Bathroom remodel photos by Derrik Louie from Clarity NW

Jason Vosper Busy Bees Photography

Justina Blakeney used our Color-It Tool to create a custom motif that was all her own for her Elephant Star handpainted tiles, which pair beautifully with our 2x8s in Tidewater. Sink: Treeline Wood and Metalworks Faucet/fixtures: Kohler

Everything looking all white and beautiful. These shower components were strategically place to maximize space for a perfect shower time.

From Attic to Awesome Many of the classic Tudor homes in Minneapolis are defined as 1 ½ stories. The ½ story is actually an attic; a space just below the roof and with a rough floor often used for storage and little more. The owners were looking to turn their attic into about 900 sq. ft. of functional living/bedroom space with a big bath, perfect for hosting overnight guests. This was a challenging project, considering the plan called for raising the roof and adding two large shed dormers. A structural engineer was consulted, and the appropriate construction measures were taken to address the support necessary from below, passing the required stringent building codes. The remodeling project took about four months and began with reframing many of the roof support elements and adding closed cell spray foam insulation throughout to make the space warm and watertight during cold Minnesota winters, as well as cool in the summer. You enter the room using a stairway enclosed with a white railing that offers a feeling of openness while providing a high degree of safety. A short hallway leading to the living area features white cabinets with shaker style flat panel doors – a design element repeated in the bath. Four pairs of South facing windows above the cabinets let in lots of South sunlight all year long. The 130 sq. ft. bath features soaking tub and open shower room with floor-to-ceiling 2-inch porcelain tiling. The custom heated floor and one wall is constructed using beautiful natural stone. The shower room floor is also the shower’s drain, giving this room an open feeling while providing the ultimate functionality. The other half of the bath consists of a toilet and pedestal sink flanked by two white shaker style cabinets with Granite countertops. A big skylight over the tub and another north facing window brightens this room and highlights the tiling with a shade of green that’s pleasing to the eye. The rest of the remodeling project is simply a large open living/bedroom space. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the room is the way the roof ties into the ceiling at many angles – a necessity because of the way the home was originally constructed. The before and after photos show how the construction method included the maximum amount of interior space, leaving the room without the “cramped” feeling too often associated with this kind of remodeling project. Another big feature of this space can be found in the use of skylights. A total of six skylights – in addition to eight South-facing windows – make this area warm and bright during the many months of winter when sunlight in Minnesota comes at a premium. The main living area offers several flexible design options, with space that can be used with bedroom and/or living room furniture with cozy areas for reading and entertainment. Recessed lighting on dimmers throughout the space balances daylight with room light for just the right atmosphere. The space is now ready for decorating with original artwork and furnishings. How would you furnish this space?

The light transparent outlook onto greenery and a privacy screen creates a larger indulgent space without compromise. Image: Nicole England

Twin Peaks House is a vibrant extension to a grand Edwardian homestead in Kensington. Originally built in 1913 for a wealthy family of butchers, when the surrounding landscape was pasture from horizon to horizon, the homestead endured as its acreage was carved up and subdivided into smaller terrace allotments. Our clients discovered the property decades ago during long walks around their neighbourhood, promising themselves that they would buy it should the opportunity ever arise. Many years later the opportunity did arise, and our clients made the leap. Not long after, they commissioned us to update the home for their family of five. They asked us to replace the pokey rear end of the house, shabbily renovated in the 1980s, with a generous extension that matched the scale of the original home and its voluminous garden. Our design intervention extends the massing of the original gable-roofed house towards the back garden, accommodating kids’ bedrooms, living areas downstairs and main bedroom suite tucked away upstairs gabled volume to the east earns the project its name, duplicating the main roof pitch at a smaller scale and housing dining, kitchen, laundry and informal entry. This arrangement of rooms supports our clients’ busy lifestyles with zones of communal and individual living, places to be together and places to be alone. The living area pivots around the kitchen island, positioned carefully to entice our clients' energetic teenaged boys with the aroma of cooking. A sculpted deck runs the length of the garden elevation, facing swimming pool, borrowed landscape and the sun. A first-floor hideout attached to the main bedroom floats above, vertical screening providing prospect and refuge. Neither quite indoors nor out, these spaces act as threshold between both, protected from the rain and flexibly dimensioned for either entertaining or retreat. Galvanised steel continuously wraps the exterior of the extension, distilling the decorative heritage of the original’s walls, roofs and gables into two cohesive volumes. The masculinity in this form-making is balanced by a light-filled, feminine interior. Its material palette of pale timbers and pastel shades are set against a textured white backdrop, with 2400mm high datum adding a human scale to the raked ceilings. Celebrating the tension between these design moves is a dramatic, top-lit 7m high void that slices through the centre of the house. Another type of threshold, the void bridges the old and the new, the private and the public, the formal and the informal. It acts as a clear spatial marker for each of these transitions and a living relic of the home’s long history.

Justina Blakeney used our Color-It Tool to create a custom motif that was all her own for her Elephant Star handpainted tiles, which pair beautifully with our 2x8s in Tidewater. Sink: Treeline Wood and Metalworks Faucet/fixtures/toilet: Kohler

Justin Lambert