An Attic Turned Ultimate Kids' Bedroom Suite

An Attic Turned Ultimate Kids' Bedroom Suite

 

By: Deborah Baldwin, This Old House magazine

From: thisoldhouse.com 

All Tucked In

Ask kids, and they'll tell you the ideal place to sleep is in a tree house or on a sailboat, like Max in Where the Wild Things Are. Architect Darren Helgesen incorporated that spirit in this attic redo at a century-old house in East Hampton, New York, where he used warm finishes and smart details to turn the dark, sloped-ceilinged space into a shipshape two-bedroom suite. The homeowners, Bill and Cory Laverack, had already renovated the rest of the house. "We used a lot of beadboard and liked it," says Cory, an interior designer, so Helgesen continued it here, calling on general contractor Ronald Gray and carpenter Paul Stisi to fit together beaded boards and built-ins as neatly as jigsaw pieces. The team also rejiggered an existing bath and put down a pine floor. "It was always their favorite place," says Cory, recalling how the couple's four kids would hide out upstairs with friends every chance they got. "And now it's the ultimate sleepover space."

Shown: Snug built-ins with below-bed storage, roof windows, pine flooring, and lots of glossy beadboard opened up the space and made it more functional.

Before: Hodgepodge Hideaway

Freestanding furniture, little light, and shabby, not chic, finishes made the attic bedrooms feel smaller.   

 

Smart Storage

Deep drawers with soft-close glides hold clothes and linens, and the built-in bedside table hides ductwork. A mirror-image bedroom occupies the space at the other end of the hall.

Safety First

A sash stop prevents kids from opening the window more than 6 inches.

Open Door Policy

The hallway's vaulted ceiling extends to the door frames; when closed, the wall-height doors have triangles of space above them to channel air and light.

Material-Minded

The bath alcove's window trim and shutters are made of vinyl to resist water damage.

Shutters: Summit Hill

Low-Key Lighting

Wall-mount sconces with streamlined porcelain bases frame the medicine cabinet and reinforce the period look.

Sconces: Rejuvenation

Clean and Kid-Friendly

Shaker-style pegs take the place of towel bars. The room's beadboard walls and trim were finished with moisture-resistant oil-based paint.

Paint: Benjamin Moore's Ivory White

Period Details

The pedestal sink, porcelain-lever faucet, and framed-mirror cabinet hark back to the 1920s, not long after the house was built.

Sink: Porcher. Faucet: Waterworks. Custom medicine cabinet: Graystone Builders

Floor Plan

Adding roof windows, rebuilding the bath, and lining the space with built-ins and glossy beadboard made the space feel bigger.

1. Raised the peak of the ceiling (including the hall and door frames) to about 6 feet 10 inches.

2. Built in bedside tables and twin beds with deep drawers that replace dressers.

3. Moved the tub to take advantage of the light brought in by a pair of double-hung windows.

4. Added roof windows, which bring in light and double as emergency exits.

5. Replaced the panes in existing windows with safety glass.

From: thisoldhouse.com

An Attic Penthouse Beyond Compare in Gothemburg, Sweden

An Attic Penthouse Beyond Compare in Gothemburg, Sweden.

From: freshome.com

Here is an amazing apartment that we are certain will not leave you indifferent. After all, who can resist a fresh, spacious loft, conveniently situated in a beautiful historic building and tastefully displaying exposed beams, a lovely chimney, lavish cuisine, tasteful arrangements and views of Gothenburg’s red and green rooftops? Found on Alvhem, the crib you are about to discover is structured on two levels, one of which is actually an expansion of the initial apartment and is situated on the top building floor. The views in the “attic” are absolutely fantastic and the interior design is flawless. The bottom level features three rooms plus kitchen and can be characterized by bright colors, combined with an excellent dim lighting scheme. The open plan living room with rustic elements (beams and bricks) creates a highly welcoming environment for having friends over. One could say this apartment has it all; what’s your opinion?

Great Girls Attic Room

Great girls attic room
Via: Cardea Building Co.

source: Cardea Building Co.

Fantastic attic playroom adjacent to girl's bedroom with greige walls paint color, coral modern sofa, Roost pasha Coffee Table, hot pink pillow, Horchow Pemberton Rug and twin desks with white plastic task chairs.

source: Cardea Building Co.

Coral & gray girl's attic playroom with greige walls paint color, coral linen modern sofa, metal drum Roost Pasha Coffee Table, red rolling library cart and gray Horchow Pemberton Rug.

Remodeled attic office

From: Apartment Therapy.com.

Noel Clarke, of 2C Design Studio, transformed the neglected attic of his Victorian house in Somerville, Mas­sachusetts, into an immaculate modern work space. Rather than bury the room’s past under layers of Sheetrock, he integrated most of its existing features. “There are ways to make interventions that develop a dialogue between old and new so they feel like they are both part of some continuous history of the space,” Clarke says.

Every modification provides clues to the attic’s former incarnation. Sheets of bent plywood curve along the slope of the pitched roof and expose patches of the old timber beams underneath. Pine slats on one of the two chimneys and the gable wall are spaced to show traces of the original structures. And a coat of glossy white paint doesn’t mask the water-damaged rough patches of the flooring. The materials, mostly purchased at the Home Depot, were relatively cheap, but the true cost was Clarke’s own labor: it took him five years to complete what he calls his “sweat equity project.”

Architect Noel Clarke created a wall of storage by tucking shelving into the Victorian attic’s vertical framing (below) and fashioned the simple light fixtures from porcelain lamp holders, coiled wire, and exposed bulbs. The existing banister was remilled and mounted onto a new steel armature.

 

 

 

One of a Kind Attic

One of a Kind Attic

From: dornob.com

 

 

Banister? Better! Steel Mesh Replaces Railing on Loft Stairs

Most free-spirited architectural and interior designers dread the confines of code, dictating that they must put this here or that there for safety reasons. Railings are not, however, the only way to keep someone safe on a staircase.

This solution takes personal security as well as aesthetics, space and style into account, bending the rules (literally, using flexible mesh) in a way that won’t break the occupant’s bones.

A1Architects had to work within the confines of an old attic in Prague, its sloped roof constraining the second-floor footprint of this remodeled top-floor apartment.

Letting light in and views down from this guest loft level was a key goal, accomplished with a combination of skylights and see-through, ultra-slim, fence-like steel to prevent falls without significant visual obstruction.

Meanwhile, wall-side shelving hugging the ceiling and hidden in-stair spaces  along the way up provided maximum storage in this otherwise small-space residence – also reinforcing the space-opening curves found throughout.

None of this is meant to suggest the rest of the loft is anything short of lovely, but this critical design move informs the rest – a combination of light-painted (white) and reflective (steel) surfaces combined with leftover (bugs and) features from the previous configuration.

A 430 sq ft Rennovated Apartment in Tel Aviv

A 430 sq ft Renovated Apartment in Tel Aviv

From: LittleDiggs.com

Two reasons for me posting this article:

1.  it is not an attic but one can use the architectural concepts that were used here to design an attic.

2.  Though I am living in Pennsylvania at the moment - I am originally from Israel. There is amazing arcitecture there.

Place: Tel Aviv
Architect: SFARO
Size: 430 sq ft
This is another excellent example of the use of a 'cube' as a solution for maximizing space, utility, functionality, and design.Following Tel-Aviv’s soaring housing prices over the last 3 years, many people were forced to renovate their existing apartments instead of selling and buying bigger ones.This owner decided to transform her studio apartment into a 1 bedroom, including storage units, a large separate kitchen and a full size queen bedroom.As a design solution, we chose to condense all the programmatic functions and storage units into a cube which was centered in the middle of the space, thus dividing the apartments into 4 zones, while maintaining a 360 degree circulation around it, which makes the space seem endless and bigger than it actually is.By adding sliding doors that disappear into the cube, the space can be altered according to the time of day and the various needs of the owner, contributing further more to the sense of a multi-functional and multi-layered space.

+ SFARO Architects