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A Bathroom of Its Own, and a Basement Built for Pool Days
This basement started as a blank canvas. Open framing, exposed insulation, a concrete slab, and a walkout wall of windows looking straight out at the pool. Nothing to work around. Also nothing telling us what it should become.
So we started with the backyard. The pool sits right outside that walkout wall, and the basement needed to work as the hinge between the two: a real entertaining space, not a leftover room under the house.
The scope was a Reconfigured project. Walls went in from scratch. Plumbing was run new, since none of it existed yet. That gave us room to plan around three things the family asked for: a media wall for movie nights, a spot for the kids to do crafts and board games, and a bathroom on that level so pool traffic never has to go upstairs.
The desk and the tall cabinets beside it were built in, not furnished in. They’re sized to hold what the kids actually own: craft supplies, board games, the stuff that otherwise ends up in a pile. That only works if you plan it before the drywall goes up.
The media wall anchors the main room: a fireplace, a wood slat surround, built-ins on either side, with the sectional and TV facing it directly. Around the corner is a wet bar and a small kitchen, with its own island and cabinetry. Nobody has to run upstairs mid-movie for a drink.
An unfinished basement is its own kind of problem. There’s no old layout to undo, but there’s nothing to push against either. Every decision is open, which sounds freeing right up until you have to make them. We work through that in Discover, before a single wall goes up.