Conversion of Two Studios into a Single One Bedroom Apt.-Design Ideas

Okay, so now I've got a rough draft of what we want to do with the basement. I need a plan for converting the two studio apartments into a single one bedroom....

Here's the existing layout.

Here's the design conditions.

1. Do as little rebuilding and demo as possible.

2. Be able to keep existing tenant in place while work is going on.

This was my first idea.

But duh, problem with this is that I would have to put the tenant out to do this as she lives in the lower unit.

Then I thought, well why not use the other kitchen as the bedroom.

But that makes for a VERY small bedroom...

So then I thought up this uh, dodge?

With this idea I end up with a big bedroom and a huge closet. I admit I'm sort of designing this for the current tenant who is a grandmother with two young grand sons who spend a lot of time with her. With this design she can have her private space by closing the door to the bedroom and the grand kids can run around in the other room. That, and she won't have to share the bathroom with them any longer.

Of course, there's nothing stopping someone from using the huge closet room as the bedroom and using the master bedroom as the living room.

I also like this idea as I think I can do all the work on the one vacant unit without disturbing her too much, and then hopefully the reframing of the closets and hallway will not be too much of a PITA and that can be done relatively quickly.

So, that's my best idea y'all have any others?

Update!!!

Went down to the city yesterday to speak to the zoning folks.

Good News On Two Fronts!!!

1. The major design review for the deck is just about to be approved!!! Yahoo!!! That means I officially have 6 parking spaces and the deck does not have to be torn down!!! YAY!!!!

2. I was told that the planning approval for the switching around of the units is an over the counter thing!! Yahoo!!!!!!!!!!! That means no $2500 major design review!!! And it can happen quicker.

So, now I need to get the planning packet together which has seperate conditions to the actual building permit packet which I also have to get together.

So, we celebrated with tasty margarita's (it was Cinco de Mayo) and nacho's.

Bottom Floor Bath Project Illustrated

So I've been learning my new to me house designing program and tried to do up our bottom bath in appropriate style. I got pretty much everything spot on except for the dang glass enclosure for the shower...can not for the life of me figure out how to do that.....

Here's a plan view of the bath with fixtures and electrical symbols.

Crazy overhead rendered view....lots of tile happening in this bathroom! The counter top on the vanity is not tiled but I couldn't figure out how to make it a solid surface.

Here's a shot of the vanity end of the room. Not sure if we are going to do crown molding on this floor but I threw it in just for kicks.

Here's a total side view of everything. You can even see the ceiling mounted rain shower head and the ceiling fan and light. I like how the toilet paper holder is suspended in air in this shot.

That's it for now. I'm still figuring out the plumbing widgets that I need to order to redo all the plumbing in the house with PEX.

Didn't get a lot of helpful advice on how to remove the clapboard siding but I'm working on figuring out a way that won't kill me.

Future Plans for the House

Well I guess I should really say 'Future Near-Term Plans for the House'.

We've decided that while I've got some extra 'free time' now that I'd apply myself to getting some projects done around the house. We have an f-ton of permits expiring starting in October so we've got to try to close as many of them out as possible or else we'll be on the hook for the fees all over again AND for any changes in the building codes since the permit was pulled.
The giant foundation-entire downstairs permit is the first to expire in the beginning of Oct. so we're hoping that we can get as much of that complete as possible. We should be able to complete everything but the drywalling (can't do the drywalling because lots of framing, plumbing is going to have to be added to the area when we redo the top two floors) by the drop dead date...that won't close the permit out but we're hoping stuff that was signed off on won't have to be re-inspected.

Job 1 is turning this room into a full bath. We'll finally have a bathroom on the ground floor so people won't have to go upstairs to potty during patio parties.

We've already got the permits to do this so its just a matter of time...
I get to learn how to hang doors during this project. I'm going to plumb this bath with PEX tubing so we'll see how that goes with the building dept.
I'll do a more in-depth post on just the bathroom with the floor plan and stuff later.

We bought the bathroom vanity a while ago...I think there was a sale or something....here's the back of it, pretty exciting huh!

We already have the toilet too! Its a super cool wall hung unit that looks like a regular toilet-not all super high-tech and inappropriate for a Victorian bathroom.

Its an elongated bowl and since its wall hung we can set it at any height we like! Hello 20" seat height! I can't wait to use this baby! Actually, it will be good for when we're elderly and can't bend our knees so well...

This is the plumbing for the shower. Notice how its above the concrete floor? Ya this is going to be interesting....we're going to have to build some sort of raised mortar bed-platform thingy to get the level of the shower floor correct.

On the back of the house we need to rebuild the back stairs (we get to cut our first stair stringers hurray!!) and make them code compliant to get the back deck amnestied.

If we're lucky we can get the stairs to land on the edge of the sunken living room. We need to get rid of that ramp its outright dangerous when its wet and or you're drunk...

Here's an up close shot of the jury-rigged stair stringer. That vertical post is just kinda wedged in there and that horizontal member is just nailed up to a deck post....not real-super secure.

Our neighbor who we share this fugly bit of fence with would really, really like to redo it. We basically can never see this fence unless we go looking for it. But because it shares a border and its currently built on our side of the property line I'm going to get roped into , designing, spec'ing, making the lumber run and over-seeing the work being done...what fun. The neighbor who stares at this fence all day long, wants a fancy fence with an arbor top....which is fine, but much more expensive than what we want, which is just a basic well built fence that will last a long while and contain her dogs....hopefully we can come up with some sort of equitable compromise.

Now, what Irene really wants is to replace this section of fence which we stare at all day long with something that's not falling down and attractive looking. Unfortunately this is with a different neighbor who doesn't seem to care about it so we might be footing the bill to redo this section of fence ourselves.

On the left at the bottom of the fence, do you see how rotted the bottom of the fence boards are? That's because they were literally underground by that much from all the accumulated debris that the previous owner had spread around the backyard....

Remodeling Renderings.

All the posts lately have been pretty word-tastic so I thought I'd do post with lots of pictures!
These are pictures I dug up from the cd-rom Winans Construction gave us. For some idiotic reason they were saved as .bmp files? Who the heck uses that file format for digital images anymore? I had to convert them all to a more sensible and much smaller .jpg.

The Outside of the House

Here's a back view or the south view of the house. Dig those two tiny looking windows way up high. I really like the stained glass transom over our little french doors to our new deck! I like how they even pulled off a reasonable facsimile of our sunken patio. You can just see the new dormer on the upper left corner.

South view from a slightly different angle. You can see the new stairs coming down. One thing I'm not convinced about is the placement of these new stairs. They start way farther in than our current stairs and take up a large chunk of our new deck.

Top view of the house. You can see both new dormers and the skylights on the far side. you can also see how much of our deck the stairs take up. That deck space there next to the stairs is like 4' deep. I guess that's big enough to be useful for something? I like how the new windows in the kitchen line up with the existing windows on the bottom floor and how the windows in the closets line up with those.

This 3/4 front view shows that the new windows and dormer on the back of the house are not so intrusive right? They look like they've always been there right?

Other side of the house 3/4 view. All the windows here are original in this weird mish-mash pattern. The two small windows on the top floor are new and in Tasha's bathroom. They certainly don't throw off the symmetry of this side of the house. Man this side of the house is ugly. Guess I'm glad that in real life this view is impossible as its blocked by fences, and garages.

The Master Bedroom

Here's a shot of the master bedroom. The doors on either side of the bed are pocket doors leading into the his and hers closets which are housed inside one of the new dormers.

The other side of the master bedroom in the new dormer. This shows our super cool built for two window bench seat with storage and storage cabinets on either side. In the afternoons sun will flood this area and it'll be a great place to while away a few minutes reading with the family. The door on the left that you can just barely see is the door to the master bath.

The Master Bath

This is a weird shot of what it would look like if you were standing in the shower looking out at the rest of the bathroom. You can see the tiny windows with the big trim which I think is super silly, and Irene's claw foot tub.

This is the view from the tub looking back at the bathroom. In this final version the steam shower is a bit smaller but the toilet is moved over behind it so its out of the way.

Laundry Area

This is a shot of the landing-laundry room at the top of the stairs. This shows the two new skylights we want to add to this area plus the washer and dryer. Right now theres a door at the top of the stairs and a wall about where the back of the washer is. Its very closed off and we hope that by opening this up we will be able to get bigger furniture up the stairs.

The Kitchen

Ahh, our lovely, lovely, kitchen....man did we pour our heart and souls into making this the super best-est kitchen ever...

This is the view from the french doors looking back at the dining nook. Look how high the windows are...I wonder if they're even be room to put them that High in reality...they're gonna need headers under them. I hope the designer took that into account... love the tin ceiling and the crown.

View from the dining nook looking back at the kitchen. That's a lot of cabinets. We just dug-up an old estimate for a cabinet place we found to make and install all the cabinets you see here plus a couple you can't see....guess how much it was? $28,000!! Actually a darn good price as it includes the custom dining area storage benches.

View from the prep sink looking back. Like all those windows along the south wall and the stained glass transom over the french doors. Also like how all the windows line up. Not sure about using the tin ceiling as a back-splash behind the stove..might be a royal pita to clean.

View from the doorway looking in. Look at all those windows! We're not going to need any lighting in the mornings. We also better make sure that there's something interesting to look at. Look how the back of the bench seat becomes the back-splash for the sink!

Tasha's Room

Here's a view from the bed looking back at the room. The doors on the left are (from the left) closet, room, bathroom. You can also see her desk-study area at the window and her built-in bookcases. Love the funky roof lines don't you?

Another view showing Tasha's bed and her built-in dresser.

Love this view as it shows Tasha's own person reading nook. Love how the designer couldn't get the wainscoting to follow the correct path.

Tasha's Bathroom

Not very exciting but the bath does fit everything our daughter will need. Though I think that the shower-tub controls are going to have to be swapped to the other side as the pocket door is supposed to slide into that wall...kinda hard to do when the wall is full of plumbing? Or I guess we could make that wall super thick?

View from the shower. Not a lot of space here but it meets code requirements.

That's it for now. We're still trying to get Winans Construction to uphold the contract we signed with them....but it's not looking good.

We're still trying to decide between two different contractors to actually do this build.

Trying to decide where the money is going to come from... ;)

Kitchen Design Ideas part 6 million

Okay so our post asking for design help ideas went over like a lead balloon
We wanted to share with y'all where we are with the kitchen remodel ideas.
We've talked to several designers, a design-builder and we've got several more in the chamber ready to be interviewed.


Here's the exact existing layout of the room which will be our kitchen.
Now with dimensions!!! The big giant windows are great for morning light but they are a pain to plan around! That and the window on the south wall is to dang close to the corner.

Here's our best attempt so far at a realistic remodel. The whole bump-out idea from earlier was kinda quashed by reality....We managed to get a little bit more space in the kitchen by squeezing down the chimney chase by 6" and removing half of it. Now its an AV cabinet and a small chase to run wires to the top floor. This also freed up enough space for us to put a corner china cabinet in the spot. Now we have somewhere to put our fancy wedding china and glasses...if we can find them Notice also that the wall between the bedroom and kitchen has been pushed into the bedroom 21". By moving the walls we gained 30 sq ft not fabulous but not horrible either. It makes the bedroom smaller but we think still quite livable with the 10' ceilings. We still plan on recessing the fridge into the wall so that its flush with the counters. Along the back wall we also moved the existing window away from the wall to allow for a corner wall cabinet. We did a mirror image window and cabinet on this same wall. Now the stove is flanked by windows with a view to the backyard.









Here's a shot looking into the room from standing in front of the stove. You can see the china hutch in the newly made corner. That weird pattern on the ceiling is my attempt to make it look like a tin ceiling with my cheap-o home design program. Lots of counter and cabinet space here.









Here's the view from the sink looking to the left. Not sure about the glass door into the sunporch its just a thought. It is a 'sunporch' and we might want to let light in from that direction. This also shows the new window we added to match the existing window on this wall.











Here's the view from the table looking at the fridge side of the room. In this version the fridge and pantry cabs run all the way to the ceiling while the rest are just standard cabinets. One odd thing about this layout is the door to the bedroom is more in the kitchen than it was before.









Here's the view looking towards the sink and stove. Notice we brought the window away from the wall 2' and lowered it so that we can see out of it more easily.






Well that's it for now. We hope to be able to find a capable designer to see if they can come up with a better solution. Some questions we still have are;

1. How much cabinet and counter space do we really need? Should all the wall cabinets go all the way to the ceiling to maximize storage?
2. What the best place for the main sink and can we fit a prep sink in there somewhere? Do we even need a prep sink?

Help! We need design help!

We are realizing that he have to step up our time table for remodeling-restoring our house. We can't afford to have it go on for-ever. The first step in having a project not go on forever is of course to have a well thought out overall plan......we don't have one of those yet really...so we could use a lot of help. Please see the illustrations and notes below.

If we use one of your ideas you will receive a super-fabulous Chez Neumansky themed prize!

Here's the first floor of our house. We have to call it 'unit A' cause the city considers the house a tri-plex with each level being a separate unit. So, the bottom floor is Unit A the middle floor is Unit B and the top floor is Unit C.

<- Here's the bottom floor. This is the floor we just reconfigured when we re-did the foundation. This floor is pretty set in stone at this point but we are open for ideas on how to get an interior stair up to the 2nd level. This pic shows a spiral stair in the laundry area but we are not married to that idea, that's just the best idea we could come up with...

<-Here's the middle floor of the house. Here we need major help in the kitchen area. We need to figure out how to fit everything in there. We need it to be an eat-in kitchen also and fit a 5'by3' table. We are not against moving-changing windows-walls-doors to make the kitchen work.

We also need to figure out how to get a stair down to the bottom level with out totally screwing up the flow and original character of the house. The kitchen and sun porch have already been stripped of any original details, those rooms can be changed the most. The Front two rooms and bedroom are original and we are loath to mess with them too much.

<- Here's the top floor of the house. Remember we gutted this floor in the de-stankification of the house. This shows our proposed idea for a bathroom but we are open to new ideas.

Basically, we want the top floor to function as our 'master bedroom retreat' (man I sound like I am trying to sell a house in Danville). To us that means a bedroom, an office-den, a bathroom and lots of storage.

Irene does not like the set-up shown above because when one person gets up way earlier than the other they have to walk over to the closet area, then walk back over across the bedroom to get to the bathroom. She thinks that it will be impossible to not piss off the person still trying to sleep....since that person is usually me she might be right....

So that's it we would appreciate any useful suggestions that y'all have. If you are really interested I have pdfs of the floors above also but I can't figure out how to put them on the blog for downloading? If you would like the pdf versions please send me an email and I'll mail 'em right out to ya.

Big Red Done Stamp on the Master Bath Design!!!

If anybody reading this gets the reference in the title you are super cool!!!
Its not like we are going to be able to actually start on the master bath anytime soon but we've come to a decision on how we are going to do it at least. We are going to have lots of tile. A good friend of ours is working at a tile shop and we can get his discount which is getting the tiles at cost which is like half off retail!! Woo-hoo we can afford tumbled marble or some such extravagant thing...


Here's are neat little plan view of the bathroom with the dimensions.
We are going to get rid of the middle window and stick the vanity-mirror thing there.
I figured out how to do a kooky birdseye rendered view so you can get an idea how its going to look. I have no idea what the color scheme is actually going to be I'm just goofing around here.
Here's the view from the steam shower out. Yep the steam shower is going to be pretty big. Big enough for at least 3...yay party in the steam shower!!! The benches will be great for lying on and taking a steam.

Here's the view from the tub looking back into the room. yep lots of tile....

So that's our final draft of the master bath, please let us know what you think we do consider all opinions when we are designing this stuff.

Our Master Bath Needs You!!!

Dang I must be bored out of my mind to do three blog posts in one night!!

Our master bath needs your help!! Its a weirdly shaped space and I really have no good idea on how to make use of it. The space is 17' wide and 6' deep. At the edges the knee wall is 3' 5" high and the roof is a 12/12 pitch. This is our first stab at a design and I am not happy with it. We gotta fit the clawfoot tub, a toilet, a decent sized vanity and the steam shower all up there in this weird space under the eves and I am stumped. No really, I'm stumped how we gonna fit all that stuff in there and have it be usable?


Here's the view if you were siting on the bench in the steam shower. I guess I like green tile? The toilet-vanity-tub are too close toghether and I don't know how to get more room.

Here's the view you would see if you were siting on the pot... There is 1' 7" inches between the toilet and the vanity...is that enough?
There is a whopping 1' 6" between the tub and the vanity...that can't be enough can it?


As you can see Irene and I could really use your help. Got any ideas on how to best utilize this space? We would really love to hear them. If you have the winning design or we use part of your design a fabulous prize awaits you!!!!


Seriously Hellllllp!
George from the Old House List gave me this idea for a redo. I have to admit it works a lot better. The only thing is, the bath vanity is up against a window. Where do you put the mirror? The windows are non original so I would not feel bad about losing the middle mirror so we could have a nice vanity-mirror cabinet thing there...