A bedsitter in Nairobi is often around 25 square metres, and it has to be a bedroom, a sitting room and a kitchen at once. The word covers a first room near campus and a studio in Kilimani or Westlands alike.
Either way, everything you own is in one room, and you can see all of it from the bed. This is how to make one room work, with the size and price of each piece we make for it.
What fits in one room?
Start with the bed, because it is the largest thing you own. A 5 by 6 bed is 152 by 183 cm, and where it goes decides the rest.
Then measure the clear stretches of wall, the ones with no door, window or kitchen counter. Our standard unit is 98 cm wide and 28 cm deep, so a clear metre takes one. Those measurements are most of the plan.
Where does the bed go?
Put the bed in the corner furthest from the door, with its long side against a wall. It leaves the most floor open, and from the doorway the room reads as a sitting room with the bed at the far end.
A low shelf beside the bed does the work of a bedside table and a bookcase at once. The one in the photograph at the top is a single Wide Base, 1.42 m wide, Ksh 8,000 in our builder.
To keep the bed out of sight, a shelf can stand at its foot. The Quadruple is 98 cm wide and just over a metre tall, Ksh 17,500. It has no back panel, so it works from both sides: books facing the sofa, bedside things facing the bed.
A shelf standing free like that is worth a word with us before you order, and using a shelf as a room divider says why.
One low piece that does three jobs
In a single room the TV stand is also the storage and the only surface that is not the bed, so it is worth choosing for all three.
The Starter is 98 cm wide and 42 cm tall, with two shelves, Ksh 6,500. A 43-inch screen is about 95 cm wide, so it sits within the Starter's width, with the decoder and router on the shelf below. For bigger screens, how wide a TV stand should be has the sizes.
Listings on Jiji for TV stands mostly ask between about Ksh 5,000 and Ksh 7,500, so the Starter is priced like the market. The difference comes later, when you need more.
If you want a higher surface, the Low Console is the same width with a third shelf, 72 cm tall, Ksh 12,000. That is about the height of a table, so the top works as a counter by the door.
Storage that goes up, not out
A bedsitter is short of floor, not of wall height, so the rest of the storage should go up.
The Versatile Stack takes the same 98 by 28 cm of floor as the Starter and rises to 1.63 m, Ksh 28,500. The shelves are about 30 cm apart, which suits books, baskets of folded clothes and the things that would otherwise live under the bed.
Our shelves are modular, which means they are made of separate parts that stack together. The Starter you buy first can become the bottom of a taller shelf later. Each unit on top adds a shelf and about 30 cm, from Ksh 5,500.
With no wardrobe, an open wardrobe is the next thing to read.
What does it cost to set up?
Only our part, since that is the part we can price:
- The Starter under the TV, Ksh 6,500.
- The Quadruple at the foot of the bed, Ksh 17,500.
- The Versatile Stack on the clear wall, Ksh 28,500.
Together that is Ksh 52,500, which is a lot for one room. None of it has to be bought at once: the Starter alone is Ksh 6,500, and the rest can wait.
We make every unit at our workshop in Dagoretti Corner and deliver within Nairobi, assembled, within a week of payment. Delivery is charged by area, and we tell you the fee before you pay.
When you move out
A first room is rarely the last. Everything above stands on the floor, so nothing is drilled into the wall, and each unit lifts off the one below it. In the next place the same units can stack a different way.
Each design has a page that stands it in your room at full size through your phone's camera: The Starter, The Low Console, The Quadruple and The Versatile Stack. The rest are on our shelving page, each with its price.