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basement progress: framing
Despite our secret hopes, the basement fairy did not wave her magic wand while we were basking in the glow of our new front yard.
Blah.
I know it will be great to have it done (or at least partially done), but there is not a lot of motivation for this project right now (besides zerbebe’s impending birth). So before we dive into a rather lackluster progress report, here’s an updated floor plan that shows the new and improved design [click to enlarge]:
Our main goal for the half basement (which is only about 385 SF) was to have a space that could serve as a guest/tv room and maybe a future kid’s bedroom. This room will be directly under the nursery and about the same size. We debated whether or not the space should be open to the adjacent stair area (and thus feel more connected to the rest of the house), but decided that we needed more flexibility since the room would serve multiple purposes. Our compromise is to install a 36″ sliding pocket door so that it could be open for casual use but easily closed off.
The rest of the space will be divided between a second bathroom, laundry room and a small unfinished space that will provide some storage and access to our crawl space. While the second bathroom is not a current necessity, we decided that as our family grows it will be nice to have and add considerable value to our home (most homes in our neighborhood seem to be 2 br/1bath). As Bailey gets older (something I don’t even want to think about!) it will also be nice to have a tub that he (and small kiddos) can more easily get in and out of.
The laundry room is fairly straight-forward and as we showed you in this post, the new appliances, cabinet, sink and countertop are already in place. On the opposite wall, we saved space for a small chest freezer. We have a rather compact 24″ fridge/freezer combo in our kitchen and while it works for us now, we know we might outgrow it in the future. Since we don’t use the freezer portion on a regular basis (it’s mostly nuts, ice cream and frozen waffles), the thought is to keep a chest freezer in the basement and buy a full-height fridge for the kitchen. While we don’t have any plans to buy a new fridge right away, we did go ahead and buy the freezer. Out of necessity you see…
Kyle just got back from a long weekend of deep-sea fishing off the coast of British Columbia (courtesy of a generous client) and this was his bounty:
King salmon, halibut and some lingcod. (They had it cleaned, filleted, packaged and flash frozen before the long drive back.) Even though we’ve been in Seattle for eight years now, we still haven’t gotten used to the luxury that is fresh fish so a sight like this has us a little giddy. The animals are equally excited and after a dinner of broiled salmon tonight, Bailey showed his gratitude by pre-rinsing plates as I loaded them into the dishwasher. [Psst…we’re always experimenting with different ways to prepare fish, so if you have any favorite recipes I’m all ears.] In addition to fish storage, the new freezer should also come in handy for all those nesting-induced meals I plan to make next month. Yup.
Oh right, the basement. You again.
A few years ago Kyle and I got a great deal on some windows that were leftover from a local school project. Most of them were long and skinny, but we made them work in our mudroom and in the “slot” window in the dining area. Since then, we’ve had one remaining window hanging out in the basement with no home. Until now.
At first I was hesitant about adding a window to the front of the house, but after realizing that our new plants would soon screen it from the street, I was on board.
Kyle’s like a window-installing wizard now. The whole operation took a couple hours max and I didn’t even have to lift a finger.
Even though the walls and ceiling are still dark, the extra window does wonders for the space and makes it feel much less basement-y. I can’t wait to see what a good dousing of white paint will do.
The downspout had to be relocated, but no big deal. (It used to come straight down from the porch eave above, but now jogs in and down before reconnecting to the existing inlet).
Like this:
In addition to the window install (which you’ll notice was done before the landscaping crew arrived), framing is underway in the bedroom. Kyle’s been gone the last two weekends so the space hasn’t seen a lot of love (hence this less than epic progress update), but I did manage to snap a few photos the other day:
Our concrete foundation wall (which extends up to the underside of the window in the photo above) needed to be furred out so we could insulate and have a space to run electrical. Although we could have extended this framing all the way to the ceiling, we decided to stop it at the top of the foundation wall (where it switches to original framed wall). This will make the space feel just a smidge bigger and provides a storage or display ledge around the two outside walls. The ledge is primed MDF that we’ll caulk and paint white.
Garden view!
Here’s a shot looking back towards the crawl. We decided it would be weird to have crawl space access from this room so the plan is to frame it in and close it off (after we get the new bathtub out of course).
Because our house is 102 years-old and not perfect, Kyle had to do some shimming in order for the future drywall to be straight and plumb. Sometimes I am in awe of the patience he has to work through things like this.
So that’s where we’re at. We’re keeping the next two weekends open to work on the house and hopefully make lots of progress before our schedules get too crazy. But it’s cool – I’ve already talked to zerbebe and asked her not to come till we’re done. I didn’t get a clear response but I think I felt a nod. Or maybe it was a butt. At any rate, at least it’s the solstice and we’re working with maximum daylight on our side. In fact, Kyle’s outside cutting lumber right now and I bet he has no idea it’s 9:30.
our design process
I had this post ready to go last week, but got all caught up in the Homies frenzy. Speaking of, you guys totally pulled it off and we placed 3rd in the prelims! That’s huge considering last year we landed in 27th place. We feel so grateful for the support of our readers, friends and family. So again, thank you. We are up against some very popular and well-established blogs and truthfully, we’re feeling a little bit like Bon Iver at the Grammy’s. In other words, we know we’re underdogs in this, but we’re excited nonetheless. So with that, we’d appreciate your vote one more time. The polls have officially reopened with voting ending on Friday (March 9th) at 3:00 p.m. EST. And if you don’t vote for us, at least vote for our friend and fellow indie blogger Daniel of Manhattan Nest.
Now, back to design and stuff. During my purging frenzy in January, I came across a stash of sketches and doodles that I’d saved since we started remodeling our house. (I love me some nostalgia.) Even though we use AutoCAD a fair amount, we always start out sketching. It’s a fast and easy way to think about a concept without getting hung up on technical aspects. After the initial pencil on paper, we usually move on to SketchUp, a free program that’s intuitive and great for quickly visualizing spaces or ideas.
Anyhow, it was fun to look back at early design ideas, so we thought you might get a kick out of seeing where our brains have been these last 5+ years.
Not long after we bought our house, we were out to dinner one night and (over a bottle of wine) came up with the idea to remodel our garage first. It would be a test run of sorts – a way to explore ideas without worrying about getting it perfect. Well, we eventually came to our senses (err, sobriety) and realized that we’d rather have a nice living space before a nice garage. It would have been a sweet garage though – and it will be, someday (although now we’re toying with the idea of doing a second story as a mother-in-law of sorts). In the sketch above, we were also messing around with different porch ideas and getting a window into our attic space.
Our garage is a clunky melding of 1910 gabled roof with a 1960’s carport tacked on. Although we’ll probably keep the same footprint, everything else has to be redone. Will there be a shed roof in our future? This is the Pacific Northwest…it’s our favorite roof form!
Moving on…our first major project on the house was to tear off and completely replace our roof. (That was the worst project! THE WORST!) At the time, we considered adding a second story but just didn’t have the funds for such an endeavor. A few years later, while planning for the big interior gut job, we thought about a small pop-up roof but also nixed the idea due to feasibility and costs.
And we don’t regret that decision. Instead, we decided to make the most of the volume we already had. Slicing through our SketchUp model (below) helped us figure out how we could create a vertical shaft that would help tie the three levels together (while also pulling cooler air up from the basement and exhausting warm air out through the loft – hell yeah!).
We’ve never really shared this on the blog, but we went through SO MANY plan iterations for the main floor. In fact, we spent the first couple of years fixing small things and thinking about what the hell we were going to do with our small house. For practical and home value reasons, our main objective (other than to make it less ugly) was to add a second bedroom. Easier said then done my friends.
Idea #1 – Add an addition off the back (to the right of gridline 2) that would accommodate a bedroom and big bathroom. (You can see the original floor plan here.) This still felt awkward, didn’t really solve all of the problems and would have been more expensive. (It also would have reduced the size of our backyard.)
Idea #2: Similar to #1, but a smaller bump-out that wouldn’t look totally out-of-place. Ok, but the second bedroom would be tiny. We also didn’t love how inefficient the kitchen layout was and the entry was still all sorts of awkward.
Idea #3: Add a tiny bedroom where the old back porch was and move the kitchen over a bit. We also had this badass idea to do an elevated living room (where the two couches are shown) – by raising the floor framing a foot or so, it would create a cozy living space while providing a better ceiling height for the basement room below. We also already had plans at this point for some type of loft. Getting better, but not hitting the sweet spot just yet.
Idea #4: We took idea #3 and shuffled things around – the kitchen went back towards the yard and the second bedroom would be a tiny “flex room” of sorts – essentially a box in the middle of a great room space that could be a nursery or small office. Notice the date on my phasing lists (2007) – WISHFUL THINKING!
Here’s a sketch Kyle did of our raised living room concept. In this version we had the loft over the back half of the house with a sweet wood-burning stove on a raised slate plinth. Vaulted ceiling and exposed beams – sexy, but way too much framing manipulation for our poor centurion house. Ultimately, we landed on the layout we now have. For us, it was the best balance between economy, efficiency and good design. Adapting old houses for 21st-century living is not always an easy task, but when you finally nail it, you feel like you’ve done a small part in advancing society.
In the random department, this is from our bathroom project in ’08. This is typical of my sketching – notes or to-do lists superimposed on sketches.
In 2009, we got busy on the exterior. Here’s a sketch I did looking at different color options. For a while we considered keeping the trim natural wood, but that would have been considerably more expensive and we’d already done the roof. We did end up with a gray-blue paint color, but darker. Sootier.
See what I mean?
Through the powers of SketchUp, we also explored a few other color combinations – at the time we had a thing for ochre (a close cousin of our BFF mustard yellow), but it just didn’t feel right. We needed something that would contrast more against all the wood and brown colors elsewhere.
We’ve also given a lot of thought to furniture, mainly pieces that are built-in and/or do double duty to make the most of a small house.
At one point we considered a built-in banquette for the dining area with the backside of the bench seat being a media cabinet for the living room. Once we demolished our space we decided that there wasn’t enough room to warrant something like that. Again, a good call in retrospect. The sketch at the top was an idea to build something in the flex room that could work for a home office and then a nursery. Well, this remodel stuff always takes longer than you think so we decided to just skip the home office phase and DIY a kid instead.
In lieu of the banquette/media cabinet, Kyle designed this low-slung unit (probably sans TV though). It was going to be built last year, but we continued to futz around with the design and now it’s on the back burner so we can make time for higher priority projects.
For the kitchen, we both did a lot of sketching. With a blank slate before us, we wanted to make sure we were thinking about every little detail. Obviously, this wasn’t the final version but going through the process was invaluable. (On that tangent, always a good idea to hire an architect, especially for small spaces that require a high level of efficiency!)
Before the stair cabinet fauxdenza or the loft, Kyle did this sketch of a possible stair guardrail. We were also going to do a little bench and message center of sorts between the bedroom and bathroom, but that was before the sliding door concept came to fruition.
I did this SketchUp model for the basement, oh…about three years ago. It’s close to our final plan, but instead of a little nook with a desk, we’ll probably do a linen closet of sorts (since the desk will now be in the loft). For now we’re just focusing on the right half of the basement – the laundry room and second bathroom will have to happen later.
Last spring, we were exploring design ideas for the back deck and awning and Kyle did this sketch. As you may recall, the deck got a bit (ok, a lot) bigger and we still haven’t built the awning. (This year? Maybe?) At any rate, the design challenge here (as it is with any building in Seattle) is how to provide protection from the rain while allowing light through. In our case, it also provides a way to BBQ the other 10 months out of the year. So yes, the awning design needs a bit more thought and we still have steel panels laying in our driveway, ready to build that second planter box. Good thing our future daughter isn’t going to care about the backyard for a while.
So there’s a snapshot of the last 5+ years of our life. Yeah, we’re having fun.
the sad basement: a look back
As we begin to work on our basement (again), we thought it might be fun to rewind back to ’06 and revisit the metamorphosis that has already taken place.
So here goes. When we bought our home in ’06, it came with a finished basement. Yep. Something like this:
A built-in wardrobe, hunter green carpet remnants, lovely drapes and a rainbow for good measure.
Hey there, how many fuse boxes can you fit in an old home? (Out of necessity, we had the electrical service professionally upgraded and a new panel installed before we moved in.)
Ahh, the Indestructo. We’re guessing this was a 1940’s coal-burning furnace that was later converted to heating oil. Because there was no blower, the hot air rose to the first floor via gravity, which is why the ducts are so huge. At any rate, we never used it. Our house had been vacant for a year before we moved in and we didn’t want to sink any money into a heating system that made us super nervous in the first place. But the furnace wasn’t the only problem – our dryer vented into the basement and the washing machine drained directly into the utility sink. Sigh.
The furnace exhausted out of a brick service chimney (which originally served a wood-burning stove in the basement and one in the kitchen). During one of the home’s earlier “remodels”, an interior stair was added to connect the basement to the main floor. The landing was framed around the chimney. Classy. This made doing laundry the first couple of years a real pain in the ass.
Our basement is half crawl space, which looked something like this 5+ years ago. The ductwork? Covered with asbestos tape. (Before we moved in, we collected samples of various flooring, wallboard, and duct tape throughout the house and had it professionally tested for asbestos.)
For the first year or so, we didn’t do much in the basement besides clean things up, fix the dryer vent and try to make it a bit homier. (At the time, we just had a desktop computer that we set up in the basement “home office”. Oh the shame.) In early 2008, after we’d saved up some money we had the asbestos professionally abated. It was expensive, but not a job we wanted to tackle due to the amount of ductwork and small spaces we’d have to crawl around in. After the crew was done, we were left with this furnace carcass, which we hauled away to a scrap metal collection place.
With the furnace gone, we no longer needed that pesky chimney (in fact, during the roof replacement in ’07 we tore the chimney down to the attic). The whole thing came down easily. Too easily.
During some earlier exploratory demolition, we had discovered some interesting things about our basement. First, the wall between the basement and crawl – y’know…the one holding back 4′-5′ of dirt, was indeed made of wood! As we shook our heads in disbelief, the only logical explanation was that the basement was originally built so that the dirt just natural sloped down and that it needed no formal retaining. Sometime later (likely when the basement was “finished out”), the additional studs and wallboard were added.
Second, the back portion of our house was sagging a bit because the beams that span over the crawl space had begun to fail. There were a series of posts and small concrete “footings” that had settled over the years and were no longer holding anything up. Before we starting the big dig fest, Kyle added several temporary supports (sitting on CMU post bases) to prevent further sagging.
Now that we were entering the zone of “substantial structural work”, we considered our options and what would be best for the long-term plan for our house. We considered digging out the crawl space to create one larger basement space, but soon realized that the labor involved to remove the dirt and underpin the entire foundation would not be worth the 300+/- square feet that we would gain. We also considered leaving it a dirt crawl space (but still fixing the structural problems), but decided that in such a small house, the space was too valuable to not use. The compromise? Short basement.
In order to convert the crawl into a useable space, we needed to remove a good deal of dirt. This was the beginning of Kyle’s worst nightmare. Good thing he was only 29 at the time. I think we’re now too old (or maybe just too wise) to do this type of thing again.
So he dug and dug and dug. In addition to removing dirt entirely, he also had to dig giant holes for new concrete footings that would support the new enhanced beams.
And as you know from our drainage project last summer, we totally hit hardpan soil. When the pick ax came out, it was a tough day.
OMG WHAT HAVE WE GOT OURSELVES INTO?
To complicate the process further, the only way to get the dirt out was to shovel it into buckets that got carried up the exterior stairs and dumped into wheelbarrows that got carted into the back of our truck. I don’t remember how many trips we had to make, but it was most likely about 10x more than we originally thought. (And now you know why working with dirt makes us so bitter.)
But after a few months, we were ready for concrete. Kyle had never really worked with reinforced concrete, but that didn’t stop him. We bought some rebar off Craigslist that was leftover from a job site and got busy. Kyle even built his own rebar bending jig.
Craigslist turned out to be a great source for concrete supplies in general – we found most of what we needed for formwork that way and then we resold it after we were done. Since we were doing this on the weekends, we scheduled the concrete work in three different pours. The first weekend was the footings for the new retaining wall.
We used 2x’s as temporary shoring to prevent any blowouts during the pour. The concrete was pumped in through the hose coming through the window, a technique that actually worked quite well.
With the footings in place, Kyle finished up the formwork for the walls.
And the next weekend the pumper truck was back again.
With the concrete wall in place, it was time to fix the beams. Kyle used the red bottle jacks and a laser level to raise the existing beam back to where it should be. During this time, I was on the main floor doing damage control. With each crank of the jacks all you could hear was the sound of plaster cracking throughout the back half of the house. And this is exactly why we knew we had to fix the floor framing before we did anything on the main floor.
After the beams and floor joists where level again, Kyle sistered on LVL’s to each side of the original beams and installed new posts on top of the new concrete footings. With plenty of hefty connections and bolts, it was like finishing up reconstructive surgery on our elderly house. Sadly, the digging wasn’t done just yet. Kyle still needed to level out the remaining dirt so we could pour a thin concrete slab over the entire crawl space.
After the dirt was level, we added a vapor barrier, welded wire mesh reinforcing and a new slab on top. We also added a layer or rigid insulation along the perimeter to provide a thermal break between the foundation wall and slab.
This project took us nearly a year from start to finish. In between adding the new beams and the crawl space slab, we also gutted and remodeled our bedroom and bathroom. To further add to the insanity, during this time we were also taking the first 6 (of 9) architecture registration exams. Oh 2008, you were so painful.
The final step in the crawl space was to move stuff back in. To save our knees, Kyle found these used interlocking rubber tiles off Craigslist which work like a charm.
After two years without a heating system, we finally were able to get a new furnace! To free up space in the basement, we chose a model that could fit in the crawl space. The ductwork was also designed so most of it stays in the crawl space (which will come in handy during this next phase of basement work).
In 2009, we completed a seismic retrofit to our basement. In old houses like ours, the wood framing was not properly connected to the concrete foundation walls. This becomes a weak point during an earthquake, something akin to hitting someone in the knees with a bat. So to remedy the situation, Kyle installed hold downs and anchor bolts along the perimeter to tie the framing to the foundation. Then we insulated and added a vapor barrier.
Finally, we added plywood to create a more structural shear wall.
During this time, our “stuff” had been shuffled around from one location to another, but I was finally able to implement my obsessive organizational skills in our new short basement. (We call it a short basement because it is a conditioned space and does not require any type of venting.) We use the short basement mostly for out of season stuff, like decorations, ski gear, camping gear, luggage, etc. It’s also been an invaluable space for various other storage needs as we’ve tackled different rooms of the house.
In the early part of 2010, we started packing up our belongings on the main floor and moving them down to the basement. A few months later, we moved our furniture down and set up our temporary basement apartment. It wasn’t stylish, but it was functional.
For the kitchen we went with industrial chic. This was our kitchen for about 7 months.
When the big remodel of 2010 was done, we moved our furniture back upstairs, but the basement had become a total disaster area, filled with building materials, empty boxes and who knows what else. Over the last year, we’ve been able to reestablish order to the space and purge what we no longer needed. (Which is good, because now we’re ready to tear things up again.)
And that’s how we deconstructed and reconstructed our basement over the course of 5 years. Now it’s time to actually finish something (no more sad basement?). More details coming.
the yard: issues
A common thread during our remodel process has been the unglamorous and mundane task of fixing things. Unfortunately, our yard is no exception to this trend. While we’ve made substantial progress over the last several years, there are still some significant projects to undertake. The good news – we’ve had almost five years to identify the problem areas, think about how we use the spaces and come up with a priority list.
Drainage: As I write this, it has been raining for nearly 20 hours non-stop (and it’s May, hello!!) – so yeah, water management is a big deal. In older neighborhoods like ours, homes often have inadequate gutters and downspouts that either spit out directly into the yard or tie into the combined sewer and stormwater system. In all new development and remodel projects, roof runoff must either go to a dedicated stormwater system or infiltrate on site. When we replaced our roof, we installed new gutters and downspouts (our old gutters were wood!), but the water still ultimately ends up in the sewer or in our yard. This poses problems during heavy or prolonged rain, when water finds its way into our basement via hydrostatic pressure. It doesn’t happen often and it doesn’t usually do any damage because our basement is unfinished, but it’s a problem that absolutely has to be fixed before we finish out that space. In short, we’ll be doing a lot of digging around the perimeter of our house and installing a series of drains that lead to a dry well where the water can infiltrate properly and “recharge the aquifer”. I know, more dirt digging. Awesome. (Although, I think Kyle really wants an excuse to rent a backhoe.) In addition to roof run-off, we’ll also improve the infiltration rate of our planting strip. Our street is slightly sloped and during heavy rains, water comes sweeping down the sidewalk and into the planting strip, making the area a good candidate for a rain garden.
Circulation: We’ll be focusing primarily on the front yard this summer and circulation is one of the top design criteria. Basically, we need a pathway system that links the driveway, sidewalk and street to the front door, with a secondary connection to the south side yard. We want something that is modern but not in-your-face; we also want to minimize the amount of impervious surfaces as much as possible. (The catawampus concrete pavers in the above photo have to go!)
Lounging: Our front yard faces west and gets great evening sun. The stoop we built two summers ago (shown above) provides a nice, informal sitting area, but we’d like to dedicate part of the yard for general lounging and maybe even some al fresco dining (fancy!). The yard is by no means level so we’ll have to do some grading and terracing to make it work.
Soil: After we fix our drainage issues, we’ll be amending the soil like crazy. Fortunately, in Seattle our food waste gets picked up and converted to compost so we have some great local resources to go to.
Plants: This is the fun part, but it’s also the part that makes us the most nervous. Truth be told, there’s a lot we don’t know about plants and our track record is not good. The Camellia (shown above) that we painstakingly transplanted from the front to side yard during our exterior renovation – totally dead. We don’t have the details worked out just yet, but we know we want to stick with native, low-maintenance options. We’re also ok with saving money by buying smaller plants and trees and being patient while they “fill in”. Finally, we’ll install a simple irrigation system for the dry summer months and while the plants establish. And even though we rocked the mulch look far longer than we originally anticipated, we intentionally saved the landscaping for last. There is no way plants would have survived the roof tear off or all of the siding work and by not having anything to protect, it was one less thing to worry about during those projects.
Lastly, we’ve got a serious budget to work with. Last year was crazy, so this year is all about scaling down and phasing. In fact, we’ll probably complete the rest of the exterior in 3-4 phases, which will be dictated by time, cost, and sequencing of other larger projects. We’re excited to get our hands dirty and tackle this summer’s projects, but we also want to enjoy summer. There are still so many things that we want to do and explore (berry picking has been on my list for years!) and we’re adamant about making sure this summer is an equal balance of work and play. That is, if summer ever comes.
(P.S. – I’m playing around with ideas for a new blog header. The old one had been bothering me for a while and so I’ve been sketching out ideas for something simple but effective. I’m still tweaking it, but I think it’s an improvement!)
(P.P.S – Well, it pretty much rained all day so instead of cleaning up the raised veggie bed, I cleaned up the House Tour page. I created new pages for the mudroom, flex room and loft and added more up-to-date photos for the kitchen, dining and living room.)
loft reveal
With our efforts focused on finishing the main floor, the attic loft has been “almost finished” for several months now. But with summer looming (and summer in Seattle = lots of visitors), it was time to put our work pants back on and just get it done.
First though, let’s go back in time:
This photo was taken in 2006 during the inspection, a fairly typical attic by 1910 standards (minus the structurally questionable chimney).
In the summer of 2007 we tore off our roof. I love this shot from inside the attic, but man…talk about a nerve-racking couple of days when we literally didn’t have a roof. During this project we also sistered on new 2×4’s to each existing 2×4 rafter and took out the knee braces and chimney.
This photo was taken a year ago, right before demo. Kyle and our friend Dustin painstakingly shoveled insulation to one side of the attic so we could demo the ceilings over the kitchen/living/dining area (at the time, the loft was not part of the plans).
But after demo, we couldn’t not make use of that space and so here we are today – yes, it’s still an empty room, but it’s done.
I painted the space in January so it was really just flooring and finish electrical work left to do (since we’ve also thought about using the area for a little home office, Kyle installed CAT 5 and ethernet too). For flooring, we ended up going with the “Love Ewe” wool carpet tiles (in “Dorset Brown”), which were generously provided by Flor. The tiles are made in the USA of dye-free wool and they are super soft to walk on!
Before ordering the tile, we took measurements of the space and did a quick layout in AutoCad to figure out how many tiles we would need and what would be the most efficient configuration.
After the boxes of tile were lugged up to the loft, we decided to start with a single row down the center, snapping two chalk lines on the plywood to serve as a guide.
At the edges and ladder opening, Kyle trimmed each tile using a utility knife and metal straight edge.
For anyone who hasn’t worked with Flor tiles before, they are very easy to install. It’s a “floating” system, which means the tiles don’t actually stick to the floor. Rather, a round plastic sticker at each corner holds the adjacent tiles to each other and since the tiles are bound by walls on all four sides, they don’t move at all. By starting in the center and working our way outwards, we were able to ensure that everything was straight and that all of the cutting would be saved for last. (Note: we installed the baseboard trim earlier in the process, holding it slightly off the subfloor so the tiles could easily slip underneath.)
In less than 2 hours, we were done! We really like the texture and color of the tiles (I know…brown, we’re so predictable) and we look forward to this being a dog hair free zone.
At the opening for the ladder, Kyle made a custom shaped trim piece out of fir, with a slight lip so the floor tiles could tuck underneath. The sconce above is from Resolute and the switch is located low and to the right of the ladder, so it’s easy to flip the light on as you’re coming up the ladder (or vice versa). The other paddle switch is wired to an outlet on the opposite side of the room, with the thought that we’ll eventually have a small lamp there to provide more even light for the space.
It’s a little hard to tell in this photo, but we also installed a roller shade for the roof window. It provides some privacy and a nice, diffuse light for the space. Tucked inside the frame is an exterior black-out roller shade that can be used on hot days (though judging by the spring we’ve been having, the next hot day could be months away). For those that are new here, the roof window pivots at the mid-point, creating an opening large enough to crawl out of in case of an emergency.
Unlike traditional lofts that are completely open on one side to the space below, we decided to instead create a light shaft over the basement stair to provide visual connection to below. (The alternative was to do a single-slope vault over the kitchen and dining with the loft completely open to that space, but we were concerned that the proportions would feel weird and the ceiling shape might be too ’70s for our taste.) Anyway, we wanted to maximize the opening but also needed to provide a guardrail to prevent any accidental toppling into the basement. In what I think is a pretty elegant solution, Kyle designed the loft ladder handrail to extend up and become this guardrail. Not only does it look hot, but it’s a good place to grab onto when going up or down the ladder. With a steel skeleton, it’s rigid enough to take the force of people pushing against it.
Sorry Bailey, you lose on this one.
From below, the angle is oblique enough that the space still feels secluded. The vaulted area also provides a means to exhaust warm air out of the house during the summer.
Kyle and I took a moment to bust out our Modulor Man poses. I think Corbu would approve.
Finally, here’s a little tutorial on how to enter and exit the loft. Understandably, some people get a little nervous with ladders so we tried to make the journey as easy and natural as possible.
Of course, we still have plans to actually furnish the space but since it’s mainly going to be a spot for guests and Sunday afternoon reading (which is what Kyle is doing as I type this – oh wait…sounds like he’s playing Tiny Wings now), we’re in no big rush. We do have some ideas for different layouts that we’ll share later, but in the meantime we’re going the inflatable route. That’s right, we have a pretty deluxe Aerobed that we got from a friend and with an old quilt and some fluffy pillows I’m sure we can make the space look bohemian chic.
