Saturday, February 16, 2008

The Master Bed/Laundry Room Shell (AKA The Back Room)

I have been struggling with ideas for how to renovate our back room. It is a 10' by 20' room that was added on in the 1920's. It has a slanted roof, windows into the main house, and 2 HUGE windows. Oh, and peel and stick vinyl tiles.

When we moved in, we decided we would convert it into our master bedroom and laundry room. We moved the laundry out of the kitchen and into this room the first weekend. We moved a bed and a clothes rack in for the bedroom side.

And then we planned. And planned. And planned.

And three years later, we are still sleeping in the room. We added a freestanding closet to separate the laundry area and the sleeping area, but it is still open to the rest of the house.

I discovered Google SketchUp tonight, and drew a mock-up of our back room:
Photobucket
I added the washer and dryer (the two boxes), as they are likely NOT moving. The top of the picture is attached to the house, and the other walls are exterior.

We are definitely removing the two HUGE windows on the bottom of the pictures, along with the window into the guest room at the top left. We are putting in French doors on the bottom.

Nothing else is final.

The room is 20' by 10' and we need:
A bedroom
A closet
A laundry room

I'm trying some ideas out in SketchUp right now! Any ideas?

3 comments:

The Speaker of the House said...

You should keep the bedroom on the left, try to get AT LEAST 10x14 for that space although even that is hardly Master Bedroom "suite" size. The MORE Room you can give over to that bedroom the better. In order to save space, don't do a "Laundry Room" but rather build your washer and dryer into a "built-in" within the walk in closet space on the right side. If you're going to put in french doors at the bottom, lose the exterior door on the right so you can max our the wall space needed for a good walk-in... (Just my humble prof. opinion... chuckle.)

Karen C said...

A FO of our house had a swanky solution for the window opening thing when our AKA Back Room was enclosed. Blogged that for ya.

http://quickerfixerupper.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-to-do-with-inside-window.html

Jill -Forever and Ever House said...

I agree with speaker of the house...I think you should do a walk-in closet and then have the laundry room as part of that. :o)