really like them when we move there: it's a great city for biking, and while they have plenty of Bicing city bikes we've got a couple nice bikes of our own.

On to the rebedor.  We couldn't see actually dining there in the drawing's 3 chairs at a counter facing the light-well windows; yank out that counter.  Now we have space at the raised bar adjacent to the top sink in the kitchen.  This is something I really wanted in our design but we didn't have the space with a dining table there. In our current and previous houses, we (and our guests) spent a lot of time sitting at the raised bar talking while cooking, or just having a simple breakfast.  We now have room for two barstools so we get back our breakfast bar and give guests a more comfortable space to hang out while we finish assembling a meal.

In our current house, we have a little "bump out" that we find very comfortable for reading, with good light surrounded by windows. Perhaps the remaining area of the rebedor can accommodate the same book nook.  It's not the best use of space but gives us a separate space outside the large living/dining room.

So here's our markup (in blue) of the vestíbul and rebedor, and some fixes and questions in the nearby "cuina".

Irene suggested a frosted glass door for the interior side of the vestíbul, and this is a great idea. It'll bring some light into that otherwise completely dark space, but also it will mirror the frosted glass we spec'd for the raised bar separating the rebedor from the kitchen, and should go well with the white back-painted glass cabinet doors in the kitchen.  If we could get one with a brushed metal frame, it would be quite striking.

I really wish we were in Barcelona to ease the conversations with our team at Address.Properties, our interior designers at Mimouca, and our terrific architect Alfonso. Fortunately, with the internet, we can exchange drawings and such with relative ease.