Bonus Room Redo

There's nothing like an annual get-together on the horizon to jump start a big project.  Our official Housewarming and annual Thanksgiving party is right around the corner, and this room needed jumper cables to kick us in the butt.  This "bonus" room is nothing like your Christmas bonus.  It's more like the petrified french fry you find in between the seats in your car...and you can't remember ever eating fries in your car.  Yeah, that kind of bonus.



This room is overdue for an overhaul.  We can't seem to get the story straight, but at one point, it was a garage, turned storage shed, turned drafty craft room.  The last owners created an access from the house by installing the french doors, and they planned to make it a nice space, but ran out of money.

This room accounts for approximately 20% of the established square footage of the house.  And it was basically unusable.  It's a pretty safe assumption to say that the reason our house was on the market for so long was that it was priced to include this space.

There were a few reasons this room was unusable...

 

1) Small heat source.  It's a bathroom heater.  Clearly, this space is larger than a bathroom. This size of heater doesn't do much during those Michigan winters.  We tested it out in February - turned this heater on full blast, shut the doors and let it run for an hour.  There was no increase in the room temperature.  

2) There is no venting to this room to include it on our forced heat system.  We are hopeful that can be changed, but there is no existing system in this room.

3) The water spigot was in great working order.  Great if this is a garage.  Not so great if this is a family room.

4) The main gas line is exposed.  It runs from the exterior wall, along the floor and then turns into the basement.  This might only be acceptable if we lived in a swanky New York City loft.

5) There are lots of gaps between the walls and floor = major bug presence in this room.

6) Large step down.  There is a 13" difference in floor level from the main house



Sure, we can see the turn-offs of this space.  But, Justin and I focused on the opportunity.  First and foremost, there was a definite price advantage.  We feel we got a great deal on the house, and you know how I feel about a great deal!  Secondly, we saw a blank canvas that we could turn into anything we wanted.

After talking, we decided that it's better to dive into this room now since we have to update our major appliances anyway (furnace and AC).  The room is so big that it would require us to update and upsize if it was possible to tie this room into our current HVAC system.

We still have plenty of work around the house, but this room already had many features already to help make the renovation more affordable.

1) Electrical is already ran for two way operation of the fan and overhead lights.

2) There is a ton of natural light - three walls with windows.

3) The windows and doors are all vinyl and fairly new.

4) Walls, floor and ceiling are already insulated (although we plan to add more)

5) The ceiling seems easily removable.  This is important so that we can achieve the design we would like.  We'll have to add support, but we think it'll be affordable.

So what do we want to do with this room? We'd love to create a room that is a great entertaining and family space.  

Here's a little breakdown of the plan...  

 

We've been asked if we were concerned about the ceiling height after raising the floor.  The ceiling height is actually at the same level as the rest of the house already.  So even raising the floor, we would have a generous 8' ceiling.  We hope to remove the ceiling and the ceiling beams (the joists that hold the ceiling in place), and raise the ceiling to the roof joists.  There is definitely some research that needs to be done in this area (like do we need to add additional support for a vaulted ceiling, will this reduce the life of our roof, is there enough room for adequate insulation, etc). 

One of our dreams for this room is to input a wet bar/snack bar.  Turn that awkward water spigot jutting through the wall into an opportunity!  We've talked about renovating our basement into a finished space, but I imagine that will be wayyyy down the road.  So this will be our hangout, our home theatre and bar.  Are you ready for some Photoshop magic? 

Pretty impressive Photoshop skills, right?

As for the walls of the room, we plan to keep them all in tact.  We really like that this room is closed off from the house.  It'll add some soundproofing and provide a separate living space so once there is more than two people we don't all have to be in each other's business all the time.

We plan to add one non-supportive wall to hide the chimney and help the room function a bit better. It'll also provide a great accent wall for the TV.  We will add a closet access to the area behind the angled wall.  Not only will this give us storage space, but it will also give us full access to the main gas line (so it's not tucked under a floor or behind a wall) and to the gas shutoff for the fireplace in the living room. 

How about a little more of that Photoshop magic... 

Let's call this the cartoon version of what we imagine.

 

What about the window heights? Great question.  Besides nixing the little window to the right in the picture below we think all window heights will still be pretty standard.  Once we raise the sliding door, the door and the remaining windows will all be the same distance from the ceiling.  That's what we call ugly-room luck.  I have a feeling we need as much luck as we can get in the coming weeks. 

Who's ready for a new renovation? What would you do with this space?