Rejiggering the stairs, adding 30 square feet, and building in clever storage solutions transform a compact 1918 bungalow—and the daily lives of two busy parents and their three young sons
Her answer was to pretty much take the first floor apart and put it together again, inserting storage in unexpected places as in a Japanese puzzle box.
Out came the front and rear staircases, making way for a key first piece: a smart-looking set of built-ins wrapped by a single set of stairs. The design-build team also altered the stairs to the basement, adding a landing halfway down with a door that opens to the side yard. Clements characterizes this new entrance as an experiment in behavior modification: a subtle architectural hint to incoming soccer players to dispatch their gear down below before surfacing to ask about dinner.
Shown: The dramatic schist fireplace surround and the whimsical ceiling fixture give the living room a fresh look. The new opening over the sofa brings in light while separating the reading-and-relaxing zone from the kitchen-dining-room-study-hall fray.
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