project highlight: coffee house basement
Our Longfellow Coffee House project is extra near and dear to our hearts as the home of one of our founders. Along with that, it also means that the project timeline and budget has looked a lot different than other projects.
The basement that we started with was 90% unfinished, with just an existing laundry space and an egress window that had been added several years prior. Our goal was to create additional living space and a ¾ bathroom while maximizing storage as much as possible. The existing laundry room would stay as-is and we needed to plan around the existing utilities (furnace, water heater, and waste pipes) and the stairs.
The first step was planning the bathroom to maximize the efficiency of the above-grade and laundry room plumbing. We wanted a walk-in shower that was compact yet more spacious than the minimum size requirement. The best place for the bathroom meant that the sink area would need to be configured around an existing structural column and the size of the space was dialed in to give optimal access to the adjacent crawl space for storage.
Planning these spaces first, offered a generous amount of contiguous space for a living area and flexible space for an open office or guest bed. To conceal the utilities and provide acoustic separation from the living space, we designed a custom sliding door that can not only close off the furnace room and storage but also slide to close off the basement “guest suite” from the stairs and laundry room.
The material palette was kept simple so that the space is easy to maintain and holds up to potential moisture damage. (The existing foundation was in great shape but we always want to make wise decisions when working with a home that’s nearly 100 years old.) The existing concrete floors were stained black and left at a single coat to show the visual texture of the layers and history below. In the living and flexible office/guest spaces we used a carpet tile with a cushion backing to provide softness and warmth underfoot that can be replaced in the event of moisture or a shift in aesthetic preference. The bathroom received a simple hex tile floor with a textured wall tile.
In the existing primary bedroom upstairs there was a freestanding gas fireplace that didn’t make sense functionally or spatially so we decided to extend the stack and relocate it to the basement. The new location of the fireplace drove the living room configuration which allowed the furniture layout to fall naturally into place.
Storage is maximized through vertical bike storage in the furnace room, open access to a large crawl space, and horizontal shelving that provides storage and personality along each side of the egress window. Upon initiating the project, the crawl space was filled with asbestos-containing siding that had been removed from the home’s exterior at one point. We worked with Envirobate to safely remove all of the asbestos, prior to insulating and finishing the crawl space to provide temperature controlled storage and improved temperature control for the porch above.
Finishing the Coffee House basement was a great way to add value and increase the longevity of the home for the owners.
