by - Zenia Olivares has been updating her New Jersey home over the past two years.
- She decided to add a partial wall to her open living room to break up the space.
- Olivares said the new wall made the area more functional and aesthetically pleasing.
Zenia Olivares wasn’t a fan of the shape of her living room when she bought her house two years ago.
Olivares, 34, lives with her husband and their two dogs in a 1935 bungalow in New Jersey. She is a full-time content creator and documents on her social media pages how she transformed her 2,800-square-foot home into the perfect home for her family.
“It has a lot of original charm,” Olivares said of her six-bedroom, three-bathroom home. ‘We have the original Douglas fir floors and some of the original skirting and cladding, but apparently a lot has been done to the house.’
Zenia Olivares in her home. Zenia Olivares
“It was updated in the ’70s and ’80s and into the ’90s, so there are layers upon layers of things that I discovered while working on the house itself,” she said. “It’s like an onion.”
Olivares’ goal was to give her home a comfortable feel with vintage and transitional influences. She described her decor style as “really cozy” and said it “feels like a hug.”
She has transformed almost every room of her home and told Business Insider that she knew there was one room she absolutely wanted to change when they bought the house: her open living room.
The open living room didn’t feel right
As you enter Olivares’ home, you are greeted by the living room, which was initially a large rectangular space. All the other rooms in the house are almost perfect squares, so the length of the space felt out of place for Olivares.
“The living room was too long and that didn’t quite fit with the layout of the house and how everything else was,” Olivares said. “It felt disconnected.”
“I thought, ‘What if I built something to separate the spaces?’” Olivares said.
She told BI that she went back and forth on the idea as she and her husband continued to work on their house, because she wasn’t sure if a wall would work if the house changed.
The area in front of the wall was added. Zenia Olivares
Olivares updated her fireplace and added columns to the ceiling, but she still felt like the living room was the wrong shape.
“I tried making furniture as a room divider, but it didn’t quite work with the positioning of the door,” she said. “I couldn’t let go of the idea of a wall.”
Olivares is not alone in her desire for separation in her home. The trend of open-concept living has become less popular in recent years, and real estate agents are seeing more and more people finding ways to close off rooms in their homes.
In mid-2024, Olivares decided to make her dream come true by working with a contractor friend to build a partial wall in the middle of the living room.
Olivares used a partial wall to break up the space
Olivares knew she didn’t want to completely close off the space to the right of her front door. Instead, she decided to add a partial wall, also known as a pony wall, with columns.
She told BI she wanted to keep the “open feel” of the large room, but hoped the partial wall would create division.
“I also like the idea of visually framing the stairs,” she said.
Olivares and her friend worked together to add a large beam to the ceiling, to which they attached tapered columns that connected to a pony wall below.
They made all the pieces themselves, also giving the wood a darker shade and coloring it to match Olivares’ vision.
Olivares also mocked up the new wall with cardboard boxes before starting work to make sure she liked the look, which she recommends to anyone doing a similar project.
Because she didn’t hire anyone to work on her house, Olivares said adding the wall and columns only cost about $830. It wasn’t too time consuming either; building, installing and staining the wood took just over a week.
She said adding the column to the ceiling was the most challenging aspect of the project.
“The ceiling is original plaster and is not flat in any way,” Olivares said. “And it’s overhead work, so that’s going to hurt your shoulders and your back.”
“It took me and my friend a whole day to get that there and make it look as good as possible,” she added.
The hard work was worth it for the final look.
Olivares likes the separate spaces
Olivares told BI that she could bring her exact vision to life.
“I love it,” she said of the pony wall. “I smile every time I walk through the living room, and everyone has to walk through the living room to get to one side of the house or the other. It’s beautiful to look at and it makes the spaces meaningful.”
“It makes it flow,” she added. “It makes it function and it looks good.”
The finished wall. Zenia Olivares
The functionality that the new wall brought to Olivares’ home was a major benefit of the addition. For example, the wall created a space where Olivares could put her keys when she walked through the front door.
Likewise, she placed her 2024 Christmas tree in the corner next to her stairs, and the new wall made it feel like a special space.
She also plans to add a buffet bookshelf on the wall next to the stairs, adding even more character to the new room down the road. Looking at the wall, Olivares knows that adding a fence was the perfect choice for her home.
“Sometimes open concept is a little too open,” she said.